One of the first graphic novels I ever owned as a young adult was Persepolis by the great Iranian-French writer Marjane Satrapi, who died this week at the shockingly young age of 56.

Persepolis was different from other YA graphic novels I had been given to read over the years in that it demanded something of me. It didn’t just tell a story—it bore witness to one. In stark black and white, with no color to soften the blow of its story, it asked me to sit inside a child’s confusion about revolution, exile, and survival, and to understand that history is not something that happens to countries, it happens to the little girls who live inside them.

Persepolis tells the story of Satrapi’s own childhood in Tehran, her life from ages six to fourteen, spanning the fall of the Shah, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the long, grinding devastation of the Iran-Iraq War. She was the only child of committed Marxist parents, intellectuals who had marched against the old regime and watched in horror as the new one rose to take its place. She was also, improbably, the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors. Satrapi grew up suspended between worlds—between the home where her parents played forbidden card games and drank wine behind drawn curtains, and the world outside, where girls were made to wear veils and women could be beaten for the wrong shoes. The book’s genius is that she renders the telling of all this through the eyes of a child who is furious, funny, bewildered, and absolutely unbroken.

Satrapi was born in Tehran to parents who were, as she would later say, too idealistic for their own good. When the revolution came, she was ten years old. By fourteen, her outspokenness—she once hit her school principal for confiscating her jewelry—had made her a liability in a country that punished girls for exactly that kind of fire. Her parents made the agonizing decision to send her to Vienna alone. She would spend years in Europe—lost, homeless at points, desperately poor—before eventually making her way to France, where she made her home, her art, and her name.

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She remained one of the most vocal critics of the Iranian government anywhere in the world—editing Woman, Life, Freedom after Mahsa Amini was killed by Iran’s morality police in 2022, and refusing France’s Légion d’Honneur as recently as 2025, on the grounds that France had been hypocritical in its relationship with the Iranian regime. She had no patience for ornamental solidarity. She wanted the real thing.

Satrapi inspired a generation of girls and young women with her punk refusal to be palatable—a teenager who wore Nike sneakers and Iron Maiden t-shirts under her mandatory veil, who listened to forbidden music, who smoked, drank, fell in love recklessly, and made art out of all of it. She showed us that the self could not be fully legislated. That even under a theocracy, something in you could remain stubbornly, defiantly yours. Her black-and-white panels weren’t just a stylistic choice; they were a political one. This past week, her family said she died “of sadness”—a little more than a year after losing her husband, the love of her life. It has a medical name: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy—broken heart syndrome—a sudden weakening of the heart triggered by acute grief. (I wrote about this phenomenon in an essay for Listening in the Dark newsletter in the spring of 2024 on having to wear a heart monitor for a couple weeks.)

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What we can learn from Satrapi’s extraordinary life and art is that the personal is never just personal. That a child’s drawing in black ink—crude, funny, devastating — can outlast a regime. That telling your own story, honestly and without permission, is a political act. That exile doesn’t have to mean silence. That punk isn’t a genre; it’s a posture toward power. Satrapi taught a generation of young women that their confusion and their rage were not embarrassing things to be managed—they were the material. They were the whole point.

This week’s Creative Call to Action: In honor of Marjane Satrapi, draw your revolution.

Write, sketch, or make something in black and white this week. No color required. Satrapi proved that a single ink line can hold an entire childhood, a political era, a country lost and found. What would your memoir look like in three panels?

Don’t worry about your skill level as an artist— this can and should be scrappy, messy, fun, raw. Use stick figures if you want to! It can be as minimalist or DIY as you want it to be.

As always, post what you made and tag me so I can share it with our community! Take a picture and post it in the comments below, in Substack’s Notes, on Intagram or Threads.

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Extra Credit: Forward this post to someone whose creative call to action you want to see manifested in the world, ask them to JOIN US!

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Substack Lives this summer, WITH DATES AND TIMES (Thank you Sam for asking for this!) :

• June 10th @ 2pm ET: A conversation with tech-founder and former META consultant Jesse Nolan on how to fix the left’s branding woes

• June 15th @ 2pm: What we can (and should) learn from the sex lives of animals with the great granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt herself, Perrin Roosevelt Ireland

• July 9th @ 2pm ET: How to wield artistry in a weaponized world with multi-hyphenate and award-winning poet, Mahogany Browne.

Upgrade to a paid subscription to hang in the comments and ask questions of our amazing guests, as well as catch up on the replays of recent interviews with guests like Roxane Gay and R.O. Kwon!

✨PLUS:✨ I’m hosting a smaller more intimate live gathering over Zoom for our paid subscribers this summer with the brilliant poet, essayist, and recipient of the NEA, Maggie Smith! Come join us to talk about finding beauty and meaning in everyday life, writing through loss and change, and the craft of making art that endures, how to infuse poetry into your art and daily life, and we’ll even get to spend a little time actually working on a poem together. Sunday July 12th at 2pm ET. (Detail and Zoom Link Will be emailed to paid subscribers the morning of!)

Upgrade to a paid subscription to hang in the comments and ask questions of our amazing guests, as well as catch up on the replays of recent interviews with guests like Roxane Gay and R.O. Kwon!

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The Sharpening is a reader-supported newsletter run by me, Amber. Upgrading to a paid subscription keeps it going—and growing. Your support lets me dedicate real time to crafting original, timely creative prompts and bringing in some of the most compelling artists working today for interviews and webinars.

With a paid subscription, you get:

• Access to all Substack Lives and Zoom webinars featuring artists whose work sits at the intersection of the political and the personal.

• The ability to comment, ask questions, and engage directly with featured guests— plus recordings of everything, so you never miss a session.

• Invitations to in-person meetups and early access to virtual and in-person events.

• Behind-the-scenes updates on my upcoming projects, book tours, and events— plus three years of archived content from my previous newsletter.

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I had the most fascinating and inspiring conversation with my friend, the poet and publisher today—we talked about how to find out what you really need and actually WANT out of publishing, …

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Recently I was asked to judge an essay competition for grade school students at a local school, grades 2 - 5. The premise of the competition was for the young students to answer one important question: What do you hope for your future self or the future world?

I found myself becoming so emotional as I read through their work—their insightfulness, so untarnished by the bullshit of adulthood. Their ideas made me laugh, surprised me, and on more than one occasion, made me cry. Some wrote about new kinds of armies, the kinds that will dutifully take care of plants and forests instead of killing one another. Many of them wrote about AI, with one young third grader writing: “I predict we will have more AI creations than real ones and that it will be harder for people to make a living.” Another young student wrote, “Dear Future Self, I think that there will be more AI and less trees.”

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What strikes me most is that these children are not writing fantasy, they are writing prophecy—or at the very least, a kind of emotional truth that adults have long since learned to suppress. We spend so much of our grown lives managing expectations, hedging our bets, softening our fears with cynicism and our dreams with practicality, that we forget what it looks like to see the world clearly. Children have not yet been handed that particular coping mechanism. And when they dream, they dream without apology. They dream with incorruptible vision. If we are willing to listen, really listen, children don't just remind us what's worth saving. They remind us that saving it is still possible. (See the books of , “All We Can Save” and “What if We Get it Right?”)

Some of the letters were filled with such prescient hope, imagining whole worlds for themselves where adults “stop fighting and start loving” or where “money will no longer be as important as good friendship.” There were desires to become the first scientist to find a total cure for cancer or to become the first marine biologist to heal the coral reefs so that they become “rainbow again.” Each new essay overwhelmed me with emotion for these young children and the futures they could see so clearly. In the words of Pete Townsend, the kids are alright.

Your Creative Call to Action this week: Inspired by these students, write a letter to your future self or to the future world.

Not a to-do list. Not a vision board. A letter—the kind a child would write, before they learned to be embarrassed by wanting things too much.

Write about what you hope for. What you fear. What you’d fix if someone handed you the world and said, go ahead, it’s yours. Let yourself be prescient, foolish, heartbroken, and wildly optimistic all in the same paragraph. The kids didn’t hedge. Neither should you.

And if you catch yourself writing “that will never happen”—good. Write it anyway. Say it anyway. Dream it anyway. That resistance is exactly where the letter needs to go.

Share yours in the comments, post it online, and as always, tag me.

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Substack Lives this summer:

• The world of publishing with author and publisher of Wave Books, Matthew Zapruder

• A conversation with tech-founder and former META consultant Jesse Nolan on how to fix the left’s branding woes

• What we can (and should) learn from the sex lives of animals with the great granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt herself, Perrin Roosevelt Ireland

• How to wield artistry in a weaponized world with multi-hyphenate and award-winning poet, Mahogany Browne.

Upgrade to a paid subscription to hang in the comments and ask questions of our amazing guests, as well as catch up on the replays of recent interviews with guests like Roxane Gay and R.O. Kwon!

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✨PLUS:✨ I’m hosting a smaller more intimate live gathering over Zoom for our paid subscribers this summer with the brilliant poet, essayist, and recipient of the NEA, Maggie Smith! Come join us to talk about finding beauty and meaning in everyday life, writing through loss and change, and the craft of making art that endures, how to infuse poetry into your art and daily life, and we’ll even get to spend a little time actually working on a poem together. Sunday July 12th at 2pm ET.

The Sharpening is a reader-supported newsletter run by me, Amber. Upgrading to a paid subscription keeps it going—and growing. Your support lets me dedicate real time to crafting original, timely creative prompts and bringing in some of the most compelling artists working today for interviews and webinars.

With a paid subscription, you get:

• Access to all Substack Lives and Zoom webinars featuring artists whose work sits at the intersection of the political and the personal.

• The ability to comment, ask questions, and engage directly with featured guests— plus recordings of everything, so you never miss a session.

• Invitations to in-person meetups and early access to virtual and in-person events.

• Behind-the-scenes updates on my upcoming projects, book tours, and events— plus three years of archived content from my previous newsletter.

  Upgrade

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Last week, my husband David and I attended a private farewell party for Stephen Colbert, held on the final night of his last taping at The Late Show. The invitation called for “festive and fired” attire, and the guest list was exactly what you’d expect: friends, family, and colleagues who had known and worked with Stephen across his many years in late night.

We arrived at a multi-roomed event space in midtown Manhattan and found ourselves surrounded by a mix of extraordinary artists, writers, musicians, and friends—some we hadn’t seen in years, some who are neighbors in Brooklyn, some we were meeting for the very first time. It felt like the world’s greatest high school reunion—the funniest, most magnetic, most alive version of one—all gathered together for one night only, to celebrate the end of something historic: Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show.

In a tiny hallway, I introduced the food writer and chef Alison Roman to Elvis Costello. In a corridor, David and I joked around with Padma Lakshmi under a giant faux palm tree, holding the plastic fronds out of our faces. I held doors open with my dear friend and fellow newsletter-er Suleika Jaouad in a foyer full of arriving guests, and left my purse on a couch under the supervision of Mark Hamill. Someone told me Dick Cavett was there—that someone being the interdisciplinary artist and magician Derek DelGaudio. I took a selfie with Ina Garten and bumbled out some words about what a massive fan I am (I truly am), then hugged special effects makeup artist Rick Baker like he was my long-lost horror dad (Rick and I worked together on The Ring.)

And this was just the first hour.

The party swelled with a pulsating, electric energy. When Colbert arrived, he moved through the room hugging his staff and writers, greeting everyone who flocked to him with warmth and grace. Then he hit the dance floor—suit and all—surrounded by hundreds of people, each of them touched in some profound way by the show, and by the community he had spent eleven years building.

^^I took this video of Colbert living his best life on the dance floor at the farewell party, amongst his crew and the many guests who have graced his show over the years.

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Over my 30-year career promoting film, television, and books, I’ve appeared on every late night show from David Letterman to Jay Leno to Jimmy Kimmel to Conan O’Brien—but none compared to sitting down with Stephen Colbert on The Late Show while promoting my 2019 memoir, Era of Ignition—perhaps the only firsthand account of the inception of the Time’s Up movement and 2017’s #MeToo Movement.

There was a particular kind of genius that arrived in a suit and tie, sat behind a desk, and reminded a weary nation—night after night—that it was still worth fighting for. Stephen Colbert had that genius. On May 21st, the Ed Sullivan Theater fell quiet for the last time under his watch, after more than 1,800 shows.

He came to us in 2015 not as a character but as himself—unarmored. A son of Charleston, a Catholic, a Tolkien devotee, a man who had known tremendous grief and chosen to respond to the world with laughter and love. What he built wasn’t merely a television program. It was a nightly ritual of civic communion. It was church. And he kept it faithfully going for nine consecutive seasons as the highest-rated show in late night.

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The show ended not because it failed, but because some institutions fear a voice that will not be quiet. And yet he spent his final months not in bitterness but in celebration; welcoming his peers, bringing back Letterman, winning an Emmy, and announcing a Lord of the Rings film. Because why the hell not? Because joy keeps moving.

Thank you, Stephen, for laughs that were also arguments for decency, for sincerity snuck past the cynicism of the age, for being generous, brilliant, goofy, and constitutionally incapable of cruelty.

Go make your Lord of the Rings movie. We’ll follow you wherever you go next.

Your Creative call to action this week: Be a part of creating an artifact of gratitude for Stephen Colbert.

I'll be sending this essay to Stephen's longtime producing partner and longtime friend, the brilliant Carrie Byalick, to share with him directly. (Carrie will also be joining us soon for something special soon—stay tuned.) In the meantime, let's flood the comments section at the bottom of this page with love for Stephen. Is there a moment that stayed with you? A particular episode, a joke that landed exactly when you needed it? Tell Stephen what he's meant to you.

You can also post something on Notes or any other social media platform. Make sure to tag me so I can share it!

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Substack Lives this summer:

• Fiction writing and the power of provocative storytelling with R.O. Kwon next week!

• The world of publishing with author and publisher of Wave Books, Matthew Zapruder

• A conversation with tech-founder and former META consultant Jesse Nolan on how to fix the left’s branding woes

• What we can (and should) learn from the sex lives of animals with the great granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt herself, Perrin Roosevelt Ireland

• How to wield artistry in a weaponized world with multi-hyphenate and award-winning poet, Mahogany Browne.

Upgrade to a paid subscription to hang in the comments and ask questions of our amazing guests!

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✨PLUS:✨ I’m hosting a smaller more intimate live gathering over Zoom for our paid subscribers this summer with the brilliant poet, essayist, and recipient of the NEA, Maggie Smith! Come join us to talk about finding beauty and meaning in everyday life, writing through loss and change, and the craft of making art that endures, how to infuse poetry into your art and daily life, and we’ll even get to spend a little time actually working on a poem together. Sunday July 12th at 2pm ET.

The Sharpening is a reader-supported newsletter run by me, Amber. Upgrading to a paid subscription keeps it going—and growing. Your support lets me dedicate real time to crafting original, timely creative prompts and bringing in some of the most compelling artists working today for interviews and webinars.

With a paid subscription, you get:

• Access to all Substack Lives and Zoom webinars featuring artists whose work sits at the intersection of the political and the personal.

• The ability to comment, ask questions, and engage directly with featured guests— plus recordings of everything, so you never miss a session.

• Invitations to in-person meetups and early access to virtual and in-person events.

• Behind-the-scenes updates on my upcoming projects, book tours, and events— plus three years of archived content from my previous newsletter.

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“Spend more time doing more creating and less time on the hamster wheel of visibility.” -Roxane Gay

Friends,

Yesterday I sat down with renowned writer and cultural critic for her very first Substack Live. We covered feminism, post-Roe America, social backlash, white fragility, and why we need men need to be better public-facing advocates in the world right now (I also shared my pride in my husband David’s recent interview with Bill Maher, where he vigorously defended trans children.)

We also geeked out on creativity—why capitalism is the enemy of good art, why logging off can be revolutionary, and Roxane gave AI an absolute dressing down. She spilled on her romance novel with Channing Tatum (!!), her literary imprint Roxane Gay Books, and her new venture running The Rumpus with her wife Debbie Millman. With a paid subscription, you can enjoy the replay of my interview with Roxane, along with all the other incredible interviews and intimate webinars we have coming up all summer long.

Speaking of incredible interviews and intimate webinars all summer long! Here are just a few coming up that you wont want to miss:

• Fiction writing and the power of provocative storytelling with R.O. Kwon

• The world of publishing with author and publisher of Wave Books, Matthew Zapruder

• A conversation with tech-founder and former META consultant Jesse Nolan on how to fix the left’s branding woes

• What we can (and should) learn from the sex lives of animals with the great granddaughter of Eleanor Roosevelt herself, Perrin Roosevelt Ireland

• How to wield artistry in a weaponized world with multi-hyphenate and award-winning poet, Mahogany Browne.

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PLUS: I'm hosting a smaller more intimate Live gathering over Zoom for our paid subscribers this summer with the brilliant poet, essayist, and recipient of the NEA, Maggie Smith! Come join us to talk about finding beauty and meaning in everyday life, writing through loss and change, and the craft of making art that endures, how to infuse poetry into your art and daily life, and we'll even get to spend a little time actually working on a poem together. Saturday July 12th at 2pm ET.

Enjoy the below interview with Roxane Gay and as always, thanks so much for being here.

The Sharpening is a reader-supported newsletter run by me, Amber. Upgrading to a paid subscription keeps it going—and growing. Your support lets me dedicate real time to crafting original, timely creative prompts and bringing in some of the most compelling artists working today for interviews and webinars.

With a paid subscription, you get:

• Access to all Substack Lives and Zoom webinars featuring artists whose work sits at the intersection of the political and the personal.

• The ability to comment, ask questions, and engage directly with featured guests— plus recordings of everything, so you never miss a session.

• Invitations to in-person meetups and early access to virtual and in-person events.

• Behind-the-scenes updates on my upcoming projects, book tours, and events— plus three years of archived content from my previous newsletter.

Upgrade me❤️

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Yesterday, my sister-from-another-mister-in-law (the wife of my childhood best friend Jesse) Ivirlei Brookes sent me a video that made my jaw drop. The video was by Liz Oyer, Former Pardon Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, putting Trump’s recent “anti-weaponization” fund into one of the most chilling contexts I can remember. And it involves you, the American taxpayer.

Oyer has spent years inside the American legal system watching its institutions bent and pressured in ways most citizens never see. But this, she says, is something she has never witnessed before: “The greatest abuse of our legal system in history—a criminal conspiracy between the president and the Justice Department.”

Here’s what happened. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS that an independent panel of legal experts called outright nonsense. Before the court could toss it, Trump’s lawyers quietly moved to dismiss it voluntarily. Gee. Why, I wonder! Because Trump had already gotten what he came for through an entirely different door.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a settlement that uses taxpayer money to create a nearly $1.8 billion fund—branded, with breathtaking audacity, as an anti-weaponization fund—to compensate “victims of lawfare and weaponization.” Five members, appointed by the attorney general and removable by the president, will distribute this money to anyone they choose, with no oversight, no transparency, and no public input.

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“This is not a legal settlement,” Oyer says. “It is a slush fund for Trump’s allies and supporters, laundered through the machinery of the Justice Department.”

Blanche, as acting attorney general, had a fiduciary duty to protect taxpayer money from false and fraudulent claims. Oyer says he has abdicated it entirely—reaching into the U.S. Treasury to give away money no one has a legal right to, at the president’s request, with no court judgment and no valid legal claim.

Oyer doesn’t mince words: this is a theft of public property, a fraud on the American people, and “a criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of our government.” For someone who has spent her career defending the rule of law, this is a breaking poin— and a call to action.

Your creative call to action this week: Spread the word.

It’s a simple but mighty one—less creative and more straightforward. We are going to rely on good ‘ol fashioned word of mouth to try and spread this information as far and as wide as possible in the hopes something can be done about it. Today I want all of us to send this article to five people we know and ask them to send it to five people they know, and so on. The more noise we can make, the more awareness we can raise, the better chance we may have at effecting change.

I know every day is an onslaught of bad news coming out of the U.S.. It can feel so hard to engage some days. But some things take just a few minutes to do our small part, and with enough small parts, we become a much larger whole, working together to fight. Forward this email if you’re reading it in your inbox, or share it if you’re reading it on the Substack website. Five people. Clue them in. Ring the alarm. Ask them to join us in sending it to five more.

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• First of all, yes I hand wrote and tore up the edges of the graphic directly above us to make it look cool and no it’s not AI. You’re welcome, America! Second: we have incredible Substack Live interviews coming up all summer long: feminism and smut with (she’s writing a romance novel with Channing Tatum,) fiction and the wilderness of storytelling with , poetry and the world of publishing with the esteemed poet and publisher of Wave Books, , artistry in a weaponized world with Mahogany Browne and SO MUCH MORE. Upgrade to a paid subscription to join the conversation, ask questions, and support The Sharpening. Paid subscribers also get the full interview recording.

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Roxane THEE Gay

The one and only R.O. Kwon

Poetry & Publishing w/ Matthew Zapruder

Poking the Squid w/ Perrin Ireland

Artistry & resistance w/ Mahogany Browne

• Next month, I’d love for you to join me in the mountains. Idyllwild Arts’ Writer’s Week (June 21–27, 2026) takes place in the San Jacinto Mountains in Idyllwild, California — an immersive week of craft talks, readings, and receptions. I’ll be joining guest authors including U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Joy Harjo, Janet Fitch, LA Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson, and the brilliant L.A. poet, Brendan Constantine. Workshops cover poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. Whether you’re deepening your practice or finally carving out time for your writing life, come join us — details and registration at idyllwildarts.org.

The Sharpening is a reader-supported newsletter run by me, Amber. Upgrading to a paid subscription keeps it going — and growing. Your support lets me dedicate real time to crafting original, timely creative prompts and bringing in some of the most compelling artists working today for interviews and webinars.

With a paid subscription, you get:

• Access to all Substack Lives and Zoom webinars featuring artists whose work sits at the intersection of the political and the personal.

• The ability to comment, ask questions, and engage directly with featured guests — plus recordings of everything, so you never miss a session.

• Invitations to in-person meetups and early access to virtual and in-person events.

• Behind-the-scenes updates on my upcoming projects, book tours, and events — plus three years of archived content from my previous newsletter.

Upgrade me❤️

Leave a comment

Blowing out the candles on our birthday cakes as kids was the most exciting part of any celebration (next to eating said cake) but what about the wish we made right before?

As a kid, my birthday wishes knew no limits in desire. They were big and grandiose and they were small and tender. Make me President of the United States so I can outlaw homework. Please make Zack and Billy breakup so he can be MY boyfriend. I wish my neighbor Liz would just give me all her glass animal collection already!!

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to cherish that briefest pause—the one right after the Happy Birthday song ends and before the candles get blown out—when a kid channels all their little newfound psychic energy into their deepest need or longing, in the form of a wish. I love watching my own daughter do it, now nine years old, or her friends at their own parties, or even some random kid at a nearby table in a restaurant.

I’ve seen a twenty-something in a tube top and mini-skirt close her eyes to make a wish and blow out an ostentatious sparkler candle at a Las Vegas night club (it was me) and I’ve seen a woman in her pajamas about to hit forty making a wish for impending middle age before blowing out a single candle stuck in a slice of banana bread (also me.)

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What is it about a birthday wish that still holds weight, still offers some promise of future good? Whether we’re eight years old or eighty, why do we still make a wish on the anniversary of the day we were born? Maybe it’s because a wish is the one moment we give ourselves permission to want something without justification, without practicality, without shame—just pure, unfiltered desire for what could be.

Tomorrow, I’m turning forty-three years old. I’m thinking a lot about how much of a life I’ve already lived—more than sixty film and television acting roles under my belt, seven books published, a written and directed feature film, co-founding a thriving feminist media company, seventeen years married to a damn good man, and my greatest work of art, my biggest life accomplishment by far: my daughter, Marlow. It’s a lot to be thankful for.

And yet, in the timeless words of Ani DiFranco: “What kind of life am I looking for? I’ve got everything I want, and still I want more.”

Still I want more.

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And so I return to the wish. As impractical as it may be, as magical as it might seem, there’s a manifesting quality to it I will never let go of. I want more: More time with my dad on this Earth before he goes. More memories with my sister who lives far from me. More books to write and read. More feature films to birth into the world. More traveling the world with David. More tender snuggling with my daughter before she’s too grown for it.

So this week, in honor of my birthday, I’m asking you to join me in making a wish of your own.

This week’s action: Light a candle and make an audacious wish.

It’s a simple but good one. Light a candle this week, close your eyes, and make the wish you stopped letting yourself make—the one that lived in you before the world talked you out of it, before adulthood taught you to ask for less. I’ll be doing the same for myself.

Share a photo of your candle and share your wish if you want to—or keep it close, that's sacred too. If something bigger moves through you, write the poem, as Jack Hirschman would say. Or write the essay, the song, the stitch in the fabric. However it comes out, wherever it lands, tag me (Notes, Instagram, etc.) I don't want to miss a single one.

Extra Credit: Forward this post to someone whose creative call to action you want to see manifested in the world, ask them to JOIN US!

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COMING UP:

• Our May Substack Live guests are extraordinary and you wont want to miss out: Chief Justice of Feminism (lol) Roxane Gay , brilliant novelist R. O. Kwon 권오경 and a special hang with me and my current husband, David Cross on my birthday tomorrow. Upgrade to a paid subscription to have fun in the comments section, and support the work here at The Sharpening.

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Birthday hang with me and David!

Roxane THEE Gay

The one and only R.O. Kwon

• This June, I’m heading to the mountains and I’d love for you to join me. Idyllwild Arts’ Writer’s Week runs June 21st–27th, 2026, nestled in the majestic forest setting of the San Jacinto Mountains in Idyllwild, California, and it is exactly the kind of immersive, inspiring experience writers dream about. I’ll be joining other incredible guest authors in leading craft talks, readings and special receptions throughout the week alongside U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Joy Harjo, White Oleander and Paint It Black author Janet Fitch, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Lynne Thompson, and a national treasure of poetry, Brendan Constantine.

  Workshops span poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction, taught by an exceptional faculty. Whether you’re deepening your practice or finally making time for the writing life you’ve always wanted, this is the place to do it. Sign up and join us—full details and registration are at idyllwildarts.org.

Special birthday shout outs to my Taurean loves: , Liz Nolan (She never did give me her glass animal collection,) Ryan Williams aka , and of course, my mom Bonnie, who’s birthday is this Friday, the day after mine.

This past week, the final tooth was pulled from the Voting Rights Act’s mouth, leaving many Americans speechless as to what will come next for the efficacy of our voting rights. In a 6–3 ruling along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, holding that race-conscious redistricting is unconstitutional and stripping away one of the last meaningful tools minority communities had to challenge maps designed to erase their political power. I watched the emotional, angry responses of friends and TV news pundits alike as they grappled with what this means for the future of our elections, our democracy, and our country as a whole. In the words of Lily Allen, I hate it here.

With this ruling, the deeply biased and compromised conservative majority of The Supreme Court—all six of those cowards—paved a path for states to redraw their district lines in the most damaging ways. It will dilute Black and brown voters’ political representation, eliminating majority/minority districts that had been hard-won through decades of litigation. As a result, fair districts across the nation will likely vanish as legislatures aim to gut representation for voters of color without meaningful checks from the courts. We will, in many chilling ways, return to a pre-Civil Rights era at the ballot box.

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This ruling had me thinking about all the ways the Voting Rights Act has touched my life directly—even as a white woman. From knowing that the ballot box was one place no husband, boss, or abuser could follow a woman in, to watching Black women finally claim offices that had been gerrymandered against them for decades.

The Voting Rights Act was paid for in blood. In 1965, only 335 of Selma's 15,000 Black citizens of voting age were registered to vote. On Bloody Sunday, March 7th, approximately 600 marchers were beaten with clubs and tear gas on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The images shocked the nation. Eight days later, President Johnson addressed Congress, invoking the movement's own words—"we shall overcome"—and the bill was signed into law on August 6th, with Rosa Parks, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King Jr. standing at his side. It outlawed literacy tests, challenged poll taxes, and mandated federal oversight where suppression had thrived. By year's end, a quarter million new Black voters were registered. Congress reauthorized the Act five times over four decades—in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006—each time affirming the promise was still unfinished. Now it is being dismantled not by honest repeal but by subterfuge, through technical legal language that guts the Act while pretending it hasn't.

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Your Creative Call to Action: Redraw Your Own Line.

This week, I’m calling on you to redraw your own line—to retrace your history and ask what the Voting Rights Act has given YOU, no matter your race, gender, socioeconomic background, or zip code.

The foot soldiers who bled on that bridge didn’t march only for themselves. They marched for all of us.

Let’s tell the world through our craft: Who did they march for you to become?

Write it in a letter to the six Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of this ruling (Their address is below.) Draw a timeline showing how the VRA affected your history and trajectory directly. Paint a picture of the line, sew it, or make a collage incorporating it. You can mail it to the Justices, post it on social media or share it in Notes on the Substack app (tag me in any of them!)

Who Did the VRA Protect?

More people than most of us ever knew. Here is a brief overview:

Latino/Hispanic Americans — The 1975 amendments added language minority protections requiring bilingual ballots and voting materials, a direct response to the systematic exclusion of Spanish-speaking citizens, particularly in Texas, California, and the Southwest.

Native Americans — Tribal communities faced polling places hours from reservations, English-only ballots, and deliberate district drawing to dilute Native voting power. The VRA’s language minority provisions were transformative for tribes across Alaska, Arizona, and the Dakotas.

Asian Americans — The same 1975 amendments protected Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese American voters, requiring materials in their languages in covered jurisdictions across California, Hawaii, and New York.

Alaska Natives — Faced unique geographic and linguistic barriers that the VRA specifically addressed through federal oversight and language assistance.

Poor White Voters in the South — Literacy tests and poll taxes suppressed poor white voters too. Eliminating these barriers opened the ballot to an entire economic class that had been quietly excluded for generations.

Language Minority Communities — The 1975 amendments extended protection to any community where English was not the primary language — a provision that continues to protect new immigrant communities today.

People with Disabilities — The VRA’s framework directly inspired the Americans with Disabilities Act, and its accessibility requirements for polling places gave disabled voters protections they had never had before.

Young Voters — The 26th Amendment lowering the voting age to 18 in 1971 was energized by the VRA’s momentum — the argument that if you could be drafted, you could vote.

Resources.

To learn more about what the VRA did for you and your community:

Women’s Rights: womenshistory.org · now.org

Rights of the Poor: poorpeoplescampaign.org · brennancenter.org

Rights of the Disabled: dredf.org · ada.gov

Rights of Immigrants: nilc.org · advancingjustice-aajc.org

Mail Your Line.

Send your work directly to the six justices who voted in favor of this ruling via good old fashioned snail mail:

Supreme Court of the United States

1 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20543

Justice Samuel Alito · Chief Justice John Roberts · Justice Clarence Thomas · Justice Neil Gorsuch · Justice Brett Kavanaugh · Justice Amy Coney Barrett

A few tips: Include a brief handwritten cover note explaining what your work represents and why the VRA mattered to you personally—it makes it harder to dismiss. Send physical mail, not email—volume is visible and harder to ignore. Write to all six, not just one.

Extra Credit: Forward this post to someone whose creative call to action you want to see manifested in the world, ssk them to JOIN US!

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COMING UP:

• Holy smokes, do we have some Substack Lives for you! Chief Justice of Feminism (lol) , brilliant novelist and a special hang with me and my current husband, on my birthday. And that’s just May! Upgrade to a paid subscription to join us, have fun in the comments section, and support the work here at The Sharpening.

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Birthday hang with me and David!

Roxane THEE Gay

The one and only R.O. Kwon

• This June, I’m heading to the mountains and I’d love for you to join me. Idyllwild Arts’ Writer’s Week runs June 21st–27th, 2026, nestled in the majestic forest setting of the San Jacinto Mountains in Idyllwild, California, and it is exactly the kind of immersive, inspiring experience writers dream about. I’ll be joining other incredible guest authors in leading craft talks, readings and special receptions throughout the week alongside U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Joy Harjo, White Oleander and Paint It Black author Janet Fitch, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Lynne Thompson, and a national treasure of poetry, Brendan Constantine.

  Workshops span poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction, taught by an exceptional faculty. Whether you’re deepening your practice or finally making time for the writing life you’ve always wanted, this is the place to do it. Sign up and join us—full details and registration are at idyllwildarts.org.

Hi friends!

Thank you so much for tuning into our conversation with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Jodi THEE Kantor yesterday. I am still buzzing from the conversation.

A small recap: is an investigative journalist at The New York Times whose reporting helped ignite the #MeToo movement and change the world. When Jodi was invited to deliver the commencement address at Columbia University (her alma mater) in 2025, she was walking into a charged moment. The campus had been shaken by protests, federal funding had been cut, and there was, by her own description, an air of doom. The question was: how do you offer hope? What she came up with went viral and became the foundation for her new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work.

The book tackles a question so many young people are asking right now: how, in this environment, is anyone supposed to find and start their life’s work? Rather than offering platitudes, Jodi identifies two principles—craft and need—to help people navigate the uncertainty of building a career amid political upheaval, economic pressure, and the ugh of AI. It is, in the best possible way, a book for all of us who feel lost, uncertain, and worried for the future.

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Yesterday’s interview was a wonderful one but I do want to take a moment to address what happened in the comments. Due to technical difficulties on my end getting the live up and running (it’s a one-woman show over here, folks!) I wasn’t able to set the proper restrictions in time, which allowed some unwelcome behavior to slip through. That has now been resolved, and all future live interviews will have a safe, moderated comments section where we can show up and engage the way this community deserves. (Jodi has graciously offered to answer a few questions that were not able to be asked during the Live in our comments section at the bottom of this post. This is a perk for our paid subscribers—if you’d like to upgrade, click here.)

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning in yesterday and check out Jodi’s website for all upcoming book tour dates and events!

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COMING UP:

• Mark your calendars! Take a breather from politics with me and my current husband, comedian David Cross, for a fun monthly get together Live on Substack where we aim to take the edge off the daily news cycle. We have no idea what the theme of this monthly hang is yet, but we… kind of like it that way? Maybe you can help us figure it out! Join us on my birthday: May 14th at 2pm ET!

  Note: This monthly hang is a perk for paid subscribers.

Upgrade me please!

• This June, I’m heading to the mountains and I’d love for you to join me. Idyllwild Arts’ Writer’s Week runs June 21st–27th, 2026, nestled in the majestic forest setting of the San Jacinto Mountains in Idyllwild, California, and it is exactly the kind of immersive, inspiring experience writers dream about. I’ll be joining other incredible guest authors in leading craft talks, readings and special receptions throughout the week alongside U.S. Poet Laureate Emeritus Joy Harjo, White Oleander and Paint It Black author Janet Fitch, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Lynne Thompson, and a national treasure of poetry, Brendan Constantine.

  Workshops span poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction, taught by an exceptional faculty. Whether you’re deepening your practice or finally making time for the writing life you’ve always wanted, this is the place to do it. Sign up and join us—full details and registration are at idyllwildarts.org.

Enjoy my interview with Jodi Kantor + drop your questions in the comments below and Jodi will come by to answer some of them!

Leave a comment

Love,

Amber

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Please be advised, today’s essay discusses sexual assault and physical violence.

When the #MeToo movement broke wide open in 2017 and women and men came forward en masse with stories of sexual harassment and abuse from every corner of the world, a man in New York emerged as a leading ally. He was very much in a visible position of power, and his public support of the movement was not lost on many of us in the eye of that storm. We needed more men like him, we told each other. We wanted more men to take their cues from him, we agreed. I had met him, on more than one occasion, as he gave speeches in support of #MeToo, frequented our marches, and was an unapologetic and outspoken advocate who we were grateful to have in our corner.

During a meeting of women convened to form Time’s Up—the human rights organization I helped found in 2018—his name was raised as someone we could count on to help push through legislative changes on sexual harassment in the workplace. But several of the women lawyers in the room went white as ghosts when his name was spoken. They knew something we didn’t yet, but would soon.

That man’s name was Eric Schneiderman, then the Attorney General of New York State. Shortly after that meeting, allegations came to light that he was not only not an ally, but a predator himself—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Schneiderman had sexually abused women and, on more than one occasion, physically harmed them in the process. He resigned within hours of the story breaking.

The Schneiderman Syndrome was the term I coined back then for the men hiding in plain sight—the ones who were often the most vocal supporters of women's rights while secretly being among the most vicious perpetrators of violence against our bodies. Last year, the horrifying story of Gisèle Pelicot came to light: the man closest to her, the one she trusted most in the world, her husband, Dominique, was discovered to have been drugging her and inviting strangers to assault her while she slept, for nearly a decade without her ever knowing.

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And as it turns out, this is a thing; a documented, global phenomenon. A CNN investigative report recently uncovered a secret online network (centered on a website called Motherless) where men share techniques for drugging their wives just enough to sexually assault them. The website received more than 62 million visits last month alone as the Dominiques of the world continued to flock to it.

Whether it's Eric Swalwell's charm being exposed as the cover story of a serial predator, or Cesar Chavez's legacy going down in flames for what he did to young girls and women—including his own co-founder, Dolores Huerta—women continue to bear the brunt of atrocities committed by men who claim to love us, who declare allegiance to our safety as a form of cover for their own sins.

I was angry in 2017 and I am still angry now, reading these headlines almost ten years later.

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I am forever in awe of the women and men who dare to come forward, who tell their stories knowing the cost is often a staggeringly steep one. I watched what happened during the Time's Up years: how some who spoke up were blacklisted, harassed, and targeted further, only to watch the one man who did face a real consequence—Harvey Weinstein—have his story repackaged by a right-wing apologist angling to rehabilitate him with a prison interview. The men supposedly "canceled" by the likes of organizations like Time’s Up took more of a time out, returning just a few years later with book deals, bigger crowds, and Netflix comedy specials.

So spare me the talk about how survivors went too far. How women speaking out about every violence from work place retaliation to sexual assault is nothing more than a witch hunt.

This week’s prompt is one I hope will reach you somewhere in the well of your rage—because the rage, it turns out, was always justified.

Your creative call to action this week: Reclaim your rage.

Rage is a resource. It has always fueled the best creative work; the most honest, the most necessary, the most enduring. Reach down into your own this week and make something from it. Not pretty. Not palatable. True. Whether it’s your own story as a survivor or inspired by the resilience you have read out from women over the last few years.

Write a poem that wields it.

Smash your paintbrush against the canvas and let it speak for you.

Record yourself dancing, moving, thrashing to a song—let your body and the song speak for what you’re feeling.

However you choose to release your rage this week, share it with our community in the comments below at the very end of this essay, or in Notes on the Substack app or website (make sure to tag me) or on Instagram using the hashtag #ReclaimYourRage (and tag me so I can share it.)

Extra Credit: Forward this post to someone whose creative call to action you want to see manifested in the world and ask them to JOIN US!

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Yours,

Amber

• Join me for an interview on Substack Live with Jodi Kantor, investigative journalist for The New York Times and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé that helped ignite the #MeToo movement. Jodi’s new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work, expands on her viral Columbia University commencement address and offers practical wisdom for discovering meaningful work in uncertain times—pairing craft with the need to navigate the hardest career questions we face. Sunday, April 26 from 2pm–3pm ET live on Substack. (All are invited but you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to comment.)

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Since as far back as I can remember, any official headshot of me was a kind of facade—a presentation of a person rather than a portrait of me. My first headshot was taken around the age of 10 when I first started acting and it was the beginning of my relationship with the art of posing. It’s where I learned how to be perceived rather than seen.

But fame changes what's expected of your face, and as I became more of a household name, my headshots grew more calculated, more aiming-to-please. They became projections of fierceness and femininity, of confidence and airbrushed beauty—images of myself I didn’t always relate to. They told whoever was looking at them that the young girl in the picture was perfect for the role of the troubled teen or the romantic lead opposite a male peer who would make three times the amount of money she would.

I had almost every hairstyle, every shade of color imaginable: from blue streaks to platinum blonde. I wore bronzer and fake eyelashes, expensive borrowed jewelry and outfits no person would wear anywhere other than a red carpet premiere. My headshots conveyed my unattainability, the sense that I was out of the world’s league…unless, of course, you wanted to cast that face in something amazing.

I also always had different headshots for different parts of of my professional life—one for my career in the entertainment business and one for my career as a writer, the latter of which always felt closer to the real me. (Shoutout to the writer Zack Whedon and the filmmaker Katie Jacobs who took a few of my favorite author photos over the years, which you can see at the bottom of this post.)

While I appreciate all the versions of me in those photos, none of them have ever really represented the whole of who I am, of what I do, of what I’m about. I longed for a photo that felt like it represented all of me, not just one facet or another. While I was building The Sharpening, I knew one of the steps was going to need to be a new headshot of myself, and I instantly began to dread the process: Should I line up a glam team and do several versions for my various professions, which photographer should I hire, and where would the shoot take place?

Then something magical happened.

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One night, my husband David and I slipped out for an impromptu date night at our favorite local bar. (Catch us in conversation this Friday, live on Substack, a monthly perk for paid subscribers.) I was wearing my favorite plum-colored corduroy jacket, my hair freshly washed, wild and natural. A little makeup, but not much. David took out his phone and took a few pictures of me, and when I looked at them, I was speechless.

There you are, I said to myself.

The photo felt like the most authentic, most natural, most real version of myself I had ever seen, or at least, seen in a long time. It’s not retouched—only slightly lightened. You can see my greying hair, which I love; the lines on my forehead, which I love even more; the flecks of green in my hazel eyes that every other photo has always flattened to brown.

David had captured all of me in a single frame. The strength I carry. The wisdom I’ve earned. The beauty I claim as my own. My existence as a writer, a poet, an actress, a woman aging with intention and proud of every year of it. To choose to see your own so-called imperfections—in a world that reserves beauty only for youth, thinness, and a very narrow idea of perfection—is itself a political act. Today’s prompt is rooted in that feeling.

Your creative call to action this week: Write a love letter to a portrait of you.

Create: Make a portrait of yourself using any medium you choose and write a love letter to it. It can be a picture, painting, collage, tapestry, textile—whatever you want. Make it an authentic representation of who you feel you are. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be you. Then write a love letter to what you see, to the version of yourself the world doesn’t always get to meet: unposed, un-retouched, and entirely your own self expression.

Act: Share your portrait and your love letter, if you’re comfortable, on Notes and tag me so I can reshare it, or on Instagram or any other social media platform with the hashtag #ThereYouAre (and make sure to tag me!) Or share in the comments below!

Extra Credit: Forward this post to someone whose love letter you want to read and encourage them to join us in whatever way they can!

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Mark Your Calendars:

• My interview on Substack Live with Jodi Kantor, investigative journalist for The New York Times and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé that helped ignite the #MeToo movement. Jodi’s new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work, expands on her viral Columbia University commencement address and offers practical wisdom for discovering meaningful work in uncertain times—pairing craft with the need to navigate the hardest career questions we face. Sunday, April 26 from 2pm–3pm ET live on Substack.

Join us and add to your calendar here!

• Take a breather from politics with me and my husband, comedian David Cross, for a fun monthly get together Live on Substack where we aim to take the edge off the daily news cycle. Our first hang will be next Friday April 17th at 2pm ET Live on Substack. Note: This one’s on the house. Future monthly hangs with me and David will be for paid subscribers only.

Come hang and add to your calendar here

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Here are some headshots from various versions of myself over the years:

Last week, four astronauts traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history.

When they got there—252,000 miles out, on the far side of the moon, in one of the longest communications blackout in the history of human spaceflight—they did something I can’t stop thinking about.

They named a crater.

Commander Reid Wiseman’s wife, Carroll, died of cancer in 2020. She was a NICU nurse and the mother of two daughters who are now being raised by a single father who happens to also be flying a spacecraft around the moon. On Monday, the Artemis II crew proposed naming a crater they'd discovered after her—a bright spot on the moon's near side, visible from Earth at certain times—so her daughters can look up and find their mother in the night sky, forever.

They named a second crater too. They called it Integrity, after the nickname they gave their spacecraft, and after the word itself; a word we've nearly hollowed out down here. I’ve been thinking about these gestures all week, and what four people, at the outer edge of human experience and life itself chose to leave out in the literal universe: messages of love and principle.

Your creative call to action this week: Name your bright spot.

Create: Name whatever shines for you when everything else feels—or literally is—dark. Tell us what it is, why it shines, what you’ve gleaned from its brightness. Tell us what you want the universe to know about us and our bright spots, beyond the cruelty of an American president who threatened to kill the entire civilization of Iran this past week, beyond the unscrupulous and amoral men in politics who mistake power for real strength—who don’t care about the bright spots, only what they can conquer and destroy.

Act: Name your bright spot in whatever creative form you want: A poem, a letter, a collage, a list, a single sentence. Share it in the comments below or on Substack Notes and tag me so I can share it, or if you’re sharing it on Instagram, use the hashtag, #NameYourBrightSpot .

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In the face of all the cruelty down here on Earth, let’s show up with what we actually love. Let’s name it out loud, in public, on the record, the way four astronauts named Carroll into the night sky—so the bright spots outnumber the hollow ones.

Love,
Amber

Extra Credit: Forward this post to someone whose bright spot you want to read and encourage them to join us in whatever way they can!

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Mark Your Calendars:

• My interview on Substack Live with Jodi Kantor, investigative journalist for The New York Times and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé that helped ignite the #MeToo movement. Jodi’s new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work, expands on her viral Columbia University commencement address and offers practical wisdom for discovering meaningful work in uncertain times—pairing craft with the need to navigate the hardest career questions we face. Sunday, April 26 from 2pm–3pm ET live on Substack.

  Join us and add to your calendar here!

• Take a breather from politics with me and my husband, comedian David Cross, for a fun monthly get together Live on Substack where we aim to take the edge off the daily news cycle. Our first hang will be next Friday April 17th at 2pm ET Live on Substack. Note: This one's on the house. Future monthly hangs with me and David will be for paid subscribers only.

  Come hang and add to your calendar here

  Upgrade my subscription please

Sometimes the way to listen in the dark is to start making the noise you long to hear. Today, this newsletter is taking on a new name and new intention.

Welcome to The Sharpening: Creative Practices for Political Catharsis.

Like so many of you, I’ve been living with an unquenchable rage at the state of our world and a grief about what has been lost—a pain that keeps renaming itself. I’ve been trying to find somewhere to put it. Some way to release it. Some form that can hold it.

I know it can no longer look like simply scrolling to get through, or posting into the void, or showing up to a protest once in a while then returning to whatever we’re still calling normal life. That is not enough. It has never been enough, and we all know it.

I keep coming back to the same stubborn conviction that has driven me for most of my life—the one that led me to write the book Dark Sparkler which humanized the lives and deaths of young actresses, and Any Man, which aimed to broaden the conversation about sexual violence and predatory behavior. The conviction that often the most dangerous and necessary thing a person can do in a time like this is to make something honest—no matter how difficult, joyous, or terrifying—and share it, with the hope to reach others, to reconnect us to each other. To build and dream and work like the future is still full of possibility, still shapeable, still ours, wholly alive in our hands.

Creative work is not separate from resistance. It never was.

For the last several months, I’ve been working to turn the newsletter into something that honors that idea—a place where I can meet the moment personally but also offer space and ideas for others to engage with. A reminder that creativity is not separate from the political, emotional, and everyday work we are called to do.

What is The Sharpening?

The Sharpening is a cultural resistance network that turns artistic expression into collective civic action. We use our creativity as a direct form of resistance and relief. Through weekly posts, creative calls to action, live interviews with changemakers, and opportunities to deepen our creative practices through workshops and Zoom meetups, this newsletter will spark something that leaves your hands every week and moves out into the world with intention and force.

What are we working toward?

How do we use the tools we already have to meaningfully engage in this critical moment? How do we take what feels dull from overuse or despair and sharpen it back into something that cuts through the noise? How do we make our creative work not just a refuge, but a strategy?

No matter your creative outlet—whether you’re a writer, painter, photographer, or someone just starting to explore their creative curiosity—this is a place for you to use your craft to effect change.

At The Sharpening, the goal is not just to make something. It’s to make something that does something.

Each week, I’ll share a post about a current political or cultural story along with a related prompt for a creative civic action. It might be writing a letter as art. Drawing what a policy would erase from your life. Creating a postcard to mail to power. Writing an obituary for something you refuse to let die.

We’ll take what we make and we’ll post it, we’ll mail it, we’ll hashtag it, we’ll share it online, in person, with friends or strangers. We’ll get it out into the world.

Combining activism with the joy of creativity has kept me from burning out, from going numb, from giving up. It’s how I stay in the fight without losing myself to it.

What does this mean for your current subscription?

Along with the creative prompts, I’ll still be hosting interviews with some of the best writers and artists working at the intersection of resistance and art today and sharing long-form essays on issues close to my heart—like this one on “The Quiet Violence of Stealing Women’s Time” or “To Heal an Old Wound, Return to the Weapon.”

Our monthly live gatherings, writing prompts, and opportunities to spend time together will all continue to be part of what we do. What’s changing is the urgency and the focus. The full rundown for both free and paid subscribers is below. Please note that all paid subscription prices will remain the same and renew at your current cost.

Your free subscription includes:

• Weekly posts and creative calls to action helping you use your creativity to effect change. These prompts will range in topic and medium but will all be accessible creative actions that anyone can participate in. Some examples of these calls to action include:

  • Letters as art. Prompts such as “Write to your senator from thirty years in the future” or “Write a love letter to what you’re trying to protect.” Then actually mail what you wrote.

  • One-image actions. Visual prompts tied to a current event or issue like “Draw or photograph what this policy would erase or add to your life.” Share what you created with someone who might have a different perspective than you. Post to social media or send it directly to a friend.

  • Obituaries. Write an obituary for something you’ve lost, such as a program, a right, or a norm. Post it, share it with friends, or send it to the elected officials who can bring it back to life.

• Essays on topics ranging from politics, feminism, entertainment, and more.

• Watch live interviews with brilliant thinkers, writers, and creatives working at the intersection of art and political action.

Your paid subscription includes:

• All free subscriber benefits

• Watch, replay, and comment live on all Substack Live sessions, interviews, and community chats.

• Join me for more personal discussions and workshops over Zoom.

• Join me and my husband, comedian David Cross, for a fun monthly get together Live on Substack where we aim to take the edge off the daily news cycle.

• Receive invitations to in-person meetups and early access to special events both virtual and in person.

• Get behind-the-scenes looks at my creative works-in-progress from book tours, film sets, and events.

• Access three years of archived content from my previous newsletter, Listening in the Dark, including all essays, writing prompts, and interviews with folks like actress and director Kimberly McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, and conflict resolution facilitator and publisher of Group Life, Priya Parker.

Why now?

When I started Listening in the Dark three years ago, in early 2023, I was looking for a calmer, more introspective place to settle in creatively and connect with others. I needed the dark to be quieter, softer.

But today we are standing in a very different world—one where a president can wage a devastating illegal war without congressional approval, has been found liable for sexual assault, and now has been credibly accused of assaulting a child. So much of the political progress we’ve fought for has been systematically dismantled by this same person. Most days I find myself asking the same question my mother has turned to in times like these:

What is mine to do?

I believe this next chapter will ask us all to answer that question for ourselves and as a collective.

That’s what The Sharpening is for.

Welcome. I’m so thrilled to have you here.

Love,
Amber

Building a resistance network requires people. A lot of them. That’s where you come in.

As we begin this next chapter, I’m asking you to support this work in whatever way you can. Upgrading to a paid subscription allows me to keep this at the center of my life, to give it the time and attention it deserves, and to keep showing up for this community with everything I’ve got.

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If a paid subscription isn’t possible right now, you can still help build this: Forward this newsletter to a friend. Share it with people who need somewhere to put their anger. Encourage them to join. Small acts, multiplied.

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The network only works if we’re in it together.

Mark Your Calendars: For our first interview at The Sharpening, I’ll be going Live on Substack with Jodi Kantor, investigative journalist for The New York Times and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé that helped ignite the #MeToo movement. Jodi’s new book, How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work, expands on her viral Columbia University commencement address and offers practical wisdom for discovering meaningful work in uncertain times—pairing craft with the need to navigate the hardest career questions we face. Sunday, April 26 from 2pm–3pm ET live on Substack.

Friends,

This past weekend I had a moving and powerful conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the recent anthology The Big M and the memoir The Chronology of Water (now a major motion picture written and directed by Kristen Stewart). Lidia and I are sister stones, unearthed from the same rock, both carrying a kind of mineral memory of what it costs to make art from a life that has often tried to bury you. We’ve known each other for nearly a decade, and on Saturday we sat down to talk about transformation, about using different artistic muscles to survive hellish times, and about next chapters as women, writers, and agitators. Lidia is in the middle of her own seismic personal shifts—ones that are changing how she approaches her work and her life—and it felt like sitting across from a mirror. Because I am in the middle of that too.

At the end of our discussion, just before signing off, I shared news with attendees that some big changes are on the horizon for the newsletter—changes that I am bubbling with excitement and nerves to tell you about, but a small preview: In the coming weeks, this community will undergo a new look, a new name, and a sharpened, finely focused reason for existing, and you’ll hear all the details soon.

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Lidia offered an incredible amount of wisdom and blunt honesty in our conversation (which is available to watch below for paid subscribers). But what was most galvanizing to me was what Lidia calls “story space.” Not debate. Not the endless parsing of political news. But the kind of communal space where people gather to share stories, pass down wisdom, and feed each other’s imaginations. She argues (and I believe her) that story space is not supplemental to a serious civic life; it is foundational to it. Communities that have this are ones that know how to listen to each other, how to hold each other’s experiences, and how to collectively imagine new systems. They are, in turn, able to survive and resist and build and rebuild together.

This is exactly why Lidia believes so strongly in what she calls “eco communities,” smaller, intimate, intentional, trust-based groups and gatherings just like what we have built here at the newsletter. A place where real conversation can occur—one where everyone is speaking and listening, not just performing outrage in the algorithmic echo chamber of social media but engaging in actual human connection rooted in the idea that sharing our own stories with each other can be world-changing.

We need each other for this.

For the wisdom that gets passed down.

For the imagination that gets sparked.

For the active, ongoing work of creating—in community, in story, in practice—the world we actually want to live in.

Love,
Amber

• This Friday, March 6 in Baltimore, MD - Free event: I’ll be performing a with an incredible lineup of writers at Pitango Bakery for The Rumpus Revel: Feminist as Fuck! offsite event at the annual AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) conference. Click here for the full lineup and all the info.

• Monday, March 23 in New York, NY: I’ll be in conversation with at St. Ann’s Church to talk all about her new book of poetry, A Suit or a Suitcase. Click here for tickets and info.

Watch now: In Conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch

Please note this recording discusses depression and suicidal thoughts.

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Well, hi. It’s been a minute.

Friends, I opened this blank page to write to all of you and found myself immediately overwhelmed by feelings, by facts, by the sheer velocity of the world since I last published here just a month ago. So much has happened: another senseless murder at the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. The sickening detention of a five-year-old boy who was used as bait by ICE. The release of more Epstein files, including an email about a ten-year-old girl and many more horrifying accounts of terror and abuse. And then, somehow, cutting through all of it like a blade of light: the precision and power of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show and the desperately needed message it sent, loud and clear—the only thing stronger than hate is love.

The joyous reaction from the crowd on a cruise ship I was recently on (more on this later) during Bad Bunny’s incredible performance. (Turn your volume down if you’re wearing headphones.)

For me, the last few months have been a much-needed moment of silence. A pause in output so I can better seek out that love in my own life and my creative work. It has been something of an existential intensive: conjuring rather than commenting, absorbing more wisdom, and divesting from more corrupt systems and institutions. (Be you left, right, center, or somewhere on the moon, have you begun divesting yet?)

This time and silence has given me the space to really build out some big ideas, and I should have some genuinely exciting things to share with you very soon. But in the meantime, I wanted to let you know that February’s The Short and Sweet gathering live over Zoom for paid subscribers will feature one of my all-time favorite writers: the one and only Lidia Yuknavitch. Lidia is the author of the acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water, which Kristen Stewart recently adapted into a powerful feature film. She is also the author of numerous other celebrated books, including The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and the recent anthology titled The Big M, a fearless exploration and examination of menopause and the power of taking back the female body.

Join me and Lidia for a conversation about radical writing, the body as an act of political resistance, and how to keep making art when the world is on fire. (Let the image of Attorney General Pam Bondi turning her back on Epstein survivors, many of whom were trafficked as children, fuel your rage today.)

The Short and Sweet paid subscriber Zoom with special guest Lidia Yuknavitch is Saturday, February 28, from 3pm–4pm ET. The Zoom link will be emailed to subscribers the morning of February 28.

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In solidarity,
Amber

A poet’s blood on American pavement is an unfinished verse we are all now responsible for completing.

Renee Nicole Macklin Good was an English student at Old Dominion University in 2020 when she won the prestigious Academy of American Poets Prize for her piece, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.” The poem questions religious faith through scientific education and asks if science, faith, and wonder can coexist. It is one of many poems Good wrote throughout her short life, a life that was filled with a love for her family, her community, and the written word.

On January 7, 2026, Good was brutally murdered in Minneapolis by Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent. She and her wife, Becca Good, had reportedly been on the way home from dropping her son off at school when they “stopped to support the neighbors,” Becca shared in a statement. It was during that stop, only a few blocks from their home, that Renee Good was shot three times while inside her vehicle. In the seconds after the shooting, cell phone footage from Ross shows Good’s SUV slowly veering off the road and crashing. Then, a male voice, widely presumed to be Ross, comes from behind the camera, calling the woman that he had just killed a “Fucking bitch.”

Renee Good was thirty-seven years old. She was a wife, a mother, and a poet.

To be a poet, or think like a poet, or feel like a poet, or love like a poet, or resist like a poet, is to live a life incapable of looking away. It is to preserve through words and existence your story and the stories of others, many of which are stories that those in power would prefer be forgotten. According to those who knew Good’s writing, she did just that. Kent Wascom, one of Good’s former writing professors, told the Washington Post, “Unlike some of her peers, Good never talked about politics…focusing instead on ‘realist fiction’ about those very different from her, from an elderly woman to a veteran.” He told the New York Times, “What I saw in her work was a writer that was trying to illuminate the lives of others.”

But this type of writing—writing that illuminates the lives of others, others who are often forgotten or pushed aside or silenced by the state or society—is a political act, even if it is not intended as one. When a person is killed by agents of the state, we lose their particular way of seeing, we lose a voice that might have spoken truth in an age that desperately needs it. On Wednesday, we lost a poet whose work was an invitation of empathy through art, a way to greater understand those whose experiences differ from our own.

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Good’s tragic murder reminds us that observing and creating and even just existing can be seen as threat to unchecked power.

The violence that ended Good’s life is inseparable from the cruel and unfounded policies that sent thousands of ICE agents into her Minnesota community. It is inseparable from the poetry Good wrote and the stories she told. Poetry teaches us to pay attention to language and its meaning, to notice when words are used to obscure rather than illuminate. We must apply that attention now as unreliable right-wing media and the Trump administration spin wild lies and unverified details about Good and about what we all saw happen on video, from multiple horrific angles.

As artists, we learn that our work matters because it insists that people matter. Every poem written, every song sung, every image created in defiance of dehumanization is an act of resistance. Renee Good’s life has ended, but it must galvanize rather than silence us. We honor her not with passive mourning but with active commitment—to witness, to create, to support each other, to refuse to be complicit to violence. To strengthen our resolve to fight for a world where our poets, our resisters, our artists, our friends, our neighbors are safe whether actively protesting or driving home from school drop-off. This tragedy must only deepen our commitment to resilience and defiance, like an anchor in our body reminding us to hold strong, one brave word after the next.

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To honor Renee’s memory and highlight the art she so deeply loved to create, here is a reading of that award-winning poem, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”

Hi there,

It’s been a nice quiet time over here at our home in Brooklyn, and other than nursing a horrendous canker sore in my mouth from recent dental surgery (a Good Riddance for another time), I am doing great. If you haven’t already heard, my current husband, David Cross, is performing off Broadway opposite Matthew Broderick in Tartuffe. The play is reinvention of the original Tartuffe from 1664, a classic French comedic satire by Molière about religious hypocrisy and social deception. This new version, which runs through January 2026, was written by one of my favorite playwrights, Lucas Hnath, and is directed by my friend, the brilliant Sarah Benson. If you’re in New York around then, I hope you get the chance to see it!

While David’s intense theater schedule keeps him extremely busy, I’ve been practicing slowing down with daily rituals of reading, writing, organizing, and staring out the window at the cold clouds passing by, trying to “empty out my head,” as my father likes to say. It’s been hard to fully embrace this model of rest this time of year, but I’m definitely making time where I can. I’ve even been taking morning walks to go scope out the neighborhood hawk—or maybe it’s a falcon?—who has graced Brooklyn with its presence, much to the chagrin of the other birds in the area. It’s even found a liking to a tree close to our home so I’ve seen it there several times this past week. I like to think this majestic bird is perhaps the reincarnation of Beakling coming back to say hi once in a while.

The hawk getting some morning sun in a neighborhood not too far from my own.

All this emptying out and watching—the hawk circling, the clouds drifting, the pages of books and journals turning—has me thinking about what might take shape in the space that’s left. With this in mind, I wanted to remind folks that our last The Short and Sweet of the year will take place on Sunday, December 28 from 1-2pm ET. I’ll be joined by conflict resolution facilitator, artist, and mom extraordinaire, Bonnie Tamblyn, for a lesson on how to make a mind map in order to envision all that 2026 might bring.

A mind map helps you plan your year by drawing your main goals at the center of a page and branching out into different areas of your life, letting you see both the big picture and the details all at once. Unlike linear lists, it reveals how your goals in career, health, relationships, and other areas connect and support each other, making it easier to create a holistic vision for your future.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ (If you are already familiar with this practice, we invite you to share your own versions of mind mapping with us too!) I hope you’ll join us for this final gathering of 2025. It feels like the perfect way to close out the year with intention and welcome what’s coming next. (The Zoom link will be emailed to paid subscribers the morning of December 28.)

Feathers, our writing prompts for midweek creative slumps usually take place in the Chat, but this week I thought I’d share them here. These prompts are a thank you to our paid subscribers for supporting the work we do which helps to make editorial ends meet and keeps the majority of our content free and accessible to all.

In the Dark,
Amber

🪶 Poets throughout history have been captivated by that liminal hour just before dawn—what the ancient Greeks called the “wolf hour,” what Louise Glück called the “blue hour,” and what Mary Oliver wrote about in her many poems about this almost-but-not-yet-light time of day.

There’s something about this threshold time that strips away pretense; the world hasn’t yet decided what kind of day it will be. You haven’t yet remembered all the ways you disappoint yourself. In this suspended moment, poets have found permission to speak differently—more honestly, more strangely, with less concern for how things are supposed to sound.

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Before we get started with today’s Good Riddance, I wanted to let you know that beginning next week, we’ll be entering a little hibernation here at the newsletter over the winter months and pausing our weekly Good Riddance series in order to prepare for all that 2026 will reveal to us. The winter solstice is almost upon us; time for our collective reset, the quieting of our output in favor of some good old-fashioned creative incubation so that we may come out into the light of next year like a famished grizzly, ready to get back in the fight. I’ll still be honoring our perks for paid subscribers by hosting our monthly live gatherings over Zoom and sharing writing prompts in the Chat, and I would love your support in joining us if you can. I can’t wait to see you all again in the new year!

Recently I watched an interview between actress Tracee Ellis Ross and former First Lady Michelle Obama, and what Obama said stopped me cold. When Ellis Ross asked about the room that’s been made for the possibility of a woman president, Obama’s answer reignited a rage in me I’ve been carrying for years. “As we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready,” Obama said. “That’s why I’m like, ‘Don’t even look at me about running,’ because you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time. We got a lot of growing up to do, and there’s still, sadly, a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman, and we saw it.”

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Hi friends, welcome back to our series Good Riddance, where you can let something go from the week before.

Many of you know I’ve been taking care of a little fledgling pigeon here in Brooklyn that my daughter lovingly named Beakling. Beakling has been doing great, growing strong and testing out their wings every day. (I maintain this bird is gender-fluid, thank you very much.) Little by little, I’ve watched Beakling start to explore more of the backyard and fly up to discover new heights and new surroundings. First it was flying from one side of the balcony to the other. Then it was hanging out on a neighboring wall. Then it was up on the wood trellis of my neighbor’s yard where they began to fraternize with a hussy of a blue jay, much to my chagrin.

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