Welcome fellow explorers to Side Quests!
Get in! We're going on an adventure!
Greetings fellow explorers!
Welcome to Side Quests, a newsletter and community on a mission to help you reconnect with your curiosities and replenish your creative soul.
I’m so thrilled to share this space with you, but before we go on our first Side Quest, allow me to introduce myself…
My name is Kae Lani. I’m a TV host, a food and travel writer, and a Renaissance woman with a cacophony of interests. I have written about culture and cuisine across four continents as a contributing editor with USA TODAY and have been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Food & Wine, The Kansas City Star and more. I'm the Emmy Award-Winning television host for WHYY's Check, Please! Philly, a restaurant series exploring dining in the Philadelphia region. I'm also a writer and host of Delishtory, a digital series on PBS Food about food, history and science.
You can follow along with my adventures on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter.
What is Side Quests all about?
Being a creative can be demanding. In a fast-paced media landscape that requires constant content, our creative pools can easily get depleted. As a creative myself, I know firsthand how challenging it can be balancing work as a creative in a capitalist society and keeping my creative spirit alive.
Creativity and curiosity are parts of us that need to be nurtured, replenished, and tended to consistently, especially when you work in a creative field. Over the last decade of working as a creative, I’ve come to learn that, if you want to be a creative, you need to live creatively.
So when your creative reserves are feeling low or you need something to spark your curiosity, you may need to go on a Side Quest.
What’s going to be inside Side Quests?
Adventure Prompts: Get easy ways to find adventure in everyday life. What opportunities to experience something new are hiding in plain sight?!
Creative Detours: Explore familiar things from unexpected, new perspectives. Let’s search for the wonder in the weird!
Curious Dispatches: Join me in the field with deep dives into offbeat stories I'm researching. If you like meeting treasure hunters in Kansas City, searching for moths and cryptids in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and musing about the common humanity of the humble onion, then you've come to the right place!
Collaborative Brainstorms: We’ll have community threads where we can share what’s been making us curious lately.
Recommended Reading: Articles, books, short stories, essays, comics and more that will get your creative juices flowing.
What will you get as a paid subscriber of Side Quests?
For now, there's only one tier for $6 which helps support all aspects of production. But as this community grows, expect more opportunities for bigger and better Side Quests!
Every month free and paid subscribers will get two Side Quest stories. Paid subscribers will join me in the field with behind-the-scenes footage, shorts, extended interviews, and blog posts.
We’ll be going on our first Side Quest in January! In the meantime, use this space to share what you’ve been curious about lately.
Feel free to ask questions, share your knowledge and if you have any tips on what Side Quest you'd like me to go on, let me know in the comments!
And if you know someone who may want to go on a Side Quest to refresh their creative spirits, please share this newsletter with them.
I am so excited to have you join this community.
Until the New Year!
Kae Lani Palmisano