Links & Things & Stuff

What I'm reading and eating and watching and teaching

Hola everyone! Happy Saturday.

Grab some tea or cold brew or a joint or whatever you’re into while you enjoy this quick newsletter about what I'm reading and eating and watching and teaching.

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📺Watching

Julio Torres for NYT, photo by Mamadi Doumbouya

I’m in my Julio Torres era. Hubby and I binged Fantasmas, loving it. Then we watched Problemista, obsessed. And now Los Espookys, fucking brilliant. I haven’t felt this inspired by an artist since watching Bo Burnham’s Inside.

Julio’s work encourages me to take artistic risks representing my intersecting cultural identities—a subject I still struggle with but hope to someday write about. The way he uses avant-garde comedy with surrealist imagery to cover topics like immigration, vanity, sexuality, gender, and always losing jewelry quite frankly blows my mind.

If you know Julio personally, please tell him I’d like to buy him an earring.

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📚Reading

If you’re feeling stuck creatively, looking for new inspo, or just want to learn about tarot through a different lens, Tarot for Creativity by

Chelsey Pippin Mizzi

is 100% the book for you. I wish I had this workbook-meets-creativity prompts-meets-approachable tarot insight in my early tarot journey. Thanks for the advanced copy,

Cassie Mannes Murray

!

I wrote about my relationship with tarot as art appreciation and self-work here.

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🍄Snacking

Y’all. Moku jerky is GOOD. And I’m a jerky snob who grew up eating the best jerky in Texas. While other plant-based jerkies I’ve tasted try too hard to imitate meat, Moku leans into the fact that it’s a mushroom without trying to be something else. I’m not paid to promote them. Just genuinely obsessed with this snack right now.

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💻Teaching

Book Proposal Boot Camp VIRTUAL September 5th - October 10th, 7-9 EST

Do you have an idea for a book but don’t know what to do with that idea? Do you feel imposter syndrome when you think of yourself as a “real” writer? Do you imagine your name on a book cover… one day?

That was me, too.

Now, I teach the very book proposal classes that helped bring my book to life because I want to bring your book to life, too. I combine my experience with publishing, marketing, journalism, internet literacy, DIY publicity, mental health advocacy, and a business degree into a course I call Book Proposal Boot Camp.

Together, we’ll write the business plan for your book, AKA a book proposal.

If you’re author-curious, join me (and guest speakers!) for six weeks this fall.

Each session ends with a 20-minute Q&A where students can ask about publishing, proposals, finding an agent, preorder campaigns, and book marketing.

Guest speakers: Hilary Sheinbaum and

Gemma Hartley

Additional Classes

• Book Proposal 101 Oct 1st. Sign up here.

• Be Your Own Publicist October 9th. Sign up here.

• Book Proposal Boot Camp Oct 22-Nov 19th (Guest speakers:

  Leigh Stein

  and Jordyn Taylor) Sign up here.

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XO,

Tawny

Mis niños, photo by Gabrielle Lenhard