News!
May, 2023: Look, I’m bad at updating. I’m sorry! I’ve got some things in the works, but I’m pretty good over at The Melt these days. Subscribe to it!
November 2022: Some fun news is that I’m working with New York Nico on his upcoming book New York Nico & Friends ‘ Guide to NYC. It will be out on HarperCollins/Dey Street in 2024!
Jan. 5th, 2021: I’ve been really terrible at updating this, but things have been pretty hectic since…2018 (yeesh). The Sprawl ended up on a bunch of best books of the year lists, including NPR and the Chicago Tribune. I’ve got a few big projects cooking up, including new books, my newsletter, and just trying to try and stay focused. But I promised I’m going to keep things updated on here.
Oct. 5th, 2018: I’m writing a new book! It’s for the great Coffee House Press, it’s about how the suburbs are weird and bad but also weird and great, and it’s called The Sprawl.
Aug. 15th, 2017: Woof. I need to update this more. Quick note that my Esquire essay on Guy Fieri will be in Best Food Writing 2017. So that's rad as hell.
Jan. 5th, 2017: Lots of stuff happened! BuzzFeed called the book one of the best literary debuts of the year, the New York Times said some really nice things about it, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Reader wrote about it, I went on WGN Radio, and a bunch of other places have written about the book. Oh yeah, and I went on WGN to talk about it. Whaaaaat?
November 29th, 2016: I guess life does move pretty fast. Searching for John Hughes is a real book as of today, and the Wall Street Journal and NPR have great things to say about it. Thank you to everybody.
November 23rd, 2016: "Searching for John Hughes tells the story of a life whose landmarks were spread out across the Chicago suburbs and were collected and consecrated by John Hughes. This makes Hughes, in a neat funhouse trick, Jason Diamond’s true biographer." - Tablet has a great review of the book.
November 8th, 2016: It's election day! Go vote. And while you're doing that you should read Nylon putting Searching for John Hughes on its list of books to read this month and also Sam Sifton at the New York Times on how you should go read my history of the literary brat pack at Harper’s Bazaar.
November 5th, 2016: The Chicago Cubs are world champions and Refinery 29, The Millions, and Flavorwire all put Searching for John Hughes on their November book lists!
September 5th, 2016: Yahoo Style picked Searching for John Hughes as one of the seven books you should read this fall along with books by Zadie Smith, Jennifer Weiner and Amy Schumer. Woah.
July 18th, 2016: Ah! Brooklyn Magazine put Searching for John Hughes on their list of books to read for the rest of 2016.
July 13th, 2016: The Millions put Searching for John Hughes on the Great Second-Half Non-Fiction Book Preview along with books by Teju Cole, Jennifer Weiner, Roxane Gay, and Bruce Springsteen. Really honored.
April 28th, 2016: Hey! I was on two podcasts this week. I talked 90s Chicago punk with Pat from Drinks on Monday and also talked Breakfast Sandwich Twitter, John Hughes, and so much more on the Writers Who Don't Write podcast.