HeyJaredFirst Person Singular
First Person Singular offers irregular missives on culture and goings-on as well as previously published writing from Busra Erkara's archives.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 27, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
Latest issues
Goings On: A Chair, a Basket, and a Fatherless Child (opens the original)
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Greetings from what is no longer the early fall! I present to you the third edition of “Goings On,” a missive on (mostly) arts & culture things happening in my sphere of vision. Since sending out the last newsletter, I attended to an editorial meeting for a neighborhood newspaper, and was also thrilled to notice I know how to eat a croquette for lunch properly, the way Dutch people do. (Did I see my husband do it? Maybe. Or maybe it was the people at the next table at Wester Paviljoen.) Cried in
Death of the Restaurant Car (opens the original)
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Greetings from a bar in Rotterdam, aka the only kind of place you can write from once it’s 6 PM around these parts, if, for some reason, you cannot work from home. It took me some getting used to saying, “oh, I guess I have to have a glass of wine/beer/irish coffee now.” Technically you can order a tea or sparkling water but let a woman live. It is also properly fall here, in a “need-to-find-my-warmish-jacket” way. And that is fine, I’m at peace with it, except I’m not at all up to full speed ye
Summer poisoning 🍅 (opens the original)
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Goings On: Sh*t Show at the F**k Factory (opens the original)
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Welcome to the second edition of “Goings On", a missive on (mostly) arts & culture things happening in my sphere of vision. Cookbook author Julia Turshen once wrote something along the lines of this on the pressure of producing a “perfect” meal every day, all the time: A lot of the times, not making the perfect meal means that there is something bigger or more important in your life. Perhaps you’ve just moved into a new home. Maybe you are getting a divorce? (Both are life updates.) And it’s OK
A Journey in Life in Six Soups (opens the original)
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Greetings from the great wide expanse! I can’t believe it’s been one third of a year since the last post. Here is how it went: Around mid-March, I had a commission to work on, then in early April I became a part of the very first edition of the Writing Circle at PrintRoom. In May, there were lots of school holidays and a trip to Berlin? Then in early June me and my partner had something like a wedding party in lieu of the party we never had during COVID. Then there was a heatwave and it is today
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