Natalie Audelo

I’ve been teaching creative writing for many years. And teaching writing is a weird thing, because it’s not just about helping students master a subject. It’s really about helping them discover what stories they’re meant to tell, how best to tell those stories, and how to overcome the inhibitions that inevitably arise when we seize the mantle of na... See more

Floors and clothing are exemplary everyday built environments, so pervasive that we tend not to notice them. They structure our every intimate, mundane, and extraordinary encounters with our own and others’ bodies and environments.

I guess if we’re talking about joy, writing, and being a fully rendered person in the world, my main sources of liveliness are so human and obvious they might seem facile: 1) loving the people I love with full throttle abandon – my guy, our kids, my mom and dad, our gaggle of brothers, my army of girlfriends. So that’s advice, maybe: make as many g... See more

there’s a real lack of palpable ambition and vitality these days, a stunning lack of life force in the world

Only that nothing works out the way you plan, which is a blessing every hour. Life always takes a different form, if only because life will always be more imaginative — deeper, wiser, more surprising — than you are.

“In many ways the magic of Patagonia comes from the constraints we place on ourselves which are grounded in our deep sense of responsibility to do right by the environment and society,” Stanley told me. “We can't go to the Fashion Institute of Technology library and choose from 5,000 fabrics for the spring line. We have a couple hundred we can choo... See more

Chouinard and his business partner, Tom Frost, made what would become a legendary decision to shift away from pitons. It foreshadowed many other decisions Chouinard would make over the next fifty years, each with a similar pattern: Come to grips with damage you’re doing, set bright lines about how you’ll shift your business to reduce that damage, t... See more

There is no room for diverse futures in the boardroom when all they’re concerned with is hitting the next quarter’s KPIs.