Big News: New Managing Editor, Book Club, Live Q&As, and Paid Subscriber Chats

We're adding some exciting new offerings to Open Secrets Magazine - plus an August sale!

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Hello! Open Secrets Magazine editor Rachel Kramer Bussel here with some exciting updates!

Firstly, welcome to all our new subscribers. We are excited to see your essays being sent for our recent call for submissions. Keep those coming through September 30; we would especially like to see more submissions to our new flash nonfiction section about our possessions, Object-ives.

Next, I’m excited to announce that Farah Faye is the new Managing Editor at Open Secrets Magazine. If you attended our personal storytelling summit Open Secrets Live in May, she was the force running things. Farah will be working on rolling out some of our new programs and social media and upcoming podcast offerings (details on that as soon as possible) and help coordinate future in-person events.

Now here’s a little more about Farah directly from her:

Hey! I’m Farah and I’m so excited to be the new Managing Editor for Open Secrets Magazine! I’ve been working behind the scenes for about a year now (and even helped with Open Secrets Live!) so it’s a pleasure to become more involved.

A little about me: I’m a writer (mostly memoir and nonfiction) based in Brooklyn, where I live with my husband and my cat, Kitty. I am the curator and host of the Scrappy Reading Series which won a Brooklyn Arts Fund grant this year (woo!) and will be hosting a Brooklyn Book Festival Official Bookends event on September 19 (RSVP here - the lineup is killer!)

I also write art monster magazine, a Substack I created to talk about books written by women and writing and the writing ~ life ~. I'm working hard to get some new posts out soon!

When I’m not reading/writing/community organizing, I’m usually at home on the couch with Kitty and watching something — I just finished Hunting Wives (which was a lot more than I bargained for) and I’m currently watching True Blood (how was I so late to the party?!). I’m also an amateur cook and have “mastered” a bunch of pasta dishes, including my penne alla vodka which I make with ground turkey. My Italian ancestors are equal parts proud and horrified.

Anyway, I am absolutely thrilled to be here with you and help more secrets be released into the wild! Cheers! xo

(P.S. If you're wondering about my two truths and a lie, I have not been kicked out of any bars for playing too much yacht rock, even though I definitely came very, very close. Kenny Loggins, I love you forever <3 )

Rachel again:

I see Open Secrets as both an online magazine and a community, and want to bring that community aspect into play so we can get to know one another and support each other. We will continue to publish essays and columns 2-3 times per week (occasionally more often), but we also want to offer more ways to be involved and connect with your fellow readers and writers.

To that end, we’re launching Substack Live Q&As with some of our writers starting next Thursday, September 28 at 7:30 pm with Brenden O'Donnell about his essay “An Extremely Close Encounter with a Gay Catholic Celibate.” You can join us then by clicking this link, which will also be emailed to subscribers. I’m looking forward to chatting with him, and if any of you have questions for him, you can ask them then (or leave a comment on his essay). If you can’t make it live, the interview will be posted on the site for anyone to watch.

I’ve always been a huge reader, and after I finish a book, I always want to discuss it with others, but much of the time, don’t know anyone who’s read it, unless I press a copy into their hand and say, “Read this and call me.” I figured many of you feel the same, so we’re starting a book club dedicated to essays and memoir. We’ll be selecting books by our contributors and event speakers that we feel offer powerful stories about what it means to be human and that will give us plenty to discuss. As of now, we will meet every other month, first in a Substack chat to share our thoughts on the book, then in a Substack Live Q&A with the author.

Our first two book club selections are memoir The Loneliness Files by Athena Dixon (September), who writes our Radical Pleasure column, and memoir in essays Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez (November). We’re now a Bookshop affiliate, which supports independent bookstores, and you can find our book club selections here. We also encourage you to shop from your local independent bookstore, Libro.fm for audiobooks (they let you choose an independent bookstore to support with your purchase), or check out or request these titles at your local library.

We’ll share more details on each book in dedicated posts, but wanted you to be able to get started reading or listening to them. I’ll be interviewing Athena on Tuesday, September 30 at 8:30 pm ET and Edgar on Monday, November 17 at 8:30 pm ET. Everyone, whether you’re a subscriber or not, is welcome to join the Substack Live with Brenden and book club Q&As, and we’d love to have questions from you!

For our paid subscribers, we are going to start paid subscriber chats to dive into issues raised by our weekly essays and to offer writing resources (you can also find us on Substack Notes sharing more places to submit your writing and other info). We may also host some paid subscriber-only online events in the future.

As we brainstorm about our next steps in 2026, including more in-person and online events, let us know what else you’d like to see from Open Secrets Magazine! You can leave a comment or reach us at opensecretsmag at gmail dot com

And another reminder that we’re offering our best deal ever, one that won’t be repeated, for $16/year for annual subscriptions, through August 31.

Thank you for being part of the Open Secrets community!