Snail Mail Sweethearts

A roundup of five postcards, described more below. L to R: a woman smoking, eyes in an envelope, an erasure poem valentine, eyes in an envelope, a person buying oranges

I run Snail Mail Sweethearts, a visual art subscription service and newsletter about history’s finest snail mail, featuring

  • annual, quarterly, or monthly original artwork mailed direct to you

  • deep dives on juicy mail throughout history

  • monthly postcard-length fiction

History is full of juicy gossip.

Forget your high school history book. The weird, the petty, and the spicy is woven into the fabric of human history. A free newsletter, Snail Mail Sweethearts explores one letter each month, examining it from two sides:

  1. The truth. Each month, Snail Mail Sweethearts subscribers get to vote on our next deep dive into history’s more memorable letters, like spicy love letters and ancient Babylonian mail.

  2. The fiction. After I dish the facts, I’ll spin it into a tall tale, revisiting the historical mail from a fresh angle in a short story that fits on a postcard - and is based on prompts subscribers vote for.

In addition, paid subscribers get an annual homemade work of art If once a year’s not enough, the Patreon provide tiers for quarterly and monthly originals.

Whether you opt for quarterly, monthly, or annual original artwork mailed from the South of France, I’ll send gems like these to your physical mailbox anywhere in the world:

 
A watercolor and ink drawing of a quiet street in Toulouse, France. It is painted onto a French romance novel page. One of the buildings is covered in vines.
A 2D soft sculpture sewn onto gold mat board. It is pink shiny fabric in the shape of a human face. The mouth is hand-drawn in pen, and is full-lipped and open.
a 2D soft sculpture of an astronaut. It is sewn from shiny silver fabric directly onto gold mat board. There are yellow embroidered stars above them.
An oil pastel specter-giant curiously knocks at the door of a cabin drawn in pen and ink in a forest at night. The forest is made of black paper, oil pastel, and paint. There is a golden moon in one corner.
A single-line drawing of a person at the market buying oranges. Some oranges and the smiley face on their plastic bag are painted orange. Their head has been replaced by a vintage stamp from Japan.
Mona Lisa style eyes painted in watercolor gaze out of a business mail envelope. Above the eyes reads "to be opened by addressee only."

Each piece is a palm-sized work of art, and no two are alike. Soft-sculpture embroidery, erasure poetry, drawings, watercolors, and paintings are a sliver of what you can expect.

At just $5 a month, you’ll receive an annual postcard, an annual zine, and voting rights for the monthly prompts and next month’s historical deep dive. Upgrade to quarterly or monthly postcards at any time.

An erasure poem on a heart-shaped valentine cut from a Soviet film poster. The poem reads: "a terrible thing / can you imagine / ? / 'We are not going to / hide' / no longer,"
A vintage postcard of a house in a field has been collaged over. A stylized sun is in the top left, an eyeball is in the middle, and a yellow door is on the bottom right. They are all connected with a zigzag of yellow embroidery.
An erasure poem with a man cut from a children's bible; his eyes are crossed out. The poem reads, "I sin and am worthy / I deserve to be one of you."
A watercolered set of eyes in blue eyeshadow gazes out from the plastic window of a business envelope. In the panel above, where a return address ought to go, is the tyepwritten sentence, "2011 was the year we first made contact."
A single-line drawing of a naked woman smoking by herself and looking in the vanity mirror. Her cocktail and a plastic bag are painted orange. the words "a smoke with a friend" are written on the bottom right.