(I'm not sharing this anywhere else ☺️)

Eric and I had never met before this conversation but we clicked right away and I'm so glad I got over my "should-I-really-ask-this-stranger-for-a-favor" self-consciousness so he could be my conversation partner. As a very visible member of the NYT cooking team, Eric gets asked this particular favor very frequently and it meant so much to a debut novelist that he'd take the time to be part of this event.

I loved speaking with Eric (who's working on a memoir) because he had so many questions about craft. This is the talk where we discussed writing the most and as much as I enjoy talking about privilege and private school brats, it was really enjoyable to be meta about satire and how my content is received and how helpful/unhelpful having a sensitivity reader was.

Topics covered:

0:20 On making content for revenge

1:00 On only crying if you have an audience

1:30 On satire

2:30 On dealing with people who don't understand satire

3:30 On posturing and performance of class

4:00 On gilded cages

5:10 On what details I borrowed from my real life

7:00 On Taiwan and sensitivity readers

7:45 On changing settings (when writing)