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Successful Queries: Jamie Carr and Maya Ziv and "But How Are You, Really," by Ella Dawson

• Author: Guest Column

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series . In this installment, find a query letter from literary agent Jamie Carr accepted by Maya Ziv for Ella Dawson's novel But How Are You, Really , recently published by Dutton. As you'll hear in Ella's own words, this novel success story was originally going to be a memoir:

I expected my first book to be a memoir about creating a healthier approach to casual sex. In May 2019 I attended my five-year college reunion with the intention of interviewing friends and old flames about their experiences with campus hookup culture. Instead, the four day long weekend gave me an idea for a romance novel about two exes who haven’t seen each other since graduating from college and wind up hashing out their differences at their reunion. I wanted to explore the insecurities I felt when I returned to my alma mater: doubt about my career compared to those of my successful friends, and fear that I had lost my way in life and fallen behind my peers. My main characters Charlotte and Reece were born from those anxieties. The first draft was all internal conflict. The two lovers pined for each other and fought and made up, but the story had little structure or tension. I shared it with Jamie Carr, an agent from The Book Group, and she suggested a huge revision that would introduce external conflict by bringing Charlotte’s awful boss to campus as the commencement speaker at graduation happening concurrently with the reunion. After I overhauled the book, I signed with The Book Group and Jamie and I prepared to take the book on submission. We chose to position The Reunion as a coming-of-age novel with romantic themes as opposed to a genre romance. While it has a happy-ever-after and Charlotte’s connection with Reece is the spine of the book, it’s much more Charlotte’s story of personal growth and triumph than a traditional romance novel. I was nervous about finding the right editor who shared my vision for the book as literary fiction. Maya was my first choice of editor from the beginning, and we were overjoyed when she took an interest in The Reunion right away. She understood Charlotte’s psychology like a best friend and encouraged me to do “more”: more flashbacks to her college days, more details about the college campus, more exploration of her feelings in nostalgic and painful moments. Plus more conflict, as we developed the tension between Charlotte and her best friend Jackie, whom she has taken for granted. With Maya’s help I unspooled the emotional themes of professional burnout, recovery from abuse and trauma, and sheer longing for a crush who makes you feel like you are lovable just as you are. After the book’s many transformations, it only felt right to rename it: But How Are You, Really .

Ella Dawson

Ella Dawson is an NYC-based sex and culture critic whose work has been published by Elle, Vox, and Women’s Health, among others. She was once internet famous for having herpes, but that’s a whole other story. Ella is proudly bisexual, very anxious, and aspires to adopt a kitten. Follow her on social media and on Patreon as @brosandprose.

Jamie Carr's Query Letter Sent on Sub

Dear X, As discussed, I’m thrilled to enclose sex and culture critic Ella Dawson’s sexy, thought-provoking, and full-of-heart debut novel THE REUNION about a burned-out bi-sexual young woman who is forced to face her estranged chosen family, old demons, and the ex she walked away from at her five-year college reunion. Charlotte Thorne does not want to go back to Hein University. Her career in media is a stalled hot mess and she has fallen out of touch with her queer chosen family, including her best friend Jackie. Willingly spend a full weekend with her incredibly successful classmates? Hard pass. But when her controlling boss, tech journalist Roger Ludermore, is invited to give the commencement address at this year’s graduation—which also happens to fall on the same weekend as her five year reunion—Charlotte has no choice but to return to campus. It’s just her luck that Reece Kreuger, the hockey player she rebounded with after a traumatic breakup, is on the Reunion & Commencement planning committee. But instead of the reckless bro she knew at age twenty-one, Reece has grown up to be a gorgeous and mature cinnamon roll. Suddenly the weekend she has dreaded for months feels like a thrilling chance to go back in time…But Reece still doesn’t know the real reason why she ghosted him on graduation day all those years ago, Jackie wants answers, and her boss’ arrival on campus is imminent—threatening to blow it all up. Set over the course of Charlotte’s college reunion weekend, the novel is equal parts second chance romance, powerful reckoning with toxic workplace culture and burnout, and an exploration of surviving emotional abuse and what it means to forge a new path forward, in both love and in life, with the help of your chosen family. In the vein of FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK by Elissa Sussman and GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN by Talia Hibbert, with a workplace dash of THE VERY NICE BOX by Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett. Ella Dawson is a sex and culture critic. Her nonfiction work has been published by Elle Magazine, Vox, and Women’s Health, to name just a few, and her short fiction has been published in seven erotica collections. A Wesleyan graduate, her activism combatting STI stigma has been featured by BuzzFeed News , The Washington Post , and The Independent , and her TEDx talk about herpes has nearly one million views on YouTube. Most recently, her viral commentary on the Heard v Depp trial has been cited by Monica Lewinsky, Molly Jong-Fast and other feminist thought leaders. Ella is bisexual, anxious, and lives in Connecticut with two rescue dogs and hundreds of romance novels. Website here & longer bio attached. As always we’re selling North American rights only. Many thanks for your time and consideration, and looking forward to hearing from you soonest. Warmly, Jamie

Check out Ella Dawson's But How Are You, Really  here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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What Maya Ziv liked about the query:

I had been following Ella Dawson online for years, and had told her agent that I was a fan of her writing. So I was primed and thrilled when Ella’s debut novel, then called The Reunion , landed in my inbox. I had no idea what she had been working on, but immediately fell for the pitch—a burned out 20-something returns to her alma mater for her five-year reunion, running into ghosts of the pasts and also the one who might have gotten away. Who doesn’t love a college reunion?? One Twin XL bed!! 

I am also always a fan of novels that probe friend group dynamics and character psychology, which this pitch promised to do. Despite having Covid for the first time, I dove into the novel right away.

I immediately fell for Ella’s writing. The color wheel of feelings stole my heart on the first page! I loved Charlotte Thorne, our protagonist, in all her messy glory, and was rooting for her the whole time. The romance here is so well done, but what landed the most for me, and my editor-in-chief, was the way Ella nails the sense of coming back to a place that forces you to reckon with how far your life has or hasn’t come. 

This book is ultimately about a woman getting unstuck and getting back on her feet through love and community. I found the first email I sent about this novel which includes this line, “The ending is a happy one, which everyone needs right now! I found myself fist pumping.”

Months later, I still find myself fist pumping and also pinching myself that I get to work with Ella. I am so proud of this novel, now entitled But How Are You, Really , and I can’t wait for readers to discover it! I hope it takes them back to a moment in their lives they hope to remember.

Maya Ziv  is VP, Editorial Director at Dutton, Penguin Random House, where she focuses on commercial and literary fiction and select narrative nonfiction. Her authors include New York Times bestselling authors Hank Green, Riley Sager, Adriana Trigiani, Karma Brown, and Erika Johansen, and some recent titles include The House in the Pines, by Ana Reyes;  The Mutual Friend, by Carter Bays, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother;   Kaleidoscope, by Cecily Wong; and Bad Sex , an exploration of truth, pleasure, and an unfinished revolution, by Nona Willis Aronowitz. Before joining Dutton, Maya was a Senior Editor at Harper, where her list included Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and Roxane Gay’s New York Times bestseller Bad Feminist .

Jamie Carr joined The Book Group in January 2020. A senior agent at TBG, she champions award-winning debuts, commercial book club fiction, and expert-driven nonfiction at the forefront of culture. Her titles have been chosen as Indie Next, Target Book Club, and Book of the Month picks. She’s also had books featured on NPR’s Best Books of the Year list, GMA (Buzzworthy segment), USA TODAY’s Bestseller List, and nominated for the Lambda Literary Awards, to name just a few. Previous to TBG, she was at William Morris Endeavor for almost six years. Born and raised in Lower Manhattan, she has an MFA in fiction writing and began her publishing journey in the books department of Tin House. Jamie represents novelists, journalists, and experts in culture, food, sobriety, finance, millennial and Jewish issues, and more. Most interested in adult literary and upmarket commercial women’s fiction and narrative nonfiction, she is drawn to writing that is voice-driven, highly transporting, from unique perspectives and marginalized voices, and that seeks to disrupt or reframe what appears to be known.

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Want to Write for Reader’s Digest? 10 Things You Need to Know

• January 26, 2024
• 28 Comments

These ten tips for getting an article published in Reader’s Digest will help you understand and follow the magazine submission guidelines for freelance writers.

I’ve written several articles for Reader’s Digest ; my editor taught me more about writing magazine articles and query letters than any other editor I’ve worked with. Below are the best tips for writers, including my own experiences writing for Reader’s Digest and other magazines.

Looking at the cover of a recent Reader’s Digest will tell you almost everything you need to know about writing for this magazine. Put yourself in Sherlock Holmes’ shoes, and look for the clues that are plastered all over the front page.

What are the articles about? Who are the readers, what do they want to learn about, what scares them? What problems, anxieties, and worries are they dealing with? What types of feature articles, health quizzes and research shorts are profiled on the cover? That’s how to write an article for  Reader’s Digest : answer questions and solve problems for the readers.

Here’s another interesting fact about writing for Reader’s Digest : when I went to Amazon to look for an annual print subscription to this magazine, all I found were Large Print issues. The regular print issues are only available on Kindle or digitally. What does this tell you about the publishers and editors? Put your businessperson’s hat on: what decisions need to be made about advertising, market share, the cost of printing paper magazines, and the readership?

You don’t need to know all the answers to my questions about writing for Reader’s Digest . Just know that the editors aren’t only thinking about your story, profile, or feature article. They’re thinking about the problems their readers have, what their readers need to know, and how to keep their readers coming back for more.

The editors and publishers – of all magazines, not just Reader’s Digest – are also thinking about attracting new readers, finding more advertisers, and even hiring aspiring freelance writers like you!

10 Writing Tips From My Reader’s Digest Editor

Writing for Reader’s Digest was my most rewarding job as a freelancer. My editor helped me pitch better query letters, find more solid research studies and think from the readers’ perspective. She also reviewed and edited my articles over the phone, which improved my writing immensely . It also showed me how she as an editor viewed the articles, magazine, and big picture.

Not all writers get this perspective; I have no idea how I got so lucky! And if you’ve seen this magazine’s submission guidelines (which you can find by searching for “how to submit an article to Reader’s Digest “), you know that writing for Reader’s Digest is a competitive business. But good news! My tips will help you get your articles published in more magazines than you have time to write for.

1. Keep your opinion to yourself

When I’m writing for Reader’s Digest , I’ve learned not to provide a running commentary. I don’t editorialize or share my opinions on the content of the article, profile, research short – or even my own story. This is the classic “show, don’t tell” advice. Everything in your pitch and the article must be solid information that sources or experts actually told, gave, or showed you. Even if you’re writing about your own experience, share what happened. Use your sensory details to fire up your writing .

2. Use reputable, provable experts or sources

If you can, talk in person to local sources who are considered authorities on your topic. I always include interview dates, names, email addresses, phone numbers and website urls in the footnotes that source my experts. Not every editor requires this; one of the other magazines I write for recently told me not to bother footnoting or even citing my sources. But if you’re pitching a query letter or writing an article for Reader’s Digest , submit all your source information (even if the contributor’s guidelines don’t state this).

3. Only quote from primary sources

A direct quote is in quotation marks (for example, “I love writing Reader’s Digest because they pay a dollar a word!”). A primary source is someone you see or talk to in person. You can also quote from a book, magazine article, research journal, or even a blog post or website. A secondary source is a “he said/she said” experience (for example, “Laurie said she found the Reader’s Digest submission guidelines for writers.”). If you can’t or don’t feel like talking experts or sources directly, you can only directly quote from press releases, journal articles, or recognized sources such as the Canadian government or the FDA.

If you already know you don’t want to be a freelance writer because it really is a ton of work, read 10 Careers for Writers Who Want to Make Money . There are thousands of options for aspiring writers who aren’t interested in reading the submission guidelines and pitching query letters to Reader’s Digest or other magazines.

4. Be specific in your query letter and article

Avoid vague, imprecise, dreamy descriptions when you’re writing for Reader’s Digest or any magazine. For example, don’t write “someone quit her job to move somewhere else.” Instead, be concrete and specific: “a writer in Vancouver, Canada quit her job tending sheep to move to New York City to pursue her dream of a freelance writing career.”

Answer these questions: What’s his name? What city does he live in? How old is he? What job did he quit? What dream is he pursuing? What made him quit his job? Is he a short or a tall man? Pretend you’re a curious reader.

6. Guard your sources’ privacy

Tell your Reader’s Digest editor the real names of the people in your anecdotes, but indicate whether their names should be protected for privacy’s sake. Also, never make up stories or people or places – unless you’re writing fiction for Reader’s Digest . Check the submission or contributor’s guidelines for their rules.

7. Never ignore an email from a Reader’s Digest editor!

Don’t do what I did. My Reader’s Digest editor sent me an assignment – which I hadn’t even pitched a query letter for – and I was like all “yay!” But I didn’t tell her that. I didn’t acknowledge her email or accept the assignment. My editor had to send me another email asking if I wanted to write the article for Reader’s Digest or if she should assign it to someone else. Fellow scribes, always acknowledge emails — even the thousands of rejection letters you’ll inevitably get from editors and publishers if you’re a real writer .

8. Make sure your headline and introduction grabs readers

Writing strong headlines (article titles and even paragraph subtitles) is one of the best ways to get your article published in Reader’s Digest . Speak directly to the need or problem the reader has. Be clear and specific about what they’ll learn, how they’ll benefit, or why they need to read your article (sometimes known as the “takeaway”).

Know your main point, present it clearly and compellingly, and stay focused. Learn how to write titles and intros that grip readers by the throat !

9. Be EAGER to edit, revise, rewrite your work

The most important thing you need to know about writing for Reader’s Digest (and getting repeat assignments from editors) is to eagerly, enthusiastically tackle revisions of your work. Do not think if your magazine article, query letter, or even an excerpt or book chapter of your memoir as “your baby.” It is your work , not your baby. You created it – and you may even have birthed it! But it is not perfect, and an editor can make it better. I don’t know if this writing tip is in the Reader’s Digest submission guidelines for contributors, but it should be. The only way to truly grow as a writer is to edit, revise, and rewrite your articles again and again and again.

10. Tailor your writing to Reader’s Digest readers

My Reader’s Digest editor was one of the first to directly tell me her preferred way of receiving query letters from freelance writers. One of the most valuable questions you could ask a magazine editor or book publisher – especially on the phone or face-to-face (such as at a writer’s conference) – is how they like to be queried. “How do you like your pitches? Long? Short? Detailed? Summarized? Should I interview experts first, or can I just name them?”

Get a subscription to Reader’s Digest magazine. I asked my editor for a year’s worth of back issues, and she sent them! For free.

In 11 Most Popular Articles to Write for Magazines | Tips for Freelance Writers I share different types of articles to write, to help you get published in the right magazine.

My list includes feature length stories, roundups, personality profiles, research shorts, human interest pieces, and “how to” articles. I also included examples of magazines that publish each type of article. Whether you’re an aspiring freelance writer or an established author you’ll find lots of ideas in this list.

When you’re ready to submit your article or pitch an idea to the editors, go to the Reader’s Digest Contributor’s Submissions page on RD.com.

Bonus writing tip from my Reader’s Digest editor…

Don’t use proper names as verbs. “We don’t Xerox, we photocopy ,” she said. This is a common writing mistake that doesn’t just apply to making print copies of stuff. Maybe you’ve heard of the “catsup versus ketchup” wars.

Have you tried writing for Reader’s Digest ? Maybe you found the contributor’s or writer’s submission guidelines on the magazine’s website, and felt overwhelmed or unworthy. Or maybe you’ve pitched multiple query letters and keep getting rejected. Feel free to share your experience below…

Want to write for magazines such as Reader’s Digest , but don’t know what to write about? Read How to Find Article Ideas That Editors Will Pay to Publish .

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28 thoughts on “Want to Write for Reader’s Digest? 10 Things You Need to Know”

I want to sell my valuable health, true love stories and nature articles to your magazine.how I do it. Please give me a opportunity to do it. I have most valuable information about secret medicine methods,

How do you come up with article ideas now, with new forms of software? I have trouble thinking up ideas to pitch to magazines like Readers Digest. What about artificial intelligence platforms to generate writing ideas?

Great question, Mark, I’m glad you asked! I just wrote a blog post for writers curious about ChatGPT and other forms of AI in their writing.

ChatGPT for Writers: How to Use AI in Your Writing https://www.theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/chatgpt-for-writers-how-to-use-ai-in-writing/

I hope it helps, and wish you all the best getting published in magazines like Reader’s Digest.

– Laurie

I have often thought of freelancing but feel overwhelmed with all of the information. Writing for Readers Digest as a beginner is solid advice; but here too, the info is overwhelming. As I write this I feel panicky about the very idea of writing for RD or for any other publication. My mind is blank. There’s too much to take in.

What do you suggest I do; what’s my first step to gain the confidence that I can do it?

I started to write a reply, then realized I need to write a whole blog post. Too many thoughts and ideas 🙂

You inspired me to write The First Step to Gaining Confidence as a New Freelance Writer https://www.theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/how-to-gain-confidence-for-new-freelancers/

I hope it helps you gain confidence to write articles you love for magazines such as Reader’s Digest.

Keep me posted; I’d love to know how your writing is progressing.

I have been purchasing Reader’s Digests since I was 12 years old (with my allowance and babysitting money). I have been sending you stories for many many years, but I have never received a reply. I have sent you 5 fabulous stories in the last few months: (1) “Bob Social”, (2) “Three Sisters Together at Last” – this one could be a question to readers as to whether or not they agree with me – (work with me on this one). (3) Peaches & Cream”, (4) “Prisoner of War Love Story” with photo of Myra and her father in Germany. (Could I please have that photograph back. At the last minute I became happy that you might want to include it. I should have made a copy.) (5) “Watching You”, which is a fabulous story with a twisted ending. I am hoping that these comments get to the right person finally. My Email address is [email protected] ..

Hi Sandra, I don’t work for Reader’s Digest, so can’t help you with this. But your article ideas sound interesting! I hope you get published with them one day. Sometimes it just takes repeated effort. Good luck with your writing, Laurie

Thank you for the tips.

Thanks for the tips. I am new to writing and really love the style of writing in RD. It is witty, engaging and educational while being succint. Any tips to write like an RD writer?

Thanks for the tips. I have a question about rejection/acceptance. I was told that RD will not acknowledge submissions – nor let you know if rejected. The only communication will be “if/when” they decide to publish it. However, there is no timeline given. How long must one wait before deciding to submit to another magazine for publishing? Is it safe to say that if I don’t hear back in 3 months, then I can safely send the same submission to someone else? Thank you in advance for your time and input.

I am a death doula…my first experience was life transforming and I have written about it…five pages. Would you be interested in my story?

Thank you. Lots of constructive information.

Very helpful, thank you! Lots of inside “stuff”… for us newbies wanting to write for RD.

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April 5, 2024

AI Chatbots Will Never Stop Hallucinating

Some amount of chatbot hallucination is inevitable. But there are ways to minimize it

By Lauren Leffer

Moor Studio/Getty Images

Last summer a federal judge fined a New York City law firm $5,000 after a lawyer used the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to draft a brief for a personal injury case. The text was full of falsehoods —including more than six entirely fabricated past cases meant to establish precedent for the personal injury suit. Similar errors are rampant across AI-generated legal outputs, researchers at Stanford University and Yale University found in a recent preprint study of three popular large language models (LLMs). There’s a term for when generative AI models produce responses that don’t match reality: “hallucination.”

Hallucination is usually framed as a technical problem with AI—one that hardworking developers will eventually solve. But many machine-learning experts don’t view hallucination as fixable because it stems from LLMs doing exactly what they were developed and trained to do: respond, however they can, to user prompts. The real problem, according to some AI researchers, lies in our collective ideas about what these models are and how we’ve decided to use them. To mitigate hallucinations, the researchers say, generative AI tools must be paired with fact-checking systems that leave no chatbot unsupervised.

Many conflicts related to AI hallucinations have roots in marketing and hype. Tech companies have portrayed their LLMs as digital Swiss Army knives, capable of solving myriad problems or replacing human work. But applied in the wrong setting, these tools simply fail. Chatbots have offered users incorrect and potentially harmful medical advice, media outlets have published AI-generated articles that included inaccurate financial guidance , and search engines with AI interfaces have invented fake citations . As more people and businesses rely on chatbots for factual information, their tendency to make things up becomes even more apparent and disruptive.

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But today’s LLMs were never designed to be purely accurate. They were created to create—to generate —says Subbarao Kambhampati , a computer science professor who researches artificial intelligence at Arizona State University. “The reality is: there’s no way to guarantee the factuality of what is generated,” he explains, adding that all computer-generated “creativity is hallucination, to some extent.”

In a preprint study released in January, three machine-learning researchers at the National University of Singapore presented a proof that hallucination is inevitable in large language models. The proof applies some classic results in learning theory, such as Cantor’s diagonalization argument , to demonstrate that that LLMs simply cannot learn all computable functions. In other words, it shows that there will always be solvable problems beyond a model’s abilities. “For any LLM, there is a part of the real world that it cannot learn, where it will inevitably hallucinate,” wrote study co-authors Ziwei Xu, Sanjay Jain and Mohan Kankanhalli in a joint e-mail to Scientific American .

Although the proof appears to be accurate, Kambhampati says, the argument it makes—that certain difficult problems will always stump computers—is too broad to provide much insight into why specific confabulations happen. And, he continues, the issue is more widespread than the proof shows because LLMs hallucinate even when faced with simple requests.

One main reason AI chatbots routinely hallucinate stems from their fundamental construction, says Dilek Hakkani-Tür , a computer science professor who studies natural language and speech processing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. LLMs are basically hyperadvanced autocomplete tools; they are trained to predict what should come next in a sequence such as a string of text. If a model’s training data include lots of information on a certain subject, it might produce accurate outputs. But LLMs are built to always produce an answer, even on topics that don’t appear in their training data. Hakkani-Tür says this increases the chance errors will emerge.

Adding more factually grounded training data might seem like an obvious solution. But there are practical and physical limits to how much information an LLM can hold, says computer scientist Amr Awadallah , co-founder and CEO of the AI platform Vectara, which tracks hallucination rates among LLMs on a leaderboard. (The lowest hallucination rates among tracked AI models are around 3 to 5 percent .) To achieve their language fluency, these massive models are trained on orders of magnitude more data than they can store—and data compression is the inevitable result. When LLMs cannot “recall everything exactly like it was in their training, they make up stuff and fill in the blanks,” Awadallah says. And, he adds, these models already operate at the edge of our computing capacity; trying to avoid hallucinations by making LLMs larger would produce slower models that are more expensive and more environmentally harmful to operate.

Another cause of hallucination is calibration, says Santosh Vempala , a computer science professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Calibration is the process by which LLMs are adjusted to favor certain outputs over others (to match the statistics of training data or to generate more realistically human-sounding phrases).* In a preprint paper first released last November, Vempala and a coauthor suggest that any calibrated language model will hallucinate —because accuracy itself is sometimes at odds with text that flows naturally and seems original. Reducing calibration can boost factuality while simultaneously introducing other flaws in LLM-generated text. Uncalibrated models might write formulaically, repeating words and phrases more often than a person would, Vempala says. The problem is that users expect AI chatbots to be both factual and fluid.

Accepting that LLMs may never be able to produce completely accurate outputs means reconsidering when, where and how we deploy these generative tools, Kambhampati says. They are wonderful idea generators, he adds, but they are not independent problem solvers. “You can leverage them by putting them into an architecture with verifiers,” he explains—whether that means putting more humans in the loop or using other automated programs.

At Vectara, Awadallah is working on exactly that. His team’s leaderboard project is an early proof of concept for a hallucination detector—and detecting hallucinations is the first step to being able to fix them, he says. A future detector might be paired with an automated AI editor that corrects errors before they reach an end user. His company is also working on a hybrid chatbot and news database called AskNews, which combines an LLM with a retrieval engine that picks the most relevant facts from recently published articles to answer a user’s question. Awadallah says AskNews provides descriptions of current events that are significantly more accurate than what an LLM alone could produce because the chatbot bases its responses only on the sources dredged up by the database search tool.

Hakkani-Tür, too, is researching factually grounded systems that pair specialized language models with relatively reliable information sources such as corporate documents, verified product reviews, medical literature or Wikipedia posts to boost accuracy. She hopes that—once all the kinks are ironed out—these grounded networks could one day be useful tools for things like health access and educational equity. “I do see the strength of language models as tools for making our lives better, more productive and more fair,” she says.

In a future where specialized systems verify LLM outputs, AI tools designed for specific contexts would partially replace today’s all-purpose models. Each application of an AI text generator (be it a customer service chatbot, a news summary service or even a legal adviser) would be part of a custom-built architecture that would enable its utility. Meanwhile less- grounded generalist chatbots would be able to respond to anything you ask but with no guarantee of truth. They would continue to be powerful creative partners or sources of inspiration and entertainment—yet not oracles or encyclopedias—exactly as designed.

* Editor’s Note (4/5/24): This sentence was edited after posting. It previously stated that mitigating bias in a large language model’s output is an example of calibration. That is instead a separate process known as alignment.

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This Writer’s 800-Square-Foot LA Apartment Puts Accessibility First

By Morgan Goldberg

Photography by Amy Bartlam

Having grown up in Los Angeles’s South Bay, Kelly Dawson wanted to experience another part of the sprawling city when she decided to leave her parents’ house and move into her own home. But the writer, editor, and marketing consultant (whose writing frequently appears in AD ) had non-negotiable requirements that made her apartment search especially challenging.

Kelly sits in her camel leather Home Goods chair , which she fell in love with immediately.

“I was born with cerebral palsy and it mostly affects my legs, so it makes it difficult to have to live in a place that has a lot of stairs,” she explains. “I looked around the East Side for a while and could not find a place that was accessible . I went to the West Side and that was out of my budget. Finally, I came [back] here.”

About 10 minutes from her childhood home, Kelly found the perfect spot: a ground-floor unit in a beachside building that doesn’t have a single stair at the entrance or in the lobby. She can walk straight from the street into her apartment, without any plane change. Plus the interiors had recently been renovated, yet the rent was significantly discounted because it lacks the Pacific views that the upper levels have.

“There were a lot of little projects that my dad helped me with around here,” Kelly shares. “I think the biggest one was the curtains, which are from Home Goods. The curtain rod is from Crate & Barrel . And it was really funny. My dad came in here and was like, ‘I’ve been doing all this stuff for your mom for 30-plus years, so I am just a pro.’ I didn’t have to hire a TaskRabbit. My dad was my TaskRabbit.”

“If I’m on the patio and I lean over the edge and the tree in front of me is cut just so, I can still see the ocean,” Kelly jokes. “But really, I loved the natural light. I also loved the fact that the floors were all one level and everything was laid out really well. It’s compact, but it feels spacious enough for one.”

Self-watering plants make it easier for Kelly to have greenery in her home.

In furnishing the 800-square-foot abode, Kelly made sure to prioritize both accessibility and style. All of the seating, for example, had to be a particular height (three feet from the ground) and sturdy enough to support her pushing off, but it also had to match her sophisticated California aesthetic. She paired a midnight blue Living Spaces sofa with a camel leather Home Goods armchair in the living area, while she chose sage spindle-back chairs from Article for the dining zone.

“I think there’s this idea that an apartment can’t feel as inviting as a stand-alone house and I don’t think that’s the case,” Kelly opines. “Even though I’m renting, I take a lot of pride in my home and respect the place as such. It’s also possible to personalize a rental without fear of losing a security deposit.”

“When people think of accessible design, they think of a hospital room, and that doesn’t have to be the case,” she says. “After all my years of design writing, this was my moment. I finally had this open space to do everything that I’ve learned from my day job to make my private life comfortable. And I really wanted to do it in a way where you wouldn’t be able to know that it was accessible to me unless you were really paying attention.”

Kelly curated a small gallery wall in the kitchen too.

By Charlotte Collins

Kelly combined three low-slung IKEA bookshelves to create a console below her wall-mounted TV, where she displays all her books, old National Geographic magazines, and beloved objects. She also invested in oversized, self-watering plants and hung up artworks she’d been saving for her future home, like a floral William Morris print and an abstract face image. She framed leaf motif Chasing Paper wallpaper samples she was sent for a story too.

“I really wanted to have an apartment that was beautiful,” Kelly says. “I felt like this was my little single lady’s haven that I was going to look back on one day and be like, ‘Wow. That was a great moment in my life that I was able to have every design decision come down to what my preferences were.’”

In the bedroom, Kelly channeled British elegance with a taupe velvet headboard , an antique-style vanity from The Home Depot , a Minted landscape print , and daintily-striped Anthropologie curtains that were a splurge. “I had this vision in my head of thinly striped curtains,” she remembers. “They were like $140 when I really just wanted to spend 20 bucks tops, so I call them my heirloom curtains because I will be passing them on to my niece and nephew. They are super expensive, but they’re lovely.”

Both the bedroom and the living area connect to the patio , which Kelly outfitted with a rust red Target rug and sand-hued furniture she snagged off-season from Big Lots. “I really like going out there and eating breakfast,” she shares. “I read out there too. When I have parties, it’s really nice because I can open both of the sliding doors and everyone can mingle in and out.” It’s that indoor-outdoor California lifestyle people dream about—fully accessible and on a budget.

Kelly’s patio is equally suited for quiet mornings and parties with friends.

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By Erika Owen

By Sydney Gore

By Kristi Kellogg

Opinion D-Day is 80 years old. Let’s not have another one.

Plus: The implosion of Russia’s Gazprom. Trump’s dark vision for America.

You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.

In today’s edition:

• Anniversaries of D-Day and the death of Hong Kong
• Gazprom shows proof of Putin’s utter idiocy
• Trump is portraying an America darker than ever

Hoping history doesn’t rhyme

On remembrances of D-Day, such as Thursday’s 80th commemoration of the beach landings at Normandy, it’s easy to imagine that back then, the United States existed free of all the fracturing that plagues it today.

Not so, Gene Robinson reminds us . During World War II, the country was still recovering from the Great Depression and bitterly fighting over the New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision to run for a third term as president had prompted howling “as angry and apocalyptic as anything we are hearing in 2024,” Gene writes. The America First movement (sound familiar?) loudly opposed U.S. entry into the war.

And even D-Day itself was riven by America’s social divisions; see the all-Black 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion.

Only fighting abroad brought the country together at home. Next time, Gene writes, we will simply have to chafe at our differences because “it is inconceivable that global war can again be the forge that welds the nation together.”

One imperative for avoiding global war is avoiding it across the Taiwan Strait, where China is getting increasingly creative and ambitious in its attempts to pressure Taiwan into a “one country, two systems” model along the lines of what the mainland has used with Hong Kong.

Kevin Rudd , the Australian ambassador to the United States, says the efforts live in a “gray zone” between peace and war — while China continues to prepare for the latter outright. Rudd sketches out the wide “equation of integrated deterrence” that the world will need to solve if it is to keep peace in the region.

This brings us to another anniversary: Sunday marks five years since 1 million Hong Kongers peacefully marched in the streets against a proposed law allowing the extradition of criminal suspects to the mainland. Keith Richburg watched from one of the city’s raised walkways, and his description of the demonstration is inspiring, beautiful even.

Protesters got the law suspended, Keith writes from the city , but at great cost: That march and ensuing, rougher protests set in motion the events that led to the draconian security law that remade Hong Kong “in China’s authoritarian image.”

Five years on, Keith is filled with “what ifs.” Could Hong Kong have been saved from its current suffering? Five years on, will we be wondering the same about Taiwan? About the United States?

From David Von Drehle’s column on the colossus’s newly reported annual loss — its first in the 21st century but certainly not its last. This economic disaster, David writes, is both Vladimir Putin’s fault and proof of his “catastrophic idiocy.”

Gazprom, David says, was Russia’s “lone economic bright spot.” No thinking leader would let their aggression grow so large as to snuff it out, especially when that leader knows full well that their state (as Sen. John McCain famously said) is “a gas station masquerading as a country.”

David previews the pain that awaits the Russian people. He also analyzes what it means that even Russian insiders are admitting this failure in Western media. And finally, he suggests what President Biden ought to do with this opportunity. Hint: The world needs natural gas now, and the United States has it.

Chaser: On the order of shooting moneymakers in the foot, Catherine Rampell writes that the GOP is again trying to defund the IRS, in pursuit of a tax policy almost exactly the opposite of what voters want.

More politics

While Biden was rhapsodizing on the beaches of Normandy, former president Donald Trump was in Phoenix, calling the United States a “failed nation.”

You can’t really blame him. As Dana Milbank writes , “lofty ideals are foreign to Trump, who serves no cause greater than himself.” Remember when, as president, he skipped a visit to an American military cemetery in France because it was filled with “suckers” and “losers”?

Alas, his blinkers have only hemmed in since then, and “his message has only become more vulgar,” Dana writes. The rest of Dana’s column is a stomach-churning chronicle of all the vengeance and vituperation Trump and his people promised this week.

Smartest, fastest

• Colleges went all in on progressive politics, Jason Willick writes , but Israel is now spurring a rethink.
• The Editorial Board lays out a better way to fix the border than Biden’s executive order.
• The Biden administration is the most progressive in U.S. history, George Will writes . (He does not mean this as a compliment.)

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

Russia without gas?

No station ever survived

On Slurpees alone

Plus! A Friday bye-ku (Fri-ku!) from reader Leonora O.:

Might does not make right

History tells us so well

Pause for reflection

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me , along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. Have a great, reflective weekend.