I Want to Tell You…That I’ve Started a Substack.
Dear Fellow Reader and Friend:
Come in. Make yourself at home. If you’ve made it here, you probably know at least a little about me and my work. I write fiction, essays, and criticism. My writings have made themselves comfortable at The Paris Review, Granta, Hamish Hamilton’s Five Dials, Vogue, Esquire, Guernica, Bookforum, ELLE, Marie Claire UK, PEN, L.A. Review of Books, Electric Literature, and other venues. I’m also the author of more than 100 reading guides to works of world literature for Penguin Random House, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins. I was a long-time contributor to Harold Bloom’s literary series with Infobase Publishing and an original member of the Yale Writers' Workshop (fka Yale Writers' Conference) faculty in fiction. Once, I even got to sit on a stage and chat about writing one-on-one with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman—a writer’s dream come true.
I want to chat with you, too.
I created I Want to Tell You… as a place for conversations I’d like to have with you and stories I want to share—about a variety of subjects—but mostly about literary things.
I Already Told You/Remember When I Said…?
To begin, I’ll be giving you access to an evolving archive of my published work. There you’ll be able to read, for example, what I’ve written about: Haruki Murakami and secret-keeping in the age of spoilers at The Paris Review; memory and the legacy of Charles Lamb for Granta’s Lost & Found, or what literary discourse has to offer in the age we live in over on the Electric Literature site. As a chronically ill writer, I also frequently explore the intersection of health and storytelling, so you’ll be able to check out pieces that I’ve written about narratives of illness—and my own experiences of life with chronic illness—for pubs like Vogue, Marie Claire UK, and Medium.
I want to be able to connect with everyone—the more, the merrier—so the archive will be free for anyone who signs up for this Substack, but if you enjoy the work and feel moved to, you can support my work as a patron with a donation in the form of a $1/month or $5/month subscription.
Down the road, as my subscriber list grows, I envision this as a place to share exclusive posts and new writing. Maybe even talk to some guests. You can speed us towards that by sharing this newsletter with interested parties and book-loving friends.
All great conversations begin with an introduction. This is mine. You can also connect with me over at Twitter. If we don’t already know each other, you should feel free to reach out, introduce yourself, and tell me a little about what brought you here. Then imagine me shaking your hand and telling you how nice it is to meet you. Now that we’re acquainted:
There Are So Many Things I Want to Tell You…
Let’s begin,
Je
