Laurie Stone is the author of six books, most recently Streaming Now, long-listed for the the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She writes the acclaimed Substack Everything Is Personal.
The other day, I received a press release sent by a publisher. He was hoping to interest me in a forthcoming memoir. It was the story of a man, driving across the country, in search of information about his father’s life. Something along these lines. A man and his father.
VOLUME 3: ISSUE 3
SUMMER 2025
Kamala is not an item on a menu, where you get to say hold the fries and I’ll have the salad instead. Do you know how many times people have written on my posts, I like your writing but I don’t always agree with you. Like I need to know
VOLUME 3: ISSUE 1
SUMMER 2024
It’s ingenious, the idea for this book. Francine Prose has written twenty-two works of fiction, and 1974 is her first memoir. She takes one year in her life and one dramatic relationship she formed in that year, and she tells you everything she wants to about being twenty-six back then.
VOLUME 3: ISSUE 1
SUMMER 2024
Ruth Wilson and Tom Burke in True Things (2021) Photo courtesy of BBC Films. A few days before Christmas, we met a friend at a fancy grocery store in Hudson, where people sit at a long table, drinking lattes and eating focaccia. We hadn’t seen our friend in a while.
VOLUME 2: ISSUE 1
SPRING 2023
The other night, we visited the South Street Seaport, where a branch of the McNally Jackson bookstore is located. On the pier, regular water cost six dollars and everyone was the age of the horizon. They looked beautiful in Bermuda shorts, walking dogs. At the event, I read a little
VOLUME 1: ISSUE 5
WINTER 2022
Anthony Bourdain (far left), c. 1980. This year, the ticks in Hudson are the size of the head of a pin. You look at them with amazement they can be that small. The man I live with examines a tiny black dot I show him, and we go upstairs to
VOLUME 1: ISSUE 4
FALL 2022
Julia Child on the set of The French Chef, c. 1965. Photo by Paul Child I WANT TO tell you about the drive to NYC early Sunday morning, the car packed with items for a party I’d agreed to cater. The man I live with was driving, and in my
VOLUME 1: ISSUE 3
JULY/AUGUST 2022
Photo by Edenpictures, via Flickr 1. When I was nineteen and living uptown near Columbia University, my boyfriend and I would go to a small bakery. The man who owned the shop worked unassisted, selling napoleons, linzer tarts with current jam, chocolate brownies, milk, and homemade matzohs. His clothes
VOLUME 1: ISSUE 2
MAY/JUNE 2022
Laurie Stone at the Morton Street Pier in New York City, c. 1970. Photo courtesy of author. Yesterday, I received a check for the security deposit on my apartment in New York City. It’s done. I lived there for forty-three years. I have visions of the open road, except we
VOLUME 1: ISSUE 1
MARCH/APRIL 2022
FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, JANUARY 2023, 176 PP. NO ONE KNOWS why they remember anything. Even the details of a disaster, like your time as a hostage, or the hurricane that swept away your house, may be shrouded in protective amnesia, while you can precisely describe the insignia on
VOLUME 1: ISSUE 5
WINTER 2022