San Francisco, California
September 13, 2000

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter is by Amy Sohn, a novelist and columnist who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Back in April, when Open Letters was not yet invented, Ian Brown and I put together a prototype, to show to prospective editors and contributors, of ten pieces of published writing that felt to us like open letters.

It included work by some writers who have since become Open Letters correspondents, like Jonathan Goldstein and Sharon O’Connor and Tabatha Southey; it also included a column by Amy Sohn, from the New York Press, about love and lust and a trip to the Berkshires to visit her boyfriend’s lecherous dad.

Between 1996 and 1999, Amy wrote a biweekly column in the Press called “Female Trouble,” in which she chronicled her life, and particularly her love life, as a young woman in New York City. It was remarkably addictive; for me the addiction reached its peak in 1998, when Amy’s relationship with another of the paper’s columnists (they alternated weeks) was hitting the skids; she chronicled its demise with a brutal honesty and an uncommon degree of style and humor and zeal. And so when Ian and I were imagining how Open Letters would read, we found Amy’s work to be a frequent source of inspiration.

Amy now has her own web site, where you can read a few of her columns from the New York Press and the New York Post, as well as a chapter of her novel, Run Catch Kiss, which is just out in paperback. If you do visit her site, let me recommend her FAQ, in which she provides readers with notes on the German translation of her book (Laufen Fangen Kussen), as well as tips on spanking; and this selectionof rage- and lust-filled letters from readers of the New York Press, in response to “Female Trouble.”

We’re going to leave Amy’s letter up for an extra day, until Friday morning, because we’re glad that our prototypical dreams have become a reality; on Friday, we’ll publish a letter about opportunity in America, and life in the dot-com salt mines.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough