(Almost) Everything I Worked on in 2025
An essay I've wanted to write forever, film reviews, and a new series!
I should have made this earlier, but it was only yesterday, on the first day of the new year, that I was feeling sad about my lack of “goals” for the new year and decided I should also celebrate everything I have done; or did last year. This will by no means be comprehensive, but rather a highlight reel. Last year my resolution was to promote my work more on my Substack. Here is me trying to see that through!
Writing & Podcasting
A career-spanning essay on my favorite director for The Point
Some time in 2024, an editor at The Point Magazine reached out and asked if I had any ideas for an essay. It’s rare to receive this sort of email when the request is: write about anything, as long as you care a lot about it. For many years I had wanted to write about Pedro Almodóvar, my all-time favorite director since I was in high school. The task had always felt daunting though. Not only because his oeuvre contains 20+ films, but also because so much had been written about him and his work; it felt hard to try and say anything new. With his first collection of writing on the horizon along with his first full-length English language film released in early 2025, it seemed like the right time. I won’t belabor the process too much—as I already did so here—but it was one of the most ardous research / writing / rewriting processes I have done to date, and as a result, its an essay I am very proud of. It didn’t actually come out until March, but I’m listing it first because it was the first thing I started working on last year. You can read it here. Quoted by David Hudson in the Criterion’s Daily here.
Sundance!
My firt trip to Sundance, blissfully funded by Sundance and a friend’s parents who let me stay in their home during one of the most expensive weeks in Park City. This trip, along with the Point piece, inaugurated in the first year I really started to write about film seriously, which has brought me so much joy, and is something I plan on continuing to do in 2026. While I was at Sundance, I wrote a dispatch on my favorite films for Screenslate, and podded for my beloved Film Comment while crammed in a hotel room with a bunch of other smart women. I was also able to see some amazing movies for the first time here that ended up turning into pieces later in the year. (I am sad that I will only be attending the festival online this year!)
My first book contribution
In February, 50 little biographies of women artists I had researched and written between 2021 and 2022 were finally published in a really beautiful monograph that accompanied a show at the NYU Grey Gallery. Writing this accomplishment here almost feels wrong because of how long ago I did (and was paid for) the work, but nonetheless, it was extremely fun to receive two copies of this insanely heavy book at my door. Would love to do a monograph essay in the future.
A very personal essay
Sometime in the summer, I finally pitched a Letter of Recommendation for the first time. This was something I had wanted to do for years, but just never felt that I had the right idea. This essay actually ended up checking two boxes for me: it was also the first time I finally wrote about my mother’s illness and our relationship—something I had spent years talking about in therapy, and many more hours scribbling about in my Notes app. When I think back on it, the idea really came together earlier in the summer when I took a trip to Europe with my parents, just the three of us. We had many fraught car ride conversations about the prospect of (my potential) marriage and having children; their own experiences attending some marriage counseling retreats—called “marriage encounter”—which sounded a lot like the scene that opens Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. That same week I spent time helping my mother up the stairs in our Airbnb, giving her a bath, and drying her hair. It was the kind of focused and dedicated care I had only done intermittently, but had never reflected on for such an extended period of time. Once I wrote the essay, which you can read here, a lot of new (idea) connections opened up for me. I have never received so many personal messages from friends and colleagues about my writing before. More to come on this topic over the next couple of years. I plan for it to somehow inform a book project, if only indirectly.
A review of a novella/memoir
I try to write a book review for The Nation at least once a year. Last year it was on Catherine Lacey and her newest hybrid work. More on that here, and you can read the piece here. (It also got put in LitHub.) I don’t have too much more to say on this one other than I’ve never had an easier time writing a review of a novel. Will give myself a pat on the back for that one.
An essay on sexual assault movies
Later in the summer I wrote again for The Point, a publication I’m so grateful for, for the way they challenge writers to think clearly and sharply. While this piece was short, it was still very labor-intensive. I was trying to comment on two films (one that I had seen at Sundance), along with our current sociopolitical landscape, in a very short amount of space. The editors there as always helped me produce something I am very proud of. Some of the ideas in this essay began whirring while once again joining the Film Comment podcast.
I wrote my first piece of fiction, which I will not share here, because I never finished it or published it. But I did read it in front of a crowd of people, which was fun and scary. (Thank you Rhian Sasseen for the invitation!)
Two more film reviews
My last few pieces of the year all came together at once, right around New York Film Festival. I really don’t like writing criticism as quickly as I had to this past Fall, but some were easier than others. I had been thinking about Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You since last year’s Sundance. I was raving and raving about it to anyone who would listen, trying to convince everyone that it would be one of the year’s knockouts. I was finally successful in convincing The Baffler, and wrote nearly the entire review in one high octane, fury-induced evening. It was a movie that encapsulated all of my interests into one frenetic and blissful package.
The other review I wrote during NYFF was for The Nation website, on Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. I don’t have much else to say here other than he’s a fantastic director. I think it will rival The Secret Agent for Best International Feature Film.
A fun nonfiction book review for Kismet
My last piece of the year was somehow written in the same month as the above two film reviews. A new magazine following in the footsteps of Astra—that everyone should check out if they haven’t yet!—asked if I would review a book on a sexual wellness cult rather last minute. I hesitated before saying yes and am so glad that I did. I had some passing familiarly with OneTaste, the cult that this book investigates. But the book itself was pretty engrossing, and I had a good time writing the review, whose style was meant to be “more Bookforum than NYRB.”
Editing
During my fourth year at The Nation, I edited an uncountable number of pieces—commissioned, pitched, assigned to me by other editors—for print and web, alongside writing and editing our Weekly newsletter and doing a whole bunch of other tasks. I’m going to highlight just a few of my favorite pieces: mostly print features, which require multiple rounds of edits, phone calls, fact-checking, copy reads, art queries, photo research, etc. It always takes a village, and when you see the final product in print, it’s exciting.
Jess McAllen on IFS therapy:
For our April issue, Baffler staff writer Jess McAllen wrote a riveting, and long piece on the practice of Internal Family Systems therapy, which to me immediately sounded like a scam. Jess, the dilligent reporter that she is, helped me feel a little more sympathetic to those who have taken up the practice, while simultaneously allowing its founder Dick Schwartz to metaphorically hang himself with his own hubris. I’ll take it as a compliment that several months later, New York Magazine totally ripped off the feature, right down to feature artwork that shows a person broken up into “Parts.” (This concept will make sense if you know about IFS and/or read the piece.)
Derek “Menswear” Guy on Republican fashion:
I think I commissioned this piece back in 2024, but as these things go, especially with a new editor taking over at The Nation, it wasn’t until August/September that this piece went to print. Derek, with the huge following that he has, brought lots of attention to this piece. Here it is discussed in podcast form, too.
Maya Vinokour on the Cybertruck
We had been wanting a feature on the Tesla Cybertruck for some time, and Maya, whose writing I admire for both its intelligence and wit, was the perfect person for this job. This 5,000+ word feature required multiple visits to Tesla dealerships, Cybertruck test drives, random conversations with intimidating men, rabbit hole dives into manuals, and much puzzle piece editing to get it into the right shape. I haven’t seen a more comprehensive piece on the Cybertruck yet.
My new weekend essay series!
To save the best for last, a huge win for me this year was successfully pitching, establishing, and launching a new weekend essay series at The Nation called The Weekend Read. I created this series after realizing that many of the feature stories I had gravitated toward had some really strong firt-person element, something that I didn’t feel we had enough of in The Nation. It has been a huge joy already to imagine this series, commission writers for it, sift through excerpts, think alongside writers, and publish an already exciting archive of pieces on our website and Substack. One of the first installments to the series was Leah Abrams’s tell-all on working with John Fetterman, which ended up being one of the top-read pieces in The Nation this year, despite only going up toward its tail end. Leah is immensely funny and talented and I can’t wait to read her novel that was somewhat inspired by this same work experience! (PS: keep pitching me essay ideas for 2026! I hope for some of these to end up in our print magazine eventually.)
Writing this all out has been a helpful process for me. I feel proud of all the work I did this year! I couldn’t have realized it at the time, but I hit a lot of milestones. I’m looking forward to writing and editing more in 2026. I’m always open for commissions, coffees, chats. (I’ve also added a paid feature to this Substack for the first time, in case anyone feels so inclined.)
XO -
Alana