For the past eight years, since the death of my boss precipitated the end of my job, and my own actions precipitated the end of my marriage (the details of which you can read about in my darkly funny memoir, Care and Feeding, now available in paperback!), I have attempted to support myself as a working writer. There have been easy times and hard times, and no small amount of anxiety around tax time, lease renewal time and FAFSA form time for my college-bound teenager, but I’ve managed to stay afloat by engaging in all of the work related to being a writer: writing long and short-form projects, obviously, but also editing and consulting for other writers, ghostwriting, public speaking, podcasting and project management. This fall, I’ll have the opportunity, through the Irish travel company Bog & Thunder, to expand further, into teaching the craft of writing, with an emphasis on memoir.

In the midst of writing this, I opened the latest Substack post from fellow professional writer Joshua David Stein, who serendipitously summed up exactly how I feel about drawing attention to this new facet of my career:

“Being an aloof writer is hard because I’m proud of the things I do and at the same time find it deeply embarrassing to promote them.”

I’m more shy than aloof, but the sentiment applies. I started writing professionally in a time when there were fewer voices, more forcefully amplified by their place in legacy media, with separate teams assembled to publicize and market the Work of the Writers™. Those days are long gone. Most of the magazine marketing and PR folks now work in different industries, and anyone with an internet connection can be a published writer and full time auto-publicist, which means that there is a lot of competition, a lot of noise to break through, and it’s not enough to sit back and hope the work (or the workshop) breaks through.

I’d like to meet as many writers as possible in beautiful West Cork, in September, so here I am, self-promoting, trying to get the word out about this opportunity to write and edit and learn together while enjoying private island-level luxury accommodations, a heated indoor pool and great food. We will all feel slightly like White Lotus characters, minus the personality flaws, the spooky music, and the murder.

(It’s not gonna be like this.)

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Since graduating from college in 1996, I’ve taken a number of writing courses, most of them through the continuing ed departments of New York University and the New School for Social Research. I love learning about the craft from established practitioners, and I welcome the chance to get detailed feedback from authors I admire, along with notes and suggestions from other student writers, and the chance to read and weigh in on everyone else’s funny or sad or wild stories, no matter how rough or polished.

One such class was a comic essay workshop with the late Bob Smith, a writer and comedian who was the first openly gay man to do a set on the Tonight Show, in 1994. As a teacher, Bob was gentle and kind, funny (of course) and fair, and he set the standard in my mind for how a writing workshop should be run. He shared with us some of his favorite essays–Bob’s class was my introduction to David Rakoff, another brilliant and very funny writer gone too soon–which we read and discussed before turning to conversations about the challenges and triumphs in our own work. Bob encouraged us to write as much or as little as we wanted. I had a full-time job and a generally busy life, but being a student of Bob Smith motivated me to write in a way that nothing else could, and from him, I learned how to give useful feedback and suggestions with empathy and compassion for the writer.

Another highlight of my post-college writing education was a workshop run by one of my favorite novelists, Jennifer Belle, whose first book, Going Down, about an NYU undergrad doing sex work to pay tuition, was the funny, feel-uncomfortable hit of the summer of 1996. Belle’s wit and storytelling and honesty represented everything that I aspired to as a writer, and I jumped at the opportunity to learn directly from her how to tackle the seemingly impossible project of starting (and completing) a piece of long-form writing. Her approach to building a novel scene by scene, and her advice about constructing realistic dialogue, were incredibly valuable. In both Smith’s comic essay and Belle’s fiction classes, I started pieces of writing that I eventually polished and fit into the puzzle of my memoir.

Working for Tony Bourdain was also an immersive writing education of a kind. He had an unmistakable voice–confident and curious, surefooted and sharp, with a knack for honing in on the funniest and most unexpected details of a scene–and my career has been profoundly influenced by his confidence in me as an occasional first reader, a line editor on books he published through his imprint, and eventually as a co-author of two books. From adolescence, Tony was a writing student himself, taking multiple classes and workshops, cold-querying publications he aspired to be published in, and seeking guidance from the writers he admired and wished to emulate.

Whether your goal is to write and publish a memoir, start or polish a piece of writing, have a relaxing trip that provides creative stimulation, or write down the story of your family for the enlightenment of successive generations, I hope to meet and spend time with you in West Cork this fall.

PS I have been to Ireland once before, in 1997, when I was young and dumb; you can read about it here. I can’t wait to do it right this time.

Will there be an official naming ceremony for World War III, at which the “president” does a little dance with Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee?

(It feels grotesque and negligent to not first say, before writing about food and travel, which it is still my privilege to be able to enjoy, that shit is fucking bad, and is probably going to get much worse. Two Congressional candidates I have been following and feeling energized by are Chuck Park, in Queens, and Beth Macy, in Virginia.)

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I have spent most of this winter on my couch with two blankets, a sleeping cat and a space heater, because my landlords have taken the bare minimum legal indoor temperature (68° F) very fucking seriously, and I’ve had a lot of work to do, and all those Housewives aren’t going to watch themselves. BUT, I have also occasionally put on two pairs of pants and two pairs of socks and a turtleneck sweater and my teenage son’s hand-me-up Land’s End parka from elementary school and I have ventured outdoors. Here are some notes on that:

In February, I went to San Juan, Puerto Rico for four nights, with my son and his girlfriend, during President’s Week. This was our first visit to the island, and I was aware that people have strong feelings for the place, especially in the wake of Bad Bunny’s moving and joyful Super Bowl performance, but I was still surprised and charmed by the full-throated yells, hoots and whistles upon landing, and the plane-wide singalong as the flight attendant played “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOTos” on his phone through the plane’s PA system. People do not feel this way about Denver or Frankfurt.

We stayed in an apartment two blocks from the ocean, in the Condado neighborhood, which is about a 10 to 15-minute drive from the airport. I got coffee, breakfast staples and snacks from a nearby SuperMax, which reminded me in many ways of my beloved local Foodtown. In fact, for the entirety of our short visit to the island, I felt that I was seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling some of the source material for the heavily Latin American-influenced New York that I have lived in for thirty years, first on Avenue C in Manhattan and later in Jackson Heights, Queens.

We lost half a day in San Juan to a nine-hour flight delay, during which I took down several sleeves of Lorna Doones and saw the absolute best and worst of humanity, as represented by fellow Frontier passengers stranded in Newark Terminal B, aka Legionnaire’s Disease Memorial Hallway (so many wet carpets). Once on the ground, we did what we came to do: we went to the beach (Ocean Park, gloriously uncrowded though with fairly rough surf, and Balneario Escambrón, whose surf was much calmer), we ate, and we slept.

OK, we did spend about two hours dodging the cruise ship zombies in Viejo San Juan, where I met writer Alicia Kennedy, who has lived there for five years. I enjoyed a substantial prosciutto and arugula sandwich on good bread and a hot Americano at the new cafe counter at Materia Prima, whose stylish cafe/retail grocery vibe reminded me of Gjusta, in Venice Beach.

The kids got meaty stews and açai bowls for lunch, from kiosks inside the SuperMax, and we had dinners together at Bebo’s, a solid homestyle restaurant; Degetau Seafood Restaurant, which my friend Santana described, accurately, as “low-key, local island food”; and, Sato Fino, which offers a well-executed pan-Asian menu with Caribbean touches (okonomiyaki bacalaitos) and the best Korean-style fried chicken I’ve had in years.

Two of the three evenings, the teens went out to La Placita, where they danced to live music and may or may not have taken advantage of the fact that the legal drinking age is 18, while I stayed back and hate-watched Love Story on FX.

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In late February, I spent two nights with my dad in Sherrill, New York, the smallest city in New York State, and the hometown of a (not the) Craigslist killer. We did our annual late winter pilgrimage to Many Maples Farm, to stock up on various grades and sizes of the good stuff, and had big bowls of pasta at Jadie & June’s, a brand-new Italian restaurant that occupies the sprawling former headquarters of the Oneida Daily Dispatch (womp fucking WOMP). We also visited the Oneida Community Mansion House, the historic home of a 19th-century Christian sex cult, which I wrote about over at Flaming Hydra.

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Here in New York, I was invited to a press preview dinner at Nōksu, the 15-seat tasting counter restaurant located within the 34th Street Herald Square subway station, in a space that was once a newsstand and shoe shine shop (womp womp?). Under opening chef Dae Kim, Nōksu received a rather frustrated two-star review from Pete Wells at the New York Times, close to the end of his long tenure as the head dining critic, and was featured in the first season of Knife Edge, the Apple TV docuseries about restaurants pursuing or struggling to retain Michelin stars (which I wrote about over at Rolling Stone). The restaurant now has a Michelin star and a new chef, Aaron Chang, who does delicately astonishing things with abalone, tuna, scallops, shrimp, ocean trout, crab and caviar. Dedicated pastry chefs are increasingly rare, but Nōksu employs former Le Bernardin pastry sous chef Brandon Ting, the beauty and elegance of whose petit fours reflect his training in Paris and Singapore.

Pete Wells was annoyed by the 80s pop soundtrack and the tall seats which require an assist from a staff member; I loved them both. I’m mostly on a peanut butter and tuna fish budget, with a kid on his way to college and New York City rent to pay, so it will be a while before I return, and indeed, at $250 per person, Nōksu may not be for you, either, but if you have a rich family member, a good job, an expense account, or that glorious willingness to accrue credit card debt that fueled most of my fun as a younger person, get yourself there.

A few nights later, my boyfriend and I sat at the bar at the reincarnation of Eddie Huang’s Baohaus, now on St. Mark’s Place, and had fucking delicious lamb and fried chicken baos, plus a half-chicken with sweet, tangy and subtle spicy peanut sauce, and rich chunks of eggplant with oyster sauce. The Baohaus soundtrack, as at Nōksu, was heavy on 80s pop, though it was more Saturday night cocaine-limousine-cigarettes (Stacy Q’s “Two of Hearts”) than the easy radio hits (Fleetwood Mac, “Seven Wonders”) at play above the tasting counter. I can’t remember when I have had more fun in the East Village.

As per my twitchy last dispatch, I recently spent a week in St. Lucia, at Jade Mountain Resort, a luxury hotel painstakingly built into a mountainside by a Canadian railroad heir-turned-architect-turned-hotelier, which begs the joke, How do you make a small fortune in the hospitality business? Start with a large fortune. It’s hard to imagine how this place makes a profit, even with stratospheric room rates and food and beverage prices that are right up there with London, Oslo or the West Village. (In a spirit of total transparency, I cannot now and never will be able to afford such a trip, but I’m romantically involved with a generous person who can.)

In the rooms (“sanctuaries”), There are no windows, no exterior walls, no air conditioning, only … fans, and mosquito netting. It’s as if your treehouse-y Costa Rica surf vacation grew up, made great investments with their massive inheritance of generational wealth, and had a baby named Fitzcarraldo. Most rooms have private infinity pools, and they all have knockout views of the Pitons.

Listen, I am not going to try and out-bitch the late David Foster Wallace about my supposedly fun and definitely guilt-inducing thing that I will definitely do again, most of which was sublime: the warm ocean and the warm air and the opportunity to order ceviche and a sorrel-flavored Angostura soda (not available in these United States!) to my beach lounger. Snorkeling, watching pelicans swoop and dive, many naps, the total absence of children, a bento box with a little sandwich and a little cake and a piece of fruit that landed in our fridge every afternoon while we were on the beach. Never having to wash or even lift a dish, make a bed, take custody of a wet towel, enter a motor vehicle, and I kept my social media and news apps mostly Bricked. It’s a great privilege, and if you can do it, you should, while tipping well and looking everyone in the eye while they’re working to make you happy. Take all that rest and relaxation back to your real life and resume the work of organizing with your friends and neighbors and even your tolerable enemies to Fuck ICE, etc.

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Speaking of rich people shit, this week’s great predictable outrage is the announcement of $1500/person dinners at the Noma LA pop-up. Chef and proprietor Rene Redzepi has long been an easy signifier for the excesses of precious culinary showmanship, but this piece by Laurie Ochoa in the LA Times makes it make sense, if you care to understand the motivation, economics and underpinnings of such an endeavor.

I personally could never afford it, hardly anyone I know could afford it, and therefore the LA Noma pop-up is not for us. There are plenty of objects and experiences (coveted wines, small-group curated travel) that are priced well above what most of us can afford, but few seem to attract the knee-jerk ire of Noma. What am I missing?

I’m willing to hear arguments about why this specific dinner series is more objectionable than attending the very expensive South Beach Food & Wine Festival or the Food & Wine Classic at Aspen, both of which are heavily powered by unpaid student and volunteer labor. Shit is so bad in the world for so many, hunger is real and growing, a fascist police force is murdering protestors out in the open, yes, but I’m not convinced that high-end dining is stopping any of us from pushing back against all of that misery and evil.

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Speaking of misery and evil, the NYT Recipes team did a huge disservice to Toni Chapman’s recently featured soup recipe, which is by all accounts delicious and smart, when they promoted it by writing “Lasagna, but make it soup” in the email subject line. My throat closed, I grabbed a stranger’s rescue inhaler, I scrabbled in the medicine cabinet for the Immodium, imagining an appallingly gloppy pot of puréed pasta and cheeses and red sauce. “X, but make it X” is of course a variation on Tyra Banks’ infamous America’s Next Top Model prompt “Ho, but make it fashion,” so perhaps the NYT was performing a subtle homage to Banks’ latest bonkers venture, “hot ice cream,” itself a real guts-curdler of an idea.

MONDAY PLANE THOUGHTS:

The DOJ is investigating the Fed, ICE is shooting unarmed protestors in the fucking face, and I am on a flight to St. Lucia, for a vacation with my boyfriend, a Diamond Medallion status guy. He got upgraded to first class, and I, a mere Platinum, am stuck in “comfort plus,” watching season three of Succession, which once felt like farce and now feels quaint, what with the politically neutral, fully-functioning FBI raiding an ersatz Fox News HQ over matters of sex trafficking, and a president who is still at least marginally beholden to the rule of law.

Upon arrival, we’ll have a one-hour drive from the airport to our hotel, much of it on switchbacking mountain roads, so I have packed over-the-counter motion sickness pills, the taking of which I have been looking forward to for weeks, like an addict. I was never big into pills, but I do love the effect of the first one of anything. I fondly recall getting my wisdom teeth extracted as a 20-year-old, and the groovy wave of the first post-op painkiller. After four hours, I took a double dose, and I puked.

The point is, I feel like a bit of an asshole going to a Caribbean resort, instead of getting out into the streets. Just because we still have commercial air traffic and vacations doesn’t mean shit isn’t falling apart. Will I regret this trip when, in six months, the midterm elections have been cancelled (which is what the most anxious people are predicting on Bluesky) and there’s no more work? Should my work at this time be more serious, or less?

There’s a real midwestern vibe on this plane. The woman across the aisle is reading a full-sized, full-color Caribbean Islands travel guidebook. A clutch of hetero couples in their early 40s boarded ahead of me; the men were wearing custom Hawaiian shirts with each others’ faces on them. Some day in twenty or thirty or more years, one of their kids will find one of those shirts hanging in a closet or jammed into a box, and their dad will be too old or fat to wear it, or he will be dead.

There’s an elderly couple next to me who said they came from Minneapolis and I want to ask them how things are going there, but who knows? As sweet as they seem, they might believe in the rapture and think ICE is doing a good job.

TUESDAY RESORT THOUGHTS:

The road between the hotel and the town is closed today for essential repairs to the electric lines, which means no ins and no outs from 10 am to 1 pm, and also the wifi will be down, according to a letter left in our bed – not on it, in it – and if I ever write a screenplay about a Caribbean resort murder, I will use that detail. Before I closed my eyes last night, I saw seven tiny lizards affixed to the ceiling above the bed, which itself is surrounded by mosquito netting. At about 3 am, the iPad on the nearby desk came alive.

“Welcome to Jade Mountain, I’m Charlie,” an alto voice purred. “How can I help you?” My boyfriend got up and kneecapped her, but about ten minutes later, Charlie again introduced herself and offered her kind assistance. Charlie is now suffocating in my closed suitcase.

We went to a pre-dinner welcome reception last night, on a terrace with stunning sunset views of the Pitons and complimentary beverages and elegant passed apps, among every possible iteration of resort wear, from adult cruise ship prom to Charleston polo club to Jimmy Buffett’s mechanic. The friendly and polished staff made excellent professional small talk, and a few of the couples gave off faint but unmistakable swinger-aspirational vibe.

“We’re not here to make friends,” I growled to my boyfriend, who couldn’t have agreed more.

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I have things to say, and this is place to say them.

This is the official reason for my launching a Substack. The unofficial reason is that I have pressing deadlines and am one of those proscrastinators who prefers to start a new project before eventually finishing the old one.

Substack suggests that I use this space to say “what kind of community I hope to build here.”

I am extremely reluctant to participate in “creating community” with the end goal of “parting you with your money.” (Which is why I am and will probably always be almost-broke.) What I will say is that I like to write, and I like the validation of knowing that other people are reading what I write. I’m a contributor at the great Flaming Hydra, which is only $36 for the whole year (7 to 10 new pieces of writing each week!), where we can pretty much write about anything at all; my writing here will likely be more ephemeral, local, personal and off-the-cuff, with topics to include but not limited to NYC dining, extremely specific travel notes, reflections on the evolving nature of “the Bourdain effect,” and reports from the aisles and speakers of my local Foodtown. The newsletters I most enjoy include Rusty Foster’s Today in Tabs, Millicent Souris’ Attitude Adjustment Facility and Eddie Huang’s Canal Street Dreams, FWIW.

OK, but like how often?

To paraphrase Napoleon Dynamite, “Whenever I feel like it, gosh.”

Substack has advised that this is the ideal place to add a photo, so please enjoy this 2017 photo of my beloved Gilbert (2004-2019) huffing Cheeto dust.