Hi!
Hello! Happy election everyone!!!! I’m thrilled. I think? Well I’m both thrilled and just quite shell-shocked. Shrilled? Anyway.
I am, as you are reading this, currently in Marrakech to see some family. Flew out yesterday afternoon and coming back Monday morning. Rishi Sunak: thank you for this wonderful timing. Going to return next week tanned and relaxed and the smuggest motherfucker this town has ever seen.
In the meantime: this week’s newsletter is quite bitty! Just a bunch of bits, one after the other. Hope that’s alright. Have bad news for you if you think it isn’t, seeing as I’ve already written said bits. No way out now. God I’m tired. Can you tell I’m tired? Don’t answer that. Anyway.
The United States of America: a round-up
All the pieces I worked on while living in New York have now been published, which is mostly nice, because I’m really happy with them all, but also sucks real bad, because I had a ton of fun writing them and I won’t get to write anymore of them for many months. Ah well.
Because Twitter has become the place where links to writing go to die, I thought I’d put all my favourite features in one place, on the off-chance that you would like to read one or maybe even several of them. They’re good! I promise!
Also if any editors are reading this then I would like to take a moment to say that I really, aggressively enjoyed being a foreign correspondent for five weeks, made me feel extremely alive. If you would like to send me somewhere abroad - don’t even really care where, to be honest - to write about whatever it is your publication finds interesting, then please let me know? I can be reached on marie.s.leconte@gmail.com. My rates are very reasonable and I’m good at travelling light. I am going to be somewhat busy over the next six weeks or so, for the obvious reasons, but will be entirely around after that.
In the meantime! Here’s what I got up to in New York:
# Can you ever leave New York City?
On the weird, weird politics of right-wing Staten Island, and its even weirder relationship with the rest of NYC. A compellingly odd bit of the world.
# A brief encounter with Joe Biden
In which I am very hungover and go watch Joe Biden get off Air Force One, for journalism.
# The Ukraine war in New York City
Brighton Beach is the bit of NYC where Ukrainians and Russians used to peacefully cohabit. Has the war changed that? I spent the day there to find out.
# New York is a lesson in how not to legalise cannabis
I mean that one is quite straightforward. Does what it says on the tin. A real policy shit-show, chronicled.
# Inside the neighbourhood offering sanctuary to queer Russians and Ukrainians
Brighton Beach again! This time focusing on the LGBTQ+ community there, and the world’s only annual Russian-speaking Pride parade. V wholesome, v heartwarming.
I hope you enjoy reading some or all of them as much as I enjoyed reporting and writing them! In my unbiased, objective opinion they’re all very fun pieces.
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