The Notebook

A new section + events + giveaways

I want to believe that this is not where the name of the new section came from, but feel like I have to share this old photo with you now that The Notebook exists as a tab on The Missing Person homepage.

Nicholas Sparks went to Notre Dame and at some point donated a chunk of money to the English Department there. Part of it paid for our tuition and stipends and part of it went to paid internships at his publisher and agency in New York. And that’s how I ended up sitting in front of this poster day after day my first summer in the US.

The Missing Person is turning 1

& It’s time to enable paid subscriptions

I shared my first Substack on October 12, 2023. A letter on Kafka, mother tongues, war, and nationalism. It’s my least favorite of all the letters I sent in the last year. Maybe because I didn’t know who I was writing for yet. I only knew who I didn’t want to write for, whose rules I had to break to reconnect with the world outside academia and Amerika. But it did the trick. Many of you subscribed after reading A Letter in Fragments and stuck around.

Some of your favorite posts since then

These are my favorites as well!

You gave me an excuse to stick my nose in three different court systems, let me find the words to work through Go problems, and didn’t unsubscribe after I sent out I knew I was going to win.

I wrote the first 12 letters in the first 6 months of The Missing Person. I had to slow down around March, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. I sent 4 more letters in private mode. And here I am now, a full-time author with no one to answer to, introducing a new section for those who’d like to read more of my work in The Notebook.

As a paying subscriber, you’ll get one long and one brief letter from me every month, starting October 31.

• Long letters will include reported and personal essays, novel excerpts and other creative works in progress.

• Brief letters will come in the form of annotated lists (like Process Notes on Display) in response to your comments and questions.

Free subscribers won’t be hearing from me for a while. But I’ll be back with another long letter for everyone in a couple of months.

And maybe I’ll see you in Miami or LA?

On November 24, 2024, I’ll be on a panel with authors Samuel Kolawole, Elysha Chang, and Crystal Hana Kim at 12:30 PM on the Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus as part of the Miami Book Fair.

I’ll be in LA for AWP in March 2025 for another panel with Bruna Dantas Lobato, and Shubha Sunder, moderated by Yuka Igarashi. Details TK.

International subscribers

I’m offering free one-on-one mentoring sessions to 3 writers, artists, or students who

• don’t feel safe in their home countries and are looking for a way out

• moved abroad in the last couple of years

• are staying put but would like to get published in the US to reach a larger audience 

If any of these apply to you, just tell me how I can help by responding to this email.

(1 spot claimed, 2 more available)

Spanish subscribers

I’m gifting a signed copy of La Solicitante (translated into Spanish by Gala Sicart and published by Mapa Editorial) to the first person who claims it in the comments. (Claimed!)

Thank you all so much for being here!