Eat or Be Eaten!

I've curated a reading happening in NYC on Saturday. Plus: The Desk Digest for September.

This Saturday, I’ll be hosting an afternoon event called EAT OR BE EATEN at Water Street Projects, part of the “Yes, Chef” exhibition.

There will also be an artist talk by Janine Antoni, and I’ll be in conversation with Camille Henrot. Every reading and talk will circle the meeting point of nourishment and violence. It’s such a thrill to have an opportunity to dig into these themes through so many angles.

The event will take place from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. at 161 Water Street in Manhattan. You can RSVP to events@thisismold.com but you could also just show up, if that’s more your style—an RSVP simply helps the folks running the event have a sense of how many people will be there.

The readers will be Charlotte Druckman, Jamie Hood, Ludwig Hurtado, Ligaya Mishan, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, and Mahira Rivers.

Sign up for the October 8 Newsletter Workshop.

There are two sessions: an 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. I give a talk on my newsletter philosophy, which is both practical and about tapping into what you want your newsletter to do for you, and then we have a discussion hour and question-and-answer session. I’ll be holding another two sessions on November 10. Paid subscribers can see the discount code in the header to this email or can reply to me and I’ll send it along.

---

Writing the Weather

“These types of interruptions can feel minor until you start to wonder whether you will ever be able to plan for your comfort again. I feel ridiculous to be upset about things that are viscerally upsetting. Where did I get the idea that I should be capable of putting up with anything and everything?”

From the Desk Recommends... My September Favorites (Paid)

“From fashion’s strange contemporary moment, where luxury is made in the same conditions as fast fashion, to some of our great poets continuing to give, to climate reparations; from Singapore to Julio Torres’ imagination to Italy of the early ’90s… ”

On Hurricanes

“To live in a colony such as Puerto Rico during a hurricane is to have a preview of the future of the planet if climate change is not taken seriously as a calamity because right now, it is only hitting the least affluent the hardest.”

The Monthly Menu: A Summer of Uncertainty (Paid)

“So those are the conditions under which we’ve been living, working, and cooking for the last two months. The housing crisis, cost of living crisis, the limits of car-dependent infrastructure, a poor job market—these are very real for me. Here’s what it’s looked and tasted like.”

‘Coca As Food’ by Carmen Posada Monroy

“The ongoing tension between these two opposing forces—state efforts to reduce and equate coca to cocaine, and Indigenous ancestrality and resistance—depicts how the perception of coca has historically swung in the minds of Colombians. Nothing in between. No relatability to the majoritarian non-Indigenous population who generally don’t consume cocaine. Could there be an in-between?”

The Desk Book Club: Eating to Extinction September Discussion (Paid)

“I appreciate, too, the specificity of these crops, these places, and these peoples. I do wonder whether he’s being a bit too focused on the potential and necessity of indigenous peoples to “save” the world that they did not destroy in the first place.”