The app for independent voices
Editor-in-chief Rachel Kramer Bussel here: I’m catching up on Open Secrets submissions I haven’t had a chance to edit but will be publishing in the next few months, designing zines of some of our personal essays to sell at writing conferences AWP in March, and putting the finishing touches on the speaker lineup for May 2 NYC personal storytelling summit Open Secrets Live.
We’ll have new essays up starting Monday, if not before. For now, I wanted to share this post by Nasrin Jafari, founder of fashion brand Mixed, about speaking at the first Open Secrets Live in May 2025. The encouragement Nasrin felt to claim the mantle of “writer” is what I want all our readers who long to write to feel.
“Writing has always been there in the background of my life, and this weekend showed me that I’d like to claim it more intentionally. One day, I’d love to publish a Mixed coffee table book. And another day—a book completely unrelated to the brand—about my mom and my family’s journey navigating her Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
I share all this as a reminder that we are many things and that we have time to live out those many identities in different chapters of our lives.”