Be Contrarian with Substack Icons Jessica DeFino and Emily Kirkpatrick

Welcome to the Substack Live Podcast!

Conversations with the best Substack early adopters who created amazing newsletters and continue to bring their good work to the world and make the world a better place in doing so. Plus, get updates and expert guidance on the platform as it changes and changes again and again, so you can use it to fuel your creative, professional, and financial life.

Brought to you by Substack Writers at Work Founder and Director and former Paris Review interviewer, Sarah Fay.

Over 300 people showed up to this live recording of the Substack Live Podcast to hear Emily Farra and Jessica DeFino talk about how they built newsletters that became something bigger than the platform itself, including:

* Why having tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers doesn’t mean the Substack writer has it easy—far from it

* How to create your own platform and not to be platform-dependent

* Why it’s ill-advised to try to write a “genius essay” every week on demand and it’s better to create a framework you can apply consistently

* Why consistency is everything—unless it’s not

* And so much more…

Jessica DeFino is an award-winning beauty reporter and critic (the New York Times, the Sunday Times, Vice). She’s also written for Vogue, Allure, and more. She now writes the Guardian’s beauty advice column, Ask Ugly, a position that arose out of her Substack. Adweek named her one of their Creative 100 for 2023. She’s smart and sharp and funny and wry. FLESH WORLD by Jessica DeFino is “the newsletter the beauty industry fears.” She’s a Substack icon who showed what’s possible beyond the platform. And her CTAs are the best, e.g., “Subscribe now. (Because retinol won’t work in the face of your mortality.)”

Emily Kirkpatrick is the Roland Barthes of fashion writing—with a little bit of Stephen Wright and Tig Notaro mixed in. She’s written for People, i-D, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair, among many others. Her newsletter I <3 Mess is essential reading, whether you care about fashion or not.

Thank you, Helen Roy, Amy Gabrielle, Lynn Jericho, Brad Wetzler, Morgan Strehlow, and many others for tuning into my live video with Emily Kirkpatrick and Jessica DeFino!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.substackwritersatwork.com/subscribe