Announcing: Private Life!
NYRB Podcast, new publications, & special Valentine's Angel-of-the-Month!
Wow. Happy New Year?
The last time I sent out a newsletter was almost a year ago, spring 2025. Back then I was doing a bi-weekly art talk show with Leigha Mason on East Village Radio, which prompted me to get this together every other week. For various reasons we paused that show (don’t worry we’re still best friends) not least of which is because I was given the opportunity to develop a new podcast for the New York Review of Books.
I’ve worked on it for most of the last year, everything from researching how to “acoustically treat” a room (complete with installing panels myself—don’t forget I went to art school!) to collaborating with composer Matthew Aucoin on the theme music (THANK YOU!) and with Review art director Leanne Shapton on the handwritten, Cocteau-inspired visuals (DOUBLE THANK YOU!) The result is “Private Life”—named after one of my favorite Grace Jones songs (actually also a cover of a great Pretenders song)—Your private life drama, baby, leave me out…
The show will feature long-from interviews with contributors to the Review (as well as authors from the NYRB books series) about their writing, and I’ll ask them to choose a piece from the archive (by someone else) they want to dive into together. These episodes will alternate with newly recorded audio version of the essays we discuss.
For instance, for the first episode (That you can listen to now! On any podcast platform, such as, Apple Music, Spotify, RSS, etc.) is a conversation with Darryl Pinckney on his friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick, which will be followed next week by Kathleen Chalfant reading Hardwick’s 1972 essay “Working Girls: The Brontes” (that’s right, just in time for the deluge of Wuthering Heights discourse—are you ready? I’m ready.)
There are some incredible things coming up—including conversations with Joyce Carol Oates, with her essay on JonBenét Ramsey read by the incomparable Alissa Bennett!—that I’m excited to share.
DO ME A FAVOR: Listen! Subscribe (it’s free!) Spread the word! Rate it five stars and leave a comment! (Apparently that helps people find it!)
If you haven’t seen me in a while “Private Life” is a big reason why (oh yeah, and I’m also in the middle of writing a book and doing endless talks and still publishing miscellaneous essays…so please, bear with me.)
Which is to say: I’ll be sending out these notes again regularly as new episodes drop. I’ll keep it short but I’ll also add a little behind the scenes flavor for each one, as well as round up my recent publications and upcoming events and talks.
For instance, I have an essay in the new Aperture monograph by pioneering gay semiotician Hal Fischer: Seminal Works (2026) and wrote a piece on Charli XCX’s (brilliant) new mockumentary of her brat tour The Moment for The Critic’s Table (thank you as ever to the wonderful Johanna Fateman!)
AND NOW, without further ado, I’m pleased to announce a special Valentine’s “Angel-of-the-Month”:
Terrific!
Wonderful to listen to you and Darryl Pinckney! Thank you!