The New Yorker

Somehow, I once had a job where I got to do things like run around backstage at the Oscars. The “famous person” sighting that had me buzzing for days was…New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick (at a park, on a run, wearing a sweatshirt illustrated by one of the magazine’s artists). Some people deride The New Yorker as snoozy and snobby. The journalists don’t break news — they aim for definitive narrative accounts. J.D. Salinger wrote The Catcher and the Rye when he was sick of getting their rejection letters! Yet the magazine has introduced me to more writers and artists I love than any other cultural entity.

Last year, when the National Portrait Gallery decided to remove Amy Sherald’s “Trans Forming Liberty” from an upcoming exhibition to appease Trump, Sherald cancelled the show and The New Yorker ran the painting as its cover. Every single cover in 101 years has been a drawing, watercolor, comic or other visual created by a working artist. When the latest issue lands in my mailbox, I drop everything.