Isaac Fitzgerald

Apr 30, 2024 | walkitoff.substack.com | Isaac Fitzgerald

A quick note to say, thank y’all so much for your patience while I dealt with a death in the family. I’ll have a smidge more about that in my next Friday Flowers. With that out of the way, it felt extremely good to go for a walk with Ada Calhoun—and it’s clear that many of you enjoyed the walk, too (thanks so much for all the kind notes!). During our conversation, Calhoun said, “Everybody has a year that the city was good, and then the city was never good again after that.

Apr 19, 2024 | walkitoff.substack.com | Isaac Fitzgerald |Walter Isaacson

“My ma died in February.”Ada Calhoun and I are at the International Bar in the East Village, and I’m telling her the specifics of my mother’s death. The afternoon is gray and rainy, but the day-drinkers around us are jovial, and the Guinness I’m sipping warms my chilled bones a bit. Ada kindly listens while I talk, she herself having lost a parent in October of 2022—which, if I’m being honest, is probably why I called her to ask if she wanted to go on a walk.

Mar 11, 2024 | writeordie101.substack.com | Courtney Kocak |Zachary Zane |Isaac Fitzgerald |Stephanie Danler

Write or Die 101 is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors. This month’s workshop, Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career, is from Courtney Kocak. When you sign up today, your full first month’s membership payment goes to them. Today’s lesson is free. Hello writers!We’re back on our newsletter grind, and today, we’re focusing on the WHAT. What to post, that is.

Jan 28, 2024 | walkitoff.substack.com | Isaac Fitzgerald

“You should order the ass juice.”Karolina Waclawiak and I are at the Double Down Saloon in the East Village. When Waclawiak was getting her MFA at Columbia, she would travel the length of Manhattan to come downtown and drink at the rock and roll tavern. She liked that they played avant-garde porn intercut with footage from punk shows and skateboarding videos on the bar’s televisions, and heavy, thick, guitar-driven metal on the bar’s speakers.

Nov 30, 2023 | walkitoff.substack.com | Isaac Fitzgerald

“I drew a face on a potato and now Rhett won’t throw it away.”Maggie Smith and I are standing in her kitchen in Bexley, Ohio—a suburb right outside of Columbus. On the table in front of us is, indeed, a potato with a small smiley face drawn on it. “Rhett even made a lil’ bed for it.”Rhett—named after the lead singer of the Old ‘97’s, Rhett Miller, who is a friend of Smith’s—is one of Maggie’s two children.