I'm Back!
I'm Back!
A really special giveaway all the way from a beautiful indie bookstore in Sri Lanka
Dear Readers,
I’m back! Sri Lanka was amazing in every possible way, but a month is enough time to start longing for things at home. We will collect Judit this weekend and I’m aching to hold her. Jasmine is flowering in the streets of Sydney. The coffee here is the best in the world. On Monday morning I did my long walk loop around the Opera House and it still genuinely makes me grin. Some cliches are true and this is one for me: everywhere I go I’m grateful for what I get to come home to.
My plan was to send out a regular edition today (I know, I miss them too) but by the time I got through the backlog of news and updates I had for you, I was getting Substack’s trademark ‘this email is too long for an inbox’ notification. So, here’s a ton of interesting and important stuff, and we finish with the usual good reviews and an extra special giveaway I’ve brought all the way home for you. :)
Best wishes and happy reading,
Bri Lee
It is Time (Cue: ominous gong sound plus me cackling.)
We’ve grown past 10,000 subscribers, so it’s time to start trimming the list.
If you’re unsure what I’m referring to, please have a quick scan of the announcement I made a month ago, which I’ve kept free and out from under the usual four-week paywall:
I can’t tell you how liberating it feels to free this space from an ‘eternal growth’ mindset and focus instead on depth, quality, and community. (Also fascinating that Sally Rooney said something similar in her latest NYT interview: ‘There is a huge cultural fixation with novelty and growth. Everything has to grow all the time. Get bigger, sell more and be different — novelty, reinvention. I don’t find that very interesting.’)
Today I filtered subscribers by their starred ‘activity’ rating and emailed about 200, checking to see if they really still wanted to be here. I suspect for the first few months this is going to be sweeping out a lot of genuinely dead accounts. Frustratingly though, within the hour I got a reply from one reader saying she opens and reads every single edition. Any other Substackers out there got a better idea for how to do this trimming?
As a reward to my Five Star Nerds, I picked a random five of the top-rating readers and comped their subscriptions for 6 months, just to thank them for being a genuine contributor to the community here. I’ll keep doing that each month too.
The Next Livestream is a Big Deal
Okay, I’ve officially hired everyone’s favourite giggling audio producer, Sam from Cool Story, to help me record our monthly livestreams. We’re calling them Spoiler Alert and the recordings will be available (for paying subscribers) to consume in a nicely-edited way after the event itself.
Please put the evening of Wednesday 30 October in your diaries! We will be discussing Rapture by Emily Maguire.
The idea for Spoiler Alert has been brewing for a while now, and has come to fruition thanks to the people in the News & Reviews chat sections and attendees of previous livestreams in particular—thank you all. The name comes from the fact that we will actually be discussing an entire book, including the ending. (You’ve got three weeks!) To kick us off, Emily Maguire has agreed to answer five questions about Rapture. I’m going to get her to record her answers as a voice note, and we’ll play them on the show.
Sam and I are presently working on an easy way for you to send in voice memos with questions and comments if you’d rather do that than pipe up live on the night. But in the meantime, if you’ve got a question for Emily, drop it here.
I’m thinking we go live at 6.30pm Sydney time, but is that annoying for people interstate with daylight savings? Let me know.
Good Stuff from Friends We Made in Sri Lanka
A few of the Certified Legends who joined me in Sri Lanka now have their own Substacks. I’m sharing two different and beautiful reflections here: Tiana writes
, and Emma writes .
Also, we had a long cross-country drive together one day and collaborated on a playlist, which has quickly become my go-to listen for flights and cleaning and pretty much everything. 10.5 hours of solid gold—yet nice and chill—hits. Plenty you know and love, with a dash of what you haven’t heard before. Exactly what listening to the radio should feel like.
Upcoming Events
I’ve got some events at writers festivals in Canberra, Berry, and Tathra in the coming weeks and months:
On Sunday 20 October I’ll be in Tathra for the Headland Writers Festival. This is a one-on-one conversation with me about The Work. Tickets and information is here.
On Saturday 26 October I’ll in Canberra for the Canberra Writers Festival. This is a one-on-one conversation with me about The Work. Tickets and information is here.
On Sunday 27 October I’ll be in Berry for the Berry Writers Festival. This is a panel with Jessie Stephens and Madeleine Gray. Tickets and information is here.
Good Reviews
Now you see why I didn’t have space for a full regular edition? Phew! Here we go:
Natasha Walsh finished my/her/our nude and she is glorious. Have I told you the story, about a man who was a fan of Natasha’s work coming to my Brisbane Writers Festival event, then finding out Natasha was painting me, and attending the opening of her Hysteria exhibition and meeting me there, and him buying the painting before it was even finished, because he just liked both our work so much, and he so trusted the result? I believe his faith has been rewarded. I’m envious he gets to keep her.
My friend the genius
has started a Substack for ‘more candid versions’ of the sustainability and fashion stories she writes for The Guardian, The Saturday Paper and Elle Australia. ‘To be able to colour what I learn when I’m on the road with how it feels to be in these places, what my gut instinct is telling me, and what I actually think about some of the latest innovations—things that don’t belong in news reporting but that used to be included in long form stories when magazines still commissioned them.’ Just look at the headline of her latest edition, featuring Em Nolan who we all know I love! Keeeeeeeen as a motherfucking beeeeeean.When I’m reading a good article and know I want to put it in News & Reviews, I highlight quotes I might want to pull out and screenshot them as reminders to myself come Wednesday. A problem I encountered this morning was that I had eight different screenshots of this New York Times article by Willy Staley. It is about the intersections of: big tech financing, film & TV, and cultural consumption habits of the last decade. I hadn’t realised just how much debt Netflix had been taking on, year after year, and how fully they have reshaped those three key sides of the screen industry—creators, commentators, and consumers. There’s some extraordinary insight into generational economic trends here. It’s also witty and snappy and full of clever analogies and metaphors. I hadn’t heard of Staley before but he’s a great writer. If you’re at all interested in how culture functions right now, I swear you’ll love it as much as I did. ‘What we’re paying for, in the end, is not any one show, or any three or 10 or 50 shows, but rather this fathomless sense of abundance. Which in turn means that any given show just doesn’t matter quite as much as it could in the era of broadcast TV.’
Giveaways
The winner of the copy of Rapture by Emily Maguire is #85 out of 96. I’ve emailed you, Jo Kemp!
This week’s giveaway is so lovely and special—these pictures don’t do it justice. I found it when we visited Wild & the Sage in Unawatuna, the local bookstore whose owners also do things for Galle Literary Festival.
It’s a colouring book, but way better and more precious. Artist Safiya Sideek has drawn shopfronts from all around Sri Lanka, and put her coloured versions on the left and an outlined version on the right for you to finish.
Enter with your name and email address here and I’ll draw the winner at random next week.
Please Note: Giveaways are for those on the paid subscribers list, as a way to show my gratitude for them funding this space. If you’ve got high enthusiasm and low funds, just ‘reply’ to this email and I’ll comp you for 6 months no questions no worries. xxx
thank u for the shoutout - lurve the things that doing a Brah Lah travelling book club inspire you to do 🦞💗
Completed my first Sri Lankan water colour the other night! A couple of hours of bliss while drinking Sri Lankan tea and watching the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives… what a vibe 😝