Dirtbags Through the Ages

Hi friends! First, a quick update for those of you in the UK, Australia, or New Zealand: the ebook of A Tip for the Hangman is currently half off just for you! Now is the perfect time to snag yourself a copy of my first novel, whose elevator pitch is “grad student just wants to be gay and write poems but accidentally becomes important at work, except work is international espionage.” Grab it here before August 1, when you’ll have to pay full-price again.

Hi friends! I was teaching a writing workshop on Wednesday at which I was gently shamed for not having posted a newsletter in several months.

Hi friends! It’s been a minute! March and April have completely gotten away from me due to a combination of factors (traveling to New York for the National Jewish Book Awards! Working 50-hour weeks! Moving all of my worldly belongings to a new apartment, including a truly unconscionable number of books! Existential dread! My cat will not pee in the litter box no matter how many tricks I employ!). I sincerely hope to be back to you with new content before very long.

Hello friends! This week’s dirtbag isn’t an individual so much as a wacky situation, an approach for which this publication has at least twoprecedents. I always feel like if a Situation gets a catchy name it basically counts as a person, and besides I wrote an entire paper in grad school on the concept of early modern werewolves and I’ll be damned if I don’t bring it up once a year one way or another. “Hey Allison,” you ask, “where the fuck did the werewolves come from?

Hello friends, and welcome to another issue of Just the Books, Ma’am! I’ll be briefer than last time, because I learned my lesson and I’m not doing eight million events in the next three weeks. I’ve even said “no” to one or two things I physically could not do in the current space-time continuum. Please be proud of me. It’s so hard and I’m so bad at it.

Hello, friends! This week’s dirtbag is a special one! We’re celebrating the almost-here-so-close-you-can-taste-it launch of my friend Ann Foster’s book Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen.

Hello friends! I hope you’re all doing as well as can be expected. Today’s newsletter is a reader submission from Amelia, who alerted me to a right-in-my-own-backyard dirtbag I’d never heard of before and now want to establish a citywide holiday in honor of. Friendly reminder that if you know of a dirtbag you think will catch my attention, you can always let me know in the comments, or email me at rapscallison@substack.com.

Hi friends! Happy New Year, and welcome to the first regularly scheduled Dirtbags Through the Ages post in a longer-than-ideal span of time! The world is what it is, but I’m here to tell you weird stories from history for as long as you all are out there wanting to hear them.

Hi friends, We made it! Depending on where you are in the world, you are a countable number of hours away from the end of 2025. May you receive that sentence as the blessing I mean it to be. I’ll be back with fully researched1 dirtbag posts as usual in the New Year after an absolutely tremendous nap. But because I’m on Substack, I’m legally obligated to send you a classic “What’s In/What’s Out” end-of-year post to celebrate the season.

I’m taking a brief pause on regular Dirtbags Through the Ages posts, likely until the holidays. In addition to everyone at my day job losing their ever-loving minds and making wild promises to our clients as they do every November 1, this has been my year of “say yes to every book promotion opportunity,” and hoo boy are we currently experiencing the consequences of that choice.