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This was a weird year! I ended up taking about a quarter of 2020 off for family leave, dealing with kids and online school, etc. But I still wrote a lot, and am really proud of what I did. Here are 10 pieces from my first year of writing full-time for Slate:
Early in the pandemic, I wrote about the ways the crisis was revealing systemic fractures in American society: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/coronavirus-tsa-liquid-purell-paid-leave-rules.html
That same month, I wrote about my last trip to a used bookstore before the world shut down: https://slate.com/culture/2020/03/coronavirus-bookstores-capitol-hill-books.html
The most hate mail I got this year was in response to this post-Oscar nominations essay about a movie I do not like: https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/oscar-nominations-2020-joker-best-picture-no.html
And the most gratifying response came to this rave for a wonderful New Zealand fantasy novel: an American publisher bought it, and it comes out in February: https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/the-absolute-book-by-elizabeth-knox-review-this-fantasy-masterpiece-should-be-published-in-america-immediately.html
I explored the weird history of "Goodnight Moon" and the librarian who hated it so much she kept it out of New York City libraries for a quarter-century: https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/goodnight-moon-nypl-10-most-checked-out-books.html
I failed to get Bruce Springsteen to acknowledge that I had finally fixed the one flaw in his hit song: https://slate.com/culture/2020/05/bruce-springsteen-glory-days-lyrics-speedball-no.html
I profiled the poet Maggie Smith, and asked whether hope in hard times is a reasonable wish during this horrible year: https://slate.com/culture/2020/10/maggie-smith-good-bones-keep-moving-poetry-self-help.html
I watched as good-hearted parents tried to create equitable, diverse learning pods for the new school year and saw their school redivide itself along racial lines: https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/10/learning-pods-greenbrier-elementary-charlottesville-divided-racial-lines.html
I walked every block in my ZIP code and made the most quixotic Google map in all existence: https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/a-quest-to-catalogue-every-single-house-number-in-one-suburban-zip-code.html
And I finally wrote down a story about my teenage years I've been telling forever -- and in the process learned how different the real story was from what I remembered. https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/04/shirley-valentine-changed-my-life.html
Thanks for reading my stuff, Twitter, and thanks @Slate for letting me write so many ambitious, weird, unclassifiable things -- and finding ways to help readers discover them.
