Hello! Welcome to my little corner of the internet.

I'm Rae (they/them), the person behind Literature and Lentils. I'm happy you're here!

I started the lit&lentils IG account 5 years ago while in grad school for my MA in Literature. It was not a stellar time for me: I was spread thin taking grad classes while working side jobs, Covid shut everything down in March, and I was desperate to connect with people.

I had also fallen out of the habit of cooking for myself since going to college. My family still tells the story of when I snuck into the kitchen as a child to make mashed potatoes by myself for a mid-day snack. I laugh at 6-year-old me using an immersion blender (that I wasn’t supposed to touch without supervision) on baby potatoes. But even at that young age, I loved being in the kitchen and was excited to work with flavor and learn new techniques.

I’ve always loved food—but somewhere along the way, I lost it. I originally started lit&lentils as a way to commit to cooking for myself: to take better care of myself during grad school, to reconnect with my love of cooking, and then to have a project to focus on during lockdown.

Over the years, lit&lentils has grown from basic recipes and shouting out local restaurants to more complex recipes as well as book content as I’ve rediscovered my love of reading. While I don’t miss academia, per se, I had missed engaging critically with literature and pop culture. As I expanded into more bookish content, I realized that writing thoughtful book reviews scratched a bit of that itch. It’s been particularly enjoyable to review ARCS, especially from queer authors, in the hopes that my reviews might help those books find their audience.

With the changing social media landscape, now is the right time to invest in longer form content. We’ve gotten too used to bite-sized content that demands simplicity, lacking nuance and depth. This simplification of content for the sake of pleasing the algorithm leads to lackluster posts that don’t properly engage with the content matter.

On Meta in particular, the algorithm also favors negative engagement, rewarding posts that get comments regardless of the sentiment behind the comments. It’s time to shift towards content that does better: content that engages deeply with the subject matter, embracing nuance rather than baiting the audience into engaging for the sake of likes, comments, and clicks.

Lit&lentils has always been a mishmash of content, making it hard to find the right audience in an algorithm that wants us to be easily categorized. Stubbornly, I’ve refused to focus on *just* food or *just* books.

The specific types of content I enjoy sharing also struggle to gain traction on IG. Bookish friends and I have discussed how difficult it is for thoughtful reviews to gain traction on IG. Food content that isn’t perfectly polished also struggles, but I prefer sharing recipes that feel accessible and achievable to make on a busy weeknight. This has definitely hindered my growth on IG, but I’m glad I stayed true to the actual content I wanted to share because it’s brought me a lot of joy over the years.

At its core, lit&lentils has always been about sharing the things I care about so I can engage with my community. Since it’s increasingly difficult to do that effectively on IG, I want to find more avenues to connect with people. That's why I started my newsletter! I hope you find joy and value in reading it—I find a lot of joy and value in creating it.