War
A brief video
begging for your help.
Hi, I'm Meg Conley
I write Pocket Observatory, an attention reclamation project. Currently, my observations are being written as I navigate treatment for triple-negative breast cancer.
My work also appears in places like Harper’s Bazaar, The Guardian, Slate, BBC and NPR.
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A Few Kind Notes About My Work
Meg writes with a rigorous precision and emotional clarity I find genuinely intimidating, but also admire with a force I can only call love.
When powerful forces try to silence her, Conley handles their hostility with grace and power. But what I love about her is yet more fundamental: she keeps writing from inside difficult things, not above them.
Her insistence on remaining the specific person doing this specific work, even while battling breast cancer, is a staunch refusal to become anything smaller than the force she is. Meg makes me want to take up space.
When I want to close the laptop and disappear, I run a test: Would Meg do this? Would Meg be brave enough to say this out loud?
Always yes. And on chemo.
- Katherine de Vos Divine, IP Attorney and Art Historian
(Untitled)
Meg's work often attracts the kind of attention that elevates thoughtful writing into the general discourse.
Alissa Wilkinson, Author and NYT Movie Critic
Meg Conley is doing some of the smartest and most challenging writing on the intersection of women, home, money, and care. She is an exquisite writer, constantly surprising me with the turns and clarity of her prose.
Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study
If you’ve ever wished you could have been a part of Tolkien’s Inklings or swirl a drink by the fire with Emerson and Alcott, Meg’s writing is pretty damn close.
Camille Andros, Author
It’s incredible how Meg can always be funny, incisive, and eloquent, all at once. Actually, it’s maddening that she’s this good.
Benjamin Park, Historian and Author
Meg's pieces have covered the challenges of having ADHD as a mom, the history of embroidery, religious representations of vultures—a miscellany of unexpectedly compelling topics. Her writing brims with emotion, and she includes personal anecdotes, though her aim is to be more observant and analytical than confessional.
Danny Funt, Columbia Journalism Review
Newsletters
Raising daughters in the ICE age
and other overlapping catastrophic eras
Cancer
The Watcher
A brief transmission about Renee Good, cancer-induced isolation and hope
Cancer
You Can Call Me Poison Pussy. (But please don't.)
'Your pussy might poison people' was never a plot point in those Cancer Girl movies.
Cancer
it's baby's first ambulance ride
...and she's lost her shirt
Cancer
I have breast cancer.
and other sentences I never wanted to write.
Can I tell you a funny story?
And also share some links to cool stuff
Outside the Pocket
Article
Specific Women
"Meg writes with a rigorous precision and emotional clarity I find genuinely intimidating, but also admire with a force I can only call 'love.' When powerful forces try to silence her, she handles their hostility with grace and power...she keeps writing from inside difficult things, not above them."
Podcast
BBC's The Coming Storm
Join us as we go through the looking glass, into a world where nothing is as it seems, where the storming of the Capitol on January 6 2021 was a piece of theatre, the institutions of the state are a façade and behind the scenes, hidden hands are believed to be pulling the strings.
Article
Why influencers with 7, 8, or 10 kids are having a moment
Even influencers who don’t explicitly talk politics are often indirectly promoting a political stance, Conley said: “There’s a formula to becoming a large influencer family, and some of that formula does include white Christian nationalist messaging.”
Interview
Columbia Journalism Review: Voicemails
"Recently, when Conley and I made plans to meet up in her neighborhood, she told me how I could spot her: “Pink dress. Frizzy hair.” She is 38, sincere and a bit shy; she said that she has trouble maintaining eye contact. She often punctuates a deep thought with a self-conscious burst of laughter."