write on, vol. 10: meticulously labeled cake, historical bicycle races, & my new boom box
Dear friend,
Last weekend, I made my first thrift store purchase of the year: a $6 radio/CD/cassette player. Believe it or not, I had been on the hunt for just such an item since I cleaned out my childhood bedroom over the summer. Therein, I discovered a real treasure trove of late 90s and early 2000s favorites, and I thought: who the heck needs Spotify when you have THIS? There was only one problem: while our old car featured a super fancy six CD changer(!), since getting our new car over the summer, I have had no way to play my complete collection of Shania Twain, the Decemberists, and Death Cab for Cutie. Until now!
My new CD player is in the kitchen, and I have decided my new ~thing~ is to put on a CD after work while I make dinner. The nice thing about a CD is that, unlike the endless river of streaming music, it is finite. It does not suggest songs I may like. It just plays the music until the CD is over, at which point, you can change the CD or play the same one again. So simple! So elegant!
I am not cool enough to be a vinal girlie, but maybe CD girlie is the very uncool middle ground where I can thrive?
I did not think to put a CD player on my 2025 vision board, but you can see that my plans for the year include lots of mustard — both literally and metaphorically. (What is metaphorical mustard, you might ask? I’m still working it out, so feel free to send me your thoughts/interpretations.) Also, in case you can’t read the words on this incredible NYer cartoon, it features a human (left) asking “Do you only drink blood?” and a vampire (right) answering, “Primarily. But I love bread pudding.” What does this have to do with 2025 in the life of Maggie? Only time will tell!
It’s been a minute since I sent my last missive, which I believe was timed with the publication of The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies. We have a lot to catch up on since then, not the least of which was my world (okay, east coast) tour of book events and this one very nice review by a man who I promise doesn’t know me.
Chapbook happenings included a lovely reading and conversation at Riffraff in Providence (left) with internet writer pals Amy Stuber and Stephanie Trott & getting to sign a nice stack of my books at the gorgeous new queer-focused Hive Mind Bookstore in Bushwick (right).
With no further ado, I present the usual review of book-related, work-related, and food-related highlights:
READING
It’s a little late for year-in-review, I know, but for posterity, I feel as though I must include my list of favorite 2024 reads:
Mutual Interest, the historical throuple novel of my dreams, is out February 4th! Hit me up if you want to come with me to the author’s Harvard Bookstore reading, where I will inevitably fangirl and then feel deeply weird about it.
A few more honorable mentions from the last couple of months of reading:
The Naming Song, by Jedediah Berry, a fantasy novel about the philosophy of language that takes place primarily on trains in a lightly Western version of the far future
A Shore Thing, by Joanna Lowell, a historical romance featuring a cis lady botanist and a trans masc painter/bicycle enthusiast who fall in love on a bicycle race through Cornwall
AGENTING
No doubt I have already talked your collective ear off about the stack of pink, purple, and orange books featured below, which comprise my 2024 stack of new releases, but let’s just take one more opportunity for us all to feast our eyes:
2025 will hold many more where these came from because, due to various factors of timing, I have NINE books coming out between now and June. For your reference:
Nancy Reddy’s smart & encouraging memoir + unpacking of the bad science behind THE GOOD MOTHER MYTH (St. Martin’s) — OUT TOMORROW!
Margie Sarsfield’s bizarre, funny-dark sugar beet horror novel, BETA VULGARIS (Norton) on February 11th
Hali Lee’s galvanizing and practical look at giving circles in THE BIG WE (Zando) on March 4th
Carla Fernandez’s paradigm-shifting and deeply felt RENEGADE GRIEF (S&S) on March 11th
Katie Mitchell’s gorgeous celebration of Black bookstores, PROSE TO THE PEOPLE (Clarkson Potter) on April 8th
The anonymous curator of @poetryisnotaluxury’s lush seasonal anthology of poems for every occasion, POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY (Washington Square) on May 6th
And then on May 13th, a trifecta of mind-boggling goodness (in alphabetical order by last name, library-style): Mac Crane’s moody homage to queer coming of age, basketball, and the timeless power of falling in love with your teammate, A SHARP ENDLESS NEED (Dial); Alice Murphy’s glittering and sassy dual-timeline historical romance, A SHOWGIRL’S RULES FOR FALLING IN LOVE (Union Square); and Denali Nalamalapu’s powerful illustrated look at grassroots activism and environmental change, HOLLER: A GRAPHIC MEMOIR OF RURAL RESISTANCE (Timber)
As always, you can admire all the pretty covers on my nifty list on Bookshop because I am too lazy to link to them all individually here. Meanwhile, I am (as ever) trying to make some new book deals & keep up with incoming queries… onward we go!
EATING
The gap between missives means that I have a lot to cover here, so I’m going to focus this section on a few good baked goods I had the pleasure of consuming between September and today.
I spent Election Day in Greensboro, NC, staying with friends before my reading at Scuppernong Books, and decided early in the afternoon that the only way to get through the next 24 hours involved cake. Behold, the sampling of slices I obtained from Greensboro fave Maxie B’s, which the brilliant Michele meticulously LABELED with her LABEL MAKER (pictured, top left!). I am not usually a big cake gal, but perhaps because of that, these were a particular treat. Our spread included lemon, pumpkin chocolate, hummingbird, chocolate peanut butter, and apple cinnamon — and yes, I can report that cake with friends does spark a wee bit of joy even in these dark times for democracy.
About a month later, I spent about a week in New York, taking meetings and sampling the culinary delights of the big city. I went to two much-hyped new bakeries, my favorite of which was Elbow Bread, whose offerings are pictured on the left, below. My favorite was their life-changing honey challah croissant twist.
On the right, you’ll see the internet famous pancakes from Golden Diner, where all-star pals Kelsy and Mike waited with me and Ash for at least ninety minutes in order to consume this fluffy stack — and I wasn’t mad about it!
Back on the home front, I checked out Sweet Tooth from the library and baked my way through a good chunk of her small-batch chapter, which features several recipes for just two cookies, muffins, etc. I’m deeply annoyed that the author doesn’t include weight measurements for her recipes (in this day and age!!!), but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying the two double chocolate chip cookies below, or the micro batches of snickerdoodles and blueberry muffins I whipped up. The rest of the book is normal-sized recipes, which I haven’t yet dipped into, but friend of the newsletter Emily Goda (hi, Emily!) gives them good reviews.
The recipe may only make two cookies, but they are two BIG cookies, which is just the right size in my book!
ALSO
Did you know that our very own Kate Pitt has a newsletter chock full of Shakespeare-related news? Did you know that there is enough Shakespeare-related news every week to fill a newsletter? Now you do! Subscribe here and stay tuned for fun tidbits such as a link to an interview with the screenwriter of classic film 10 Things I Hate About You and a table of swear words used in Taylor Swift albums (as well as much very serious scholarly and theatrical content). While we are on the topic of Kate Pitt, you may also enjoy her McSweeney’s debut, in which the Macbeths go to couples therapy.
One of my favorite museum moments of this fall was the Beau McCall show the Fuller Craft Museum — a pretty comprehensive retrospective of McCall’s button art from his early days making button-bedazzled vests in Philly and Harlem all the way up through his more recent art gallery work. Ash interned at Fuller Craft back in their college days, but I had never been there & our visit was a great reminder that there are apparently wonderful small museums hiding out in places like Brockton, Massachusetts. I LOOOOOVED the button art and was also intrigued to learn that McCall completely stopped making art for like two decades before coming back to it. I wish that he never stopped, but since he did, it’s nice to see that, actually, you always go back to something, even if you step away from it for literal years.
This is not ever going to be a shopping newsletter (unless maybe… a grocery shopping newsletter?), but Ash got me these slipper socks for Christmas and they are warm! soft! delightful!
THE END
How is January treating you? What kind of treats are you baking to ward off inauguration dread? Will you join me in the CD player renaissance?
Winter beach selfie, courtesy of our early December trip to Autocamp.