hello beautiful people of the Hot Literati Universe. For those of you that don't already know this, I was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. Which I was also recently told is the birthplace of Mr. Beast. I come home often, because the people are kind and humble and the sky feels so big in Kansas. I think of myself as a sort of nomad these days, wandering around a lot, a little lost but mostly happy. Wichita has changed a lot since I was a little girl, in really beautiful way

stuff to do before it’s nice out make a spring playlist wash your sheets and dust— you won’t want to later when you’re frolicking outside buy yourself a bouquet of flowers for your dining room table with the Hot Literati “how to be hotter” course, sort through your clothes and keep only those that are coherent and aligned start a friendship bracelet, so that you can finish it by summer smile at a stranger on your way to work cozy up with a last hot drink and read the Hot Lite

hello cuties angels and lovers I spent most of today flyering for Hot Literati. It's more fun and potentially more effective than paying meta to show Hot Literati to people who it thinks might like it. I printed out a bunch of these flyers at UPS before walking to the lovely people of Laams to borrow some scissors. I went to Wolfnights, to order my hyperfixation wrap before going to my favorite social club for a glass of water. I sat down and started chatting with one of my f

Did any of this resonate with you? let me know in the comments :) <3

A couple of weeks ago, I had the honor of visiting Sarah Lawrence to read an essay and answer questions about Hot Literati and my writing practice. Huge thank you to Kulsum for organizing everything, and for the campus literary group Dark Phrases for hosting, and bringing such good, raw questions. I never thought that a single TikTok in 2022 would lead to Hot Literati, but it's grown beyond anything I could imagine and I'm so grateful. I love the website, the community, and

In December, I had the honor of hanging at the office of a record label called Verve Records for a couple of hours. What I did to earn the honor? I have no idea, but hanging out is a skill that I didn’t develop until I stopped being addicted to my phone. And I like to think that I was invited because now, I'm very good at hanging out. That morning, I left my apartment on the Lower East Side of Manattan, walking down the stairs in black cowgirl boots I bought in London and a s

Did this teach you anything new? Are you surprise by anything? Let me know :) xx hailo

Happy Friday Beautiful people! I am extremely caffeinated and sitting in a beam of sunshine in a new apartment. Moving is a humble exercise, especially in a pre-war buidling. My hamstrings are sore. Last night, I attended a Substack event at The Back Room on the Lower East Side. The first time I went to the back room I was 22 or 23. They have a 25 and up door and I talked my way inside to wait for my date. We roamed around and after on a cool summer night and said goodbye. He

hello hello I'm reading my Bible and packing up my apartment for a big move. To where? That's not a secret I'll never tell :o I own one pair of jeans Leaving this space has me reminiscing on what it was like to move in. In my early 20s I made up for what I lacked in experience with audacity. The bed frame for example, was put together by a very kind Italian man as our first and last date. The mount that held the TV to the wall was a gift from an Australian man who I kept runn

And some thoughts on the World Wide Web Today I received my first real literary rejection, which was an email that said "I'll pass on this." I've had a very unconventional, internet forward career as a writer so far, but I'm currently shopping around a memoir titled The American Princess Diet , about some very particular instances in my life through the lens of food, media, sex, and God. I never expected to make any money from writing, which is one of the ways I stumbled into

There are many lonely little girls in the world; the same way there are lonely little boys and lonely little adults. Notebook, 19th Century Germany, vis Art Institute of Chicago We cope with this loneliness in different ways: drugs, sex, work, books, music, movies, pets, thinking, writing, dreaming, crying. As a lonely little girl who grew up to be a lonely little girl who grew to be a lonely little adult, none of these things ever made the feeling go away. I’ve experimented

Ballet, Computer Science, and Journaling hello hello good people of Hot Literati I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend. I've been so busy with work and other things, but a recent highlight is that I went to the ballet. I hadn't been in about four years and as I've written about a lot, I did ballet very seriously for fifteen years. My school practiced the Cecchetti method, which I'd love to learn more about the history of now, but as a kid, I remember being so jealous of t

Melancholia and Isherwood Musings New Years Eve Party I, Francis Chapin, American, 1899-1965, via Art Institute of Chicago Website I first read Goodbye to Berlin last summer, months after my infatuation with the Kander and Ebb musical adaptation Cabaret began. I read the book during the summer where it rained nearly constantly, following the heatwave the year prior where London was so scorching the city almost seemed to be burning for its sins. That summer I’d take long walks

Or, on interdisciplinary thinking. I'm writing from my kitchen table, which has historically been one of my favorite places to write. There's cello music in the background, and I'm about to hit my 3 pm slump. When I was younger, even in some of my early popular writing, I think I lobbed around critiques of industrialization without really understanding what industrialization is. Now that I've gotten older, I can sort of look back and laugh at myself and understand that "the d

Taylor Swift and the Routinization of Everything I was drinking coffee with Sara at a cafe in Brickell when she mentioned she'd bought tickets to the Eras Tour. singers on the stage, degas Sara's long brown hair was pulled back in the same style she wore in 2008, efficient rather than styled, though the effect was somehow elegant despite the functionality. Her eyes are the same penetrating grey, intelligent and severe in a way that made you want to prove you'd done the readin

Lily Allen and the danger of misbehaving by Cara Ballingall “I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” Woman in a Riding Habit (L'Amazone) by Gustave Courbet from the met archives So says Antoinette Cosway in Jean Rhys’ The Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel that proposes the origin story for Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester’s madwoman wife in the attic in Jane Eyre, and, in doing so, opens up a voice against a status quo that se

I sat down with Rob Franklin to talk about the writing process, side hustles, MFA programs, Anna Nicole Smith, and his debut novel GREAT...