Mallory Ortberg
Mallory Ortberg
Mallory Ortbergis an American author, editor, and a co-founder of the feminist general interest site The Toast. She previously wrote for Gawker and the Hairpin, where she met Toast co-founder Nicole Cliffe. Her first book, Texts from Jane Eyre, was released in November 2014, and became a New York Times bestseller. Ortberg was included in the 2015 Forbes 30 under 30 list in the media category. On November 9, 2015, it was announced that she was taking over Slate's "Dear...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth28 November 1986
CountryUnited States of America
Usually, the first thing I do when I wake up is I start working, so I often won't start the day by reading anything because I like to minimize my 'commute' as much as possible. I wake up, open my laptop and start working in bed.
Anything where I get to write a lot of jokes and have a lot of creative control - that's all I want.
I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It's always a really cool perspective.
I love 'Jane Eyre,' and I love the Bronte sisters. I actually didn't read any of them until I was in college, so I don't have quite the same connection with them that I think a lot of women do.
In my final year of attending a Christian sports camp in rural Missouri, the year before I started high school, they began to offer an elective Bible study group for young Christians who wanted a chance to read in the afternoons instead of learn to water-ski.
I'm really not a journalist, and I don't do a ton of newsy pieces. Occasionally I'll write about something that's going on recently, but I really don't do a ton of stuff that's tied to current events.
I'm on Twitter a lot of the day because I really like Twitter. It's great for jokes. But when I'm writing, I can't do anything else. I can't even listen to music. I just have to write, and then I can do something else. I can't multitask.
I read my first P.G. Wodehouse when I was 12.
It's so, so awful for my entire body and my spine and my hands, and I have a perfectly good desk to write at, but I don't care. I love writing in bed.
The Toast's audience is about 30-35 percent male, which shocked me because I would say that we actively try to discourage men from reading our site. Apparently, there's not insignificant number of dudes out there who think that what we are doing is okay.
I spent the first 22 years of my life absorbing everything, like a big disgusting cell, and now I'm disgorging it with jokes added out into the world. That's a really gross metaphor.
If you get a dog, take care of your dog! You can just not have a dog if you don't feel like taking care of one, it's very easy to not have a dog.
A woman who repeatedly asks a man she knows to be gay when he's going to get married and have children is not trying to let sleeping dogs lie.
The hardest part about being ghosted is the fact that you can't deal with the ghoster directly. You just never hear from them again, and everything feels odd and incomplete.