A Letter to My Subscribers

Brilliant, but Slight is Rebranding

Darling friends and readers,

After some careful consideration, I’ve decided to rebrand (terrible word) this newsletter. Don’t worry, it’ll still be packed with literary themes and topics - that’s pretty well baked into my personality.

Simply put, I’ve been feeling a pull toward a variety of topics, not just literary, and I want to seize the moment when the newsletter is still in its early days to avoid pigeonholing myself. Probably not the smartest move, if all the How To Build Your Substack articles are to be believed. Having a niche is what works on Substack, supposedly, but hey, even in high school I was never in just one clique. I like to drift around.

So here’s what you can expect from your friendly neighborhood night owl. There are more posts about literature to come, of course. I’ll be writing about film, music, travel. I’m also very excited to launch a series of interviews with a variety of people in the arts.

A lot of you are new here (hell, so am I - this newsletter’s only 5 weeks old!), so I may lose some of your attention. That’s okay, too.

But if you decide to stick around and support me, I’ll be absolutely thrilled to go down this road with you.

That’s all from me, for now. Next time you hear from me, it’ll be as Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, after the 1996 poem by Hayden Carruth:

Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

Scrambled eggs and whiskey

in the false-dawn light. Chicago,

a sweet town, bleak, God knows,

but sweet. Sometimes. And

weren’t we fine tonight?

When Hank set up that limping

treble roll behind me

my horn just growled and I

thought my heart would burst.

And Brad M. pressing with the

soft stick, and Joe-Anne

singing low. Here we are now

in the White Tower, leaning

on one another, too tired

to go home. But don’t say a word,

don’t tell a soul, they wouldn’t

understand, they couldn’t, never

in a million years, how fine,

how magnificent we were

in that old club tonight.

With love, always,

Maya