Restless Limbo

Everything I wrote this year

It’s that week between xmas and new years. Time moves differently. How anxious I feel for the distractions to start up again ebbs from year to year. Usually I overestimate how much can be accomplished, preoccupied by expectant dread only able to waste my numbered days.

I’m considering doing the polar bear swim on new year’s day. I started working out again, two days in to doing it everyday, after having not stepped foot in a gym in months. But the perfect antidote to this sanguine jingoism, marching orders: new year new me, I just cracked open A. S. Hamrah’s newest book Algorithm of the Night, a collection of his film writing from the last six years. The intro paints a bleak portrait of entertainment-politics, re: streaming, A.I. slop, and MAGA influence as broadcasters and studios consolidate. The reviews that make up the book’s bulk continue with the same unsparing wit. But as a collection of short texts, it’s easy to nibble away at, making it perfect for the restless limbo of this week. And since you probably have more time than usual to watch movies right now, there are lots of ideas for something to turn on. Next up for me is Mandy (2018) starring Nicolas Cage, per Hamrah “a parody of ‘the hero’s journey’ on par with Kanye West’s use of that phrase in the oval office while describing Donald Trump to himself.” Hamrah writes with an arsenal of this kind of marginalia, a detail that might have otherwise gone unremembered keenly deployed like a hand grenade.

Recently, I did an interview on my media diet with The Slowdown.

The only year-end list I participated in, I chose a favorite book for The Paris Review: Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp.

The last thing I published this year: a fly-on-the-wall account of my time at a porn shoot in Barcelona via Los Angeles Review of Books.

I’m including a list at the end here of everything I authored in 2025. I’m sure I’ll forget something. But a big part of what I do in addition to writing is also editing, public speaking, and organizing/curating. Please keep in mind, I’m a gun for hire and a great moderator.

A highlight this year was the Brain Rot series of talks I did with David Lisbon and Bri Griffin (birthed at NEW INC but which we continued at Offline Gallery and in Miami at Locust Projects). David recorded all of them so stay tuned we might do something with the transcripts.

I organized and moderated a talk which felt like a poets’ version of The View at Fleiss-Vallois gallery (“A Literary Coven Meets on Madison Avenue”). It was on the occasion of a women surrealists show they had up including Leonora Carrington and Niki de Saint Phalle and Ariana Reine’s latest collection The Rose. Ariana and I were joined by Alexandra Auder and Marissa Zappas.

I moderated a talk for the Aesop Queer Library with Tourmaline, Raquel Willis, and Bernie Wagenblast.

I was part of a Dazed Studios panel about “culture shapers” with Emily Sundberg, Fran Tirado, and Bunny Kinney.

I was in conversations, respectively, with Lynne Tillman and Grace Byron for their book launches.

I moderated a panel with artist Alice Aycock and SO-IL principal Jing Liu about Art Omi Pavilions.

And I was part of a conversation about criticism with Johanna Fateman and Jarrett Earnest at NADA Miami.

In 2025, I organized Whitney Review-related programming at Metrograph, Fleiss-Vallois, the Swiss Institute, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York Life Gallery, Journal Gallery (in Paris), Surrender Dorothy, the Performa Biennial Hub, and with Nina Johnson Gallery (in Miami). We also participated in book fairs in New York, Los Angeles, and Oslo: Press Play, Available Works, AWP, and Fashion Printed Matter(s).

I read my own writing at readings organized by other people too: Drew Zeiba, Max Steele, and Allie Rowbottom organized my favorite ones.

I (especially) loved the essays I got to edit this year in the Whitney Review by venus stevens, mark iosifescu, Alex Schmidt, Ruby McCollister, Collier Schorr, Mara McKevitt, Enzo Escober, and Canal Street Research Association.

And finally, here’s the list of my published writing from 2025. I’m not including substack blogs (though they’re all here). Maybe this and this are most worth revisiting.

Family Style, Inside High Valley Books (with Maya Kotomori)

The Paris Review, My Ex Recommends (for Valentine’s Day)

Cultured, Critic’s Table, Camille Henrot at Hauser & Wirth

Dinamo newsletter, When Kylie Was A Font

New York Review of Architecture, Skims retail store review

Family Style, In Oslo for the International Library of Fashion Research’s first-ever book fair, Fashion Printed Matter(s)

Foreword for Kim Hastreiter’s book Stuff

Magic Farm by Amalia Ulman x Mubi book, “Horny Conscious Consumption” (essay about American Apparel)

CURA., Isaiah Davis

The Whitney Review of New Writing issue 005, review of Maya 69 Martinez, Theatrics

Essay for artist monograph Raphaela Vogel and the Fist Fuckers

Document Journal, Julianne Moore interview on beauty

Document Journal, Tara-Jo Tashna interview

The Paris Review, favorite Jane Austen adaptations (basically an excuse to write about Mia Goth)

The World of Interiors, on Kim Hastreiter’s apartment

Spike Magazine, Spiral Theory Test Kitchen interview

New York Review of Architecture, Printemps retail store review

Autre, Richard Kern interview

Family Style, Emily Allan and I visit Molasses Books

“Touch Grass” essay for Mother Nature in the Bardo book

LA Times (Image magazine), “Jonathan Anderson’s Final Act at Loewe Cements His Reputation for Craft”

Fantastic Man, Benny Safdie profile

Love Magazine, essay on courtroom fashion (is it sold out, I can only find a resale link on ebay?)

PIN–UP, Irena Haiduk interview

Spike Magazine (nostalgia issue), on celebrity and book culture

Autre, Diane Severin Nguyen interview

The Whitney Review of New Writing issue 006, reviews on Nula by Irena Haiduk and Blake Bessire and Perfect Victims by Mohammed el-Kurd

PIN–UP, José Esparza Chong Cuy interview

Los Angeles Review of Books, “Airbrushed Tanlines”