New Year's Eve, Baby 💥

the best TV Dinners of 2023

Happy New Year’s Eve! Here’s a list of my favorite TV Dinner newsletters from the past year, as well as ones that racked up the most views, comments, and other signs of life on the internet. I wrote SO MUCH in 2023, holy smokes, and I’m so excited to keep these good vibes going in 2024.

Thank you so much for reading and allowing me into your inbox! I’m so grateful for each and every one of you. I hope your holiday season is filled with light, love, and the timeless confidence of a Ferrero Rocher <3

xoxo, Maddy

Edie, Weezy, and Louis are sending you warm wishes for a fun, effortless 2024

Top Queer Advice Columns of 2023

I’m always amazed by how widely these circulate, but here are four that seemed especially resonant.

• #68: settling with Brad “…I was dumped about a month ago by the first woman I have dated, Angela, who was previously my online bff.“

• #62: a terrible, tangled mess “Last year I had an affair with a colleague. I am a married lesbian, she is a married ‘straight’ woman. The affair was spectacular, as affairs generally are, but it destroyed my marriage and broke my wife's heart.“ see also: the UPDATE

• #54: my GF of nearly two years has Long COVID and I’m handling it super badly “I missed the things we used to do together, and the social life we’d built together in this city. There were no more long walks, no more day trips. She could barely get up the stairs.“

• #52: a MILF of MILFs “I played/sang to her an original song on guitar. she cried, asked to hug me, and whispered, 'I want so much more of you’ into my ears.“

TV Recaps 📺

• hands-down my most read, shared, and liked posts of 2023 were about The Ultimatum: Queer Love, a Netflix original series from Hell: part 1, part 2, part 3, and the official TV Dinner discussion thread.

• it’s difficult to believe that at the beginning of 2023, Gen Q was still airing and now it’s been removed from streaming. Here’s my recap of the totally bonkers series finale and here is my farewell to the cursed reboot, which contains links to alllll my Gen Q recaps if you’re looking for a real rabbit hole.

Queer Author Interviews 📚

I will be doing more of these in 2024!

• Sabrina Imbler on How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

• Sarah Thankam Mathews on All This Could Be Different

• Jenny Fran Davis on Dykette

• Krista Burton on Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Lesbian Bars in America

Personal Non-Fiction 📺

posts about food, money, and my life in Boston and Vermont

• I cooked, I almost quit Instagram

• one weekend in Vermont

• grub street diet

5 pieces of writing that rearranged me in 2023

• We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxanna Asgarian

• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

• this deep-dive into online communities where parents whose adult children have cut off contact with them are collectively delulu

• Julia Golda Harris
  on Provincetown Women’s Week: “The women were mostly white, and most wore the fleeces, short haircuts, and Merrills that you’d expect from an older lesbian crowd. There was a long and non-centralized list of events for the week, including a shocking number of comedy shows. We later learned that the only place, online or in real life, where you could find the complete schedule was on a printed-out daily itinerary taped to the wall in the public library.“

• Manifestation Is for Cowards by Alice Sparkly Kat