At the time, Penpalooza was less than two months old and swiftly growing, thanks to the inventiveness and charm of its founder, New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme, and to an evident need for social outlets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Syme, who lives in New York City, began mailing letters to friends and family in April 2020, when, she told Pop-Up Magazine, she rarely left her apartment and “couldn’t write for more than a few minutes at a time.” Writing letters, she said, helped jump-start her work. In late June, Syme asked her Twitter followers—they currently number more than 111,000—if anyone would be interested in finding a pen pal. In a matter of days she received more than five hundred replies, and on June 30, she launched Penpalooza on Elfster, an online platform designed to facilitate Secret Santa gift exchanges. By July 9 more than 1,500 people had signed up. By the time 2020 came to a close, nine thousand pen pals had found correspondents from more than fifty countries. Penpalooza is the largest exchange ever hosted on Elfster, so large that the platform’s engineers altered their code specifically to accommodate this demand.
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We Build It Ourselves
A roundtable on race, power, and the writing workshop
Things We Lost to the Water
Eric Nguyen whose debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water, was published in May by Knopf.
THE FIELD OF STORIES
IN HER NEW MEMOIR, POET WARRIOR, PUBLISHED BY W. W. NORTON IN SEPTEMBER, U.S. POET LAUREATE JOY HARJO TRAVELS THE ROADS, RIVERS, AND RHYTHMS OF HER LIFE, TAKING READERS ON A JOURNEY ACROSS GENERATIONS AND SINGING POWERFUL LESSONS ON THE CYCLICAL NATURE OF TIME AND BECOMING.
The Other Black Girl
Zakiya Dalila Harris introduced by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Your Career On The Line
Writers and agents discuss “The Call”
How We REMEMBER
WITH HIS FIRST NONFICTION BOOK, HOW THE WORD IS PASSED, PUBLISHED IN JUNE BY LITTLE, BROWN, POET AND SCHOLAR CLINT SMITH DELVES INTO THE LEGACY OF SLAVERY ALIVE IN MONUMENTS AND LANDMARKS WITHIN AND BEYOND THE UNITED STATES, IN AN IMMERSIVE READ THAT EXQUISITELY DEPICTS HOW A NATION AND ITS INHABITANTS REMEMBER ITS HISTORY.
Stone Fruit
Lee Lai introduced
Ehrlich Speaks to Mother-Writers
Lara Ehrlich, author of the short story collection Animal Wife (Red Hen Press, 2020), has a deep narrative investment in the ways the world denies women power and agency. In October 2020 that commitment took a new shape with the first episode of her podcast, Writer Mother Monster, a much-needed balm for those of us balancing mothering and writing in the midst of a global pandemic. Aimed at dismantling the myth that women can “have it all,” her podcast is a series of interviews with mother-writers working in all genres, at varied points in their careers, who candidly discuss the joys and complications of that dual identity. Ehrlich, herself a mother-writer—her daughter turns five this year—spoke about what she has gleaned from these exchanges and how they’ve influenced her own approach.
A Decade of Women Who Submit
For the past decade an international community of women and nonbinary writers have been working to claim space for themselves in an industry historically dominated by men. Known as Women Who Submit (WWS), the group supports and empowers its members to submit their work in spite of publishing’s inequities. Their achievements have been extraordinary: This July, the organization celebrates its tenth year, with twenty-seven chapters across the United States and Mexico, more than one hundred fifty successful book and magazine publication credits by its members in 2020, and a devoted community of writers, editors, and publishers.
Saddle Up and Read
A young reader finds an attentive audience during a July 2020 farm visit.
