Start Here. Out Loud
I'm Dana DuBois, and I write out loud. I'm so glad you're here.
Welcome to I Write Out Loud
I Write Out Loud is my home for cultural memoir and personal essays about the strange, brave process of becoming yourself in midlife.
I’m drawn to the nuanced edges where private life collides with shared cultural experience, and the conversations that emerge from that tension.
My writing explores relationships, feminism, parenting, media, music, modern dating, politics, beauty, and aging. Those may sound like disparate topics. But they’re all part of the same conversation—using personal stories to make sense of the larger cultural forces shaping the world around us.
I write to make sense of the things we’re all living through—and to give you something to recognize, question, laugh about, or see differently in your own life.
If you like essays with a point of view and a pulse, you’re in the right place.
Start with these five essays
1. DATING & RELATIONSHIPS
Midlife dating isn’t about finding someone without baggage. It’s about discovering whether two people’s losses can exist in the same room.
More Dating & Relationship essays
2. FEMINISM & POLITICS
The “online rape academy” story isn’t really about one website. It’s about what happens when contempt becomes community—and why so many men looked away.
More Feminism & Politics essays
3. PARENTING & FAMILY
Is teaching your daughters to endure difficult men resilience—or just another way of teaching them to tolerate misogyny?
More Parenting & Family essays
4. MUSIC & POP CULTURE
A soundtrack to growing up, becoming a mother, losing yourself, and discovering you never really disappeared.
More Music & Pop Culture essays
5. AGING & BEAUTY
A love letter to complicated feminism, complicated faces, and refusing to pretend either one is simple.
👉🏼 Or explore all my essays.
But that’s not all…
I write out loud all over.
My work has appeared in more than 20 publications, including TODAY.com, Business Insider, MSN, Your Tango, ParentMap, Seattle Weekly, Human Parts, Age of Empathy, Pink Hair & Pronouns, The Narrative Arc, Open Secrets Magazine, Another Jane Pratt Thing, The Memoirist, Blue Amp Media, and more.
And yes, I podcast. A lot.
I Write Out Loud features two live conversations per week: a public live on Wednesdays and a Sunday Salon, where I offer a more intimate behind-the-scenes look at my work and life with my paid subscriber community, whom I’ve lovingly dubbed “The Outlouders.”
I’m also host of 🚩Red Flag Round Up 🚩, an ongoing feature where I give you a front-row seat to my online dating inbox. I offer hot takes and rhetorical analysis from the frontlines of attempting to date in mid-life—because if I have to live it, you get to laugh alongside me.
In summer 2026, I introduced the I Write Out Loud Academy, with writing trainings for my paid subscribers.
And of course, I co-host The Daily Whatever Show and Crone Cocktail Hour, and am a regular guest on Saturdays for Sanity on The Mayday Network.
Want to keep reading?
Subscribe to keep up with my work. New essays land every Monday, with live conversation on Wednesdays and a Sunday Salon for paid subscribers.
Some essays and podcasts are free to everyone, while paid subscribers get access to the full archive of subscriber-only writing, plus Sunday Salon and other behind-the-scenes conversations, including trainings.
If you like what you’ve read, I’d love to have you here—whether as a free subscriber, a paid subscriber, or simply someone reading along and thinking out loud beside me.
Thanks for being here. 💜
Good writing Dana, the maga republicans want to take away women’s rights
I’m excited to have so many of your articles in one place to read. I’m a spotty visitor on Substack but always enjoy your articles. Thank you for sharing.