How I Got Through This

At the end of every day, I slide three feet from the desk where I sit with my computer, to the couch where I sit with my computer. I’ve made something for dinner — at this point an exercise in calories, and boredom, usually over polenta — when my boyfriend turns to me and asks me the same question. “Time for The Funny?” he says.

It’s been a long day online, my brain has melted into a jiggly-wiggly blob. “One Funny,” I reply. “Maybe two.”

The Funny is 30 minutes of the only thing that has brought unfiltered, screaming, crying…

Taylor Lorenz has made reporting on internet culture for the New York Times an enviable gig. She’s covered the petty dramas of L.A.-based influencers and their work-live situations in mega-mansions across the Southland, and the deals these predominately White creators bring to their respective collab houses, even under quarantine.

But Black influencers and creators in Atlanta have long been a juggernaut of the industry, responsible for some of the biggest viral hits of recent memory, including the Renegade, “Old Town Road,” and memorable trending challenges on TikTok. But not only have these creators not gotten the same attention as their…

When Toni Morrison worked as an editor at Random House from 1976 to 1983, about 3% of the books published during that time were written by Black authors. After Morrison left to focus on her writing career, that number dropped significantly: Between 1984 and 1990, Random House published only two books by Black authors, one of whom was Morrison.

After a summer when anti-racist books and books by writers of color climbed the New York Times bestsellers list, the newspaper decided to do a deep dive into racial inequity in the book publishing industry. This was always a portrait of…

Baltimore has just sworn in a new mayor—a progressive, Black millennial who wants to redefine the office. Thirty-six-year-old Brandon Scott is the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century.

It’s a powerful office—in the last decade, mayors have resigned in disgrace due to corruption charges—and Scott aims to curb much of that power. A member of the city council for the past nine years, Scott wants to strengthen social services and combat the long history of redlining in the city.

“Am I going to wipe away hundreds of years of inequity in Baltimore? No,” Scott said. …

2020 may have been the worst for almost everything, but it was a great time for new words. Trapped at home, our brains buzzing, turns out to be a great crucible for word creation, explains Ben Zimmer. 2020 took away a lot, but it gave us doomscrolling, covidiots, quarantinis and much, much more.

Want to feel a million years old? The last time I went to Book Expo, the largest trade show for the book industry in North America, the “Big Six” still existed. Then six became five, and very soon five will become four, with the merger of Penguin Random Schuster House. And Book Expo itself is now kaput, as the show’s organizer announced it would not be held in 2021, or in the foreseeable future.

Back in 2012, Emily Gould set off to the Javits Center for The Awl to investigate just what this spectacle of books was really about. Ah…

Trump’s lawyers seem like they’re not super great at this law stuff. The worst legal team in history is currently failing to steal the election for Donald Trump and looking…

Ashley C. Ford has long been obsessed with teen magazines. She would buy them with her allowance from her grandma, hoping that one day he would see herself reflected in them. She was always disappointed but tried not to let her disappointment show.

Now she collects these 1990s-era magazines—Seventeen, YM, Teen People, even the Delia’s catalog—and she’s finally in possession of her Holy Grail, the August 1998 issue of Seventeen with Drew Barrymore on the cover, promoting her iconic girl-power twist on Cinderella, Ever After.