Hi friend!

I’ve been a little quiet on here while I’ve been spending most of my brain working on a novel. It’s a wild process of walking in the dark with a flashlight that is occasionally dim, sometimes bright, and other times flashing multicolor strobe lights that are fun and a little scary. Mostly, I’m trying to trust the process, which is really just trusting what writers who have done this before me say that it’s like. You feel in the dark until you’re there. Or, as Amis says, “What happens is what Nabokov described as a throb. A throb or a glimmer, an act of recognition on the writer’s part. At this stage the writer thinks, Here is something I can write a novel about… You have to decide between identical-seeming dirt roads, both of which look completely hopeless, but you nevertheless have to choose which one to follow.”1

The novel feels like one reason I’ve felt paused in the newsletter writing, another reason is our current political moment. One of the worst parts of the administration we’re living under is that it often feels like you have to solemnly respond to whatever they are doing on any given day. More than in fiction, a newsletter feels like a trade. If you’re offering me your attention at this current moment, how can I not talk about What Is Going On? Having a public digital life feels more perilous and less desirable. So, I paused before sending out this newsletter. How can I talk about vacation or leisure when so much else is going on? The only answer I’ve found is to do a little of both.

First, I want to plan a big trip and a little trip for you. When my girlfriend and I were prepping for a recent trip, we looked at a lot of travel blogs from a bygone era with names like Travels with Austin, or Wanderlust Mia. My gf thought those blogs were extremely cheesy but I thought they were kind of great. The best thing they do is not just list out all the cool things you can do but tell you exactly what order to do them in. There’s something satisfying, especially when things are this perilous in the world, to see how someone strings a day together. A big compliment a friend will give is ask me, “I’m going here, what should I do?” So friend, here’s what you should do.

Trip Itinerary 1: St. John

If you are as in the dark as me, St. John is a US Virgin island near Puerto Rico (often confused with St. Thomas), a four hour flight from nyc. Most of it is a national park (as long as, you know, those magical things exist), so there’s lots of hiking trails and undeveloped beaches. There’s lots of history to learn about like the US put Oppenheimer there in a yellow house on a remote beach that’s now called Oppenheimer Beach when he was in the witness protection program. Or, residents of the island didn’t get electricity until 1940. This book was in our rental and offered amazing oral histories of that time on the island (side note: the cabin we rented offers a writer’s residency for any interested writers).

You pretty much have to rent a car on St John, driving is on the left side of the road and the roads are built at steep angles I didn’t realize cars could drive on. If you are a sheepish driver, I’m not sure St. John is the best destination for you.

Day 1:

• Do the Reef Bay hike in the national park

• Go to Cinnamon bay beach then eat at Skinny Legs (you can spend 3-7 hours at this bar, they’re the only restaurant on the island that serves fresh food grown on the island - salads with mahi and the turkey reuben and the key lime pie)

• Go to the shop at Pottery in Paradise for really cool jewelry and ceramics

• Go snorkeling at salt pond bay (sea turtles!!!) until sunset

Day 2:

• Play tennis or pickleball on the public courts in town

• Go to Irie pop for cold brew and breakfast popsicles

• Go to Trunk Bay beach (if parking at the beaches is crowded, you can park anywhere along the road to the beach or in town and wait for a taxi, which is just a converted pick up truck with lots of seats)

• Go to Skinny Legs (it’s a daily thing)

• Watch the sunset at Maho Bay beach

Trip Itinerary 2: Biking Brooklyn to Montauk

This comes with the caveat that I planned nothing of this trip and all credit goes to Mary. Our group had a range of bikes, I used my around town bike and got panniers (not to be confused with paneer). Our not-quite-right gear made us go more slowly but it didn’t really matter except for that.

Day 1:

• Leave as early as physically possible (5 am latest) to bike from Prospect Park to the Patchogue ferry terminal. There’s a little restaurant, Harbor Crab Co by the ferry terminal that has painkillers and chicken tenders.

• Take the ferry to the Fire Island National Seashore. (This was my first time on Fire Island, which I’ve always heard of as having very fun crowded party vibes. This side of Fire Island is a national seashore with campsites and vacant breathtaking beaches.) We stayed at an established camping site so we didn’t have to carry supplies but you could also backcountry camp.

Day 2:

• Take the ferry back to the mainland and bike from the ferry terminal to Montauk.

• We stayed at a motel in Montauk and got there in time to dunk in the cold pool and go to dinner. I wish I could tell you more about the Montauk time but I was tired and mostly just experiencing a mix of sensations—hot, cold, wet, tired.

Day 3:

• Beach, pancake breakfast, and LIRR back to Brooklyn with bikes.

something to read

One of my favorite categories of book lists is books to take on vacation. There’s no better feeling than being in a chair somewhere by the water and feeling absolutely sunk into a book, but the alternative really sucks of lugging a book everywhere that you just can’t crack. I usually approach this problem by only bringing books on vacation that are certified bangers—lots of people with lots of different vibes give this book a Hell Yes. A few other requirements for vacation reads include, one, that you have to feel like you can finish it during the length of your vacation even though you probably won’t. Two, that you could feasibly read it tipsy or just generally sun fried. It doesn’t have the sort of sentence level rigor that requires multiple reads. I also like reading a novel with a lot of world building on vacation because there’s a lot of open time for my brain to build that world.

• Hunter, Tana French

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid (*this is a great book if you’re just getting into reading again)

• Tiny Beautiful Things, Cheryl Strayed (I often find vacations are times where you’re hoping to relax and, instead, life’s big questions tend pummel you. This is a beautiful book to welcome the questions and get some help navigating them.)

• Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

• Hunger Games, Susan Collins (any of them. See, world building.)

• Intimacies, Katie Kitamura

• All Fours, Miranda July

• James, Percival Everett (really anything by Percival Everett will not let you down)

• Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clark (I haven’t read this one but I’ve been told by a cross section that it’s a certified banger)

• Loved and Missed, Susan Boyt (this is on my read ASAP list. It’s been word of mouth recommended to me three times, which to me is always a sign I need to read it soon.)

• The House in the Cerulean Sea, T.J. Klune (*great if you’re just getting back into reading)

• The God of the Woods, Liz Moore (Interviewed by Emma Copley Eisenberg on plot here)

• Land of Milk and Honey, C. Pam Zhang

• Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld

• Geovanni’s Room, James Baldwin

• My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

You can always message me or comment, and I’ll give you a personalized rec!

Finally, if I have your attention, let me leave you with this;

This piece in The Nation by Kaveh Akbar

I’ve been thinking about this piece “The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons” by Yiyun Li nonstop since I read it. Home to one of my favorite recent quote on fiction:

“Fiction, as I’ve learned from writing it and reading it, tends to be about the inexplicable and the illogical. Sometimes my students complain about what they read in fiction—“I don’t believe this would happen in life” or “I don’t believe any parent would do that to their children.” What can I say to a young person who has strong convictions but a lack of imagination? Not much, really. The world, it seems to me, is governed by strong conviction, paltry imagination, and meagre understanding.” - Yiyun Li, The New Yorker

Agencia Alpha, one of my favorite community-based non-profits just had their gala. If you don’t donate to them, consider donating to another non-profit that does on the ground community work when immigration is in the news and when it’s not.

I hope you all have a wonderful rest of May. At last, we have made it to fresh serotonin land.

Love,

Zoe