Deep Read #51 is with New York-based author Stephanie Wambugu. Her debut novel Lonely Crowds centres on the intense bond between two young women, Ruth and Maria, who meet at a Catholic girls’ school in Rhode Island and remain entangled in one another’s lives into adulthood.

We spoke about the discomfort of ugly emotions, the dangers of ‘staying too long at the fair’, and the realities of navigating artistic ambition while trying to establish stability, intimacy, and a truly “adult” life.

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Zakia Sewell is a broadcaster, DJ and writer, and the author of a remarkable new book, Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain.

In this conversation we talk about national identity, immigration, paganism, Notting Hill Carnival, radical histories, British humour, and what happens when love of place is ceded entirely to the right.

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Deep Reading Lists are available at phoebe.substack.com

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Find Deep Reading lists for each episode at phoebe.substack.com

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Deep Read #49 is with Annie Kreighbaum, a creative director and beauty-world architect who helped shape Glossier in its defining era and is now building KRAUM, a brand that begins with five exquisitely small makeup brushes made to her exacting specifications in Japan — what she half-jokingly calls a “vanity project,” for reasons that become clear as we talk. We revisit the optimism and extravagant funding energy of 2016, and the skills she honed in that moment — instinct, language, taste, and the discipline of editing — before turning to the bigger thesis behind KRAUM: not just better tools, but a slower, more intentional approach to getting ready. We also discuss fast beauty, permanence, her resistance to AI as a shortcut in creative work, and the books that shape her thinking.

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@phoebelovatt

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@annieokay

@kraum.co