When I started this newsletter in 2020, I didn’t know it would be the foundation of a new way of working for me. I’ve been in digital media since 2009, when I was 23, and have been freelancing as a food writer since 2015. As a freelancer, I usually had what we call an “anchor gig”: a stable base of money to rely on monthly that would pay fixed bills, and beyond that, I’d be hustling, pitching, and chasing down invoices. The periods when I didn’t have an anchor gig were financially ruinous, and when I started this newsletter, that’s what I was facing down: another period without any stable income, only this time it was a pandemic, there were warnings of looming recession, and I was no longer in New York City. I had a book proposal that I was retooling nightly over whiskey sodas, without feeling any real hope of publishing it.

This space, where I’ve been publishing essays on Mondays and flip-flopping between interviews and recipes for paid subscribers, became that anchor gig, that stable foundation, and it also became much more. Indeed, it was a lifeline while writing No Meat Required, for which I received a very small advance.

However, as it is a one-person show—as The Atlantic put it, I’m running a one-woman magazine—I never wanted to put all of my eggs in its basket, so to speak. I wanted to keep doing this for the creative outlet, as well as for the visibility and stability it provided, but I would never say no to assignments to work on it. This was how I’ve also kept it cheap, at $30 for an annual subscription.

And while I will continue to hopefully write books and for magazines, I have to recognize that this newsletter, with a free audience of over 32,000 and paid subscribers numbering over 2,100, has become more than just an anchor gig. To honor the seriousness with which I take being in so many inboxes each week, I’ve been planning a relaunch of this newsletter for 2024. (This was how I, a control freak, processed the anxiety of my book coming out: an editorial rejiggering.)

The changes will be to a broadening of who has a voice here: I’ll be bringing in writers through a monthly contributor essay, and encouraging more conversation through comments and a book club.

It will mean a rise in the annual subscription rate to $50 per year, but those who have been annual subscribers at $30 will be locked in—and anyone else still has until the end of 2023 to become a paid subscriber at this lower rate.

Paid subscribers can also choose to receive only The Desk Digest in their inbox, per their subscription options, and thus get access to everything but receive only one email per month to cut back on inbox clutter. Find the option on the “manage subscription” page.

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy is becoming more of a magazine, and I’m bringing it into alignment with my hopes for the future: These include more books of my own, of course, but also my hope to eventually publish inventive, long-form food writing in print. 

Next week, more about how I envision The Desk Dispatch and how to pitch me your ideas. I’m so excited about this new chapter and hope you’ll come along.

This Friday will be From the Desk Recommends… for paid subscribers, a link roundup on what I’m reading and watching, with a specific focus on something I’ve been discussing a lot with folks: how reading about art teaches me how to write about food.

My husband, historian and writer Israel Meléndez Ayala, has launched a bilingual newsletter called Crítica that I will be editing (lightly!). He will be putting Puerto Rico’s politics, economy, and culture into historical context. Subscribe!

My small capsule jewelry collection with By Ren, whose designs are handmade to order in Philadelphia, is live through the end of 2023. There are cocktail picks with a pearl on them, which are my favorite thing ever! Perfect gift.

I’ve got two assignments that I’m working on right now that require me to read a lot about gender and performances of domesticity vs. adventure. They’re very different pieces for very different outlets, but they have this nice overlap. Aside from my readings for these (which I’ll discuss at another time), I’m reading Poetry Is Growing in Our Garden by winemaker Anders Frederik Steen.

I made some really good beer-battered onion rings that I’ll talk about in the November Monthly Menu (getting a head-start on 2024).