The Monday Media Diet with Lily Sullivan

Lily Sullivan is a strategist and publisher. Happy to have her with us on this later afternoon LA send.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Lily Sullivan and I’m a writer based in Brooklyn. I have a newsletter called Love and Other Rugs, which compares dating men in New York to furnishing an apartment. Once a year, L&OR has a print issue—50+ pages that are sold online and at stores across the country. Recently, a personal essay I wrote about drycleaning my mother’s closet after she died was published in Vogue. Slowly and steadily, I’m working on a book proposal about being a motherless daughter.

When I’m not writing, I’m a strategist producing events and fostering partnerships between media and brands. I started working in magazines when I was 15—first at a local St. Louis, Missouri publication called Alive Magazine. The now EIC of Glossy/Digiday, Jill Manoff, was the style editor at the time and really shaped my understanding of how magazines run. Then I interned at Martha Weddings (under Kate Berry) and The Last Magazine (run by industry-vets Magnus Berger & Tenzin Wild), before landing at Domino Magazine (on Jessica Romm’s team).

I left media to work at sexual wellness brand maude—when I interviewed for the job, maude's founder Éva said she was looking for someone to play offense. I am not an athletic person but this was so clear to me—a task of socializing a taboo topic and telling a really compelling story of an industry disruptor. It made me very popular, because I basically had a warehouse of vibrators at my disposal. While I was at maude I had a vision to combine both decor and sex and write a Substack, and that’s how Love and Other Rugs was born.

Describe your media diet.

Oh boy, well, I do wish I had something super profound to say here but I’m a 30-year-old Brooklynite who kisses boys at wine raves and then writes about it. This translates mostly to newsletter subscriptions across shopping and culture—Shop Rat & Magasin for fashion, Hung Up for culture, Feed Me to stay plugged into my DTC life. I also read author Amina Sow’s newsletter, plus Agents and Books which I highly recommend for anyone who is curious about how the publishing world works.

I open T List immediately upon receiving. I read whatever my close friends Lane Florsheim (WSJ), Sydney Gore (AD), & Madison Kircher (NYT) write. I think Leah Faye Cooper is doing such a killer job as Digital Style Director at Vogue and I continue to love what the team there is putting out. And for restaurants, I love reading Matthew Schneier’s reviews.

My background in print media has made it hard for me to want to consume all my media digitally. I’m constantly buying magazines and art books. Sophie Calle is a favorite, if you have not gone and dropped a secret into her installation at Green-wood Cemetary I suggest you put down your phone and go immediately. I just bought her book in collaboration with The Walker museum in Minneapolis, which is titled Overshare. I also read print issues of Cake Zine and Byline, and will pick up Konfekt (Monocles’ fashion/culture pub) when traveling.

I try to go to museums as often as possible—in 2025 this feels like media to me. In my growing up years in LA, instead of church on Sunday’s my mother and I would go to the Melrose Flea Market and LACMA. Every Sunday of my whole childhood.

I listen to one podcast reguarly, How Long Gone, which is definitely not by women. The episodes are the exact length of the 3.3 mile loop in Prospect Park. One day, when I write and sell a book, I hope they’ll have me on the show. Other than that, I’ll pop into epsiodes of the Daily (for news) and Fashion People (because Lauren Sherman is a genius).

What’s the last great book you read?

I love to read about death, mostly because I love to write about death (and grief) when I’m not comparing men to chairs. Last fall, when I left a writing residency in Mallorca, I spent a few days in Paris before coming home to New York. At Zwirner, I picked up a copy of Duchamp’s Last Day which chronicles the last day of the artist’s life and the things left undone. Imagine having “send 500 bricks to Philadelphia” on your to-do list and never getting to it. It also depicts his lifelong friendship with photographer Man Ray who shot a hauntingly beautiful portrait of the artist hours after his death.

What are you reading now?

I am always reading at least 3 books at once. Next up is Biography of X. I have not finished Molly by Blake Butler (despite trying for far too long). I recently read Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments that my pal Amina recommended and Sloane Crosley’s Grief is for People.

I’m also slowly, tirelessly paging through the nearly 20 journals of my mothers that she wrote from 1991-1995 detailing past lovers along with my conception and birth. She was a poet (among other things) who wrote very passionately about love—maybe this is where my desire to write about relationships and dating comes from.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I love this question. I have been reading, photocopying, and cutting up magazines since I was 5. I always flip through first and see what I gravitate towards visually. I never read anything cover to cover—it's not all for me. How could it be? I tend to read things by or about friends or brands I love first, travel sections always thrill me. When I’m done with the substantial content, I’ll rip out pages of things I love or want to buy.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

My friend from college, Sonia Feldman, runs a poetry newsletter called Sonia’s Poem of the Week where she curates or writes poems that drop into your inbox every Friday. She just sold a book of fiction that is coming out in 2026 that I’m very excited about. My editor and close friend Eliza Dumais has a book coming out with 831 this fall called Grape Juice about wine harvest. I had the pleasure of reading an early draft and I continue to follow along with her musings on the internet about wine and dating and travel.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Ok honestly, the Mill app connected to my composter. The library of what can or cannot be composted brings me a lot of joy.

Plane or train?

Planes domestically. Trains in Europe. My best friend from high school lives near the border of France and Germany so when I go to Paris I take a quick train to Stuttgart—which she calls the Detroit of Germany—to squeeze my godbabies and decompress in the countryside.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Naoshima and Teshima, the art islands in Japan, are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. When I went, my family and I stayed in the Bennesse House which is a functioning art museum. I looked out my bedroom window and on the beach was a yellow boat on the shore. Two floors down there is a Hockney painting of the same boat. Totally surreal. There is also a permanent installation of Christian Bolanksi’s Les Archives du Cœur, where visitors can record their own heartbeat and submit it to the running archive. I sobbed a lot. A powerful way to depict life at its very simplest.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

I’m not a super obsessive person, so I don’t find myself in rabbit holes that often. (LS)