
Be Contrarian with Substack Icons Jessica DeFino and Emily Kirkpatrick
From Substack Live Podcast by Sarah Fay
November 25, 2025 · 1h 5m
About this episode
The episode features a discussion with Jessica DeFino and Emily Kirkpatrick on building successful newsletters and navigating the challenges of platform dependence.
Welcome to the Substack Live Podcast! Conversations with the best Substack early adopters who created amazing newsletters and continue to bring their good work to the world and make the world a better place in doing so. Plus, get updates and expert guidance on the platform as it changes and changes again and again, so you can use it to fuel your creative, professional, and financial life. Brought to you by Substack Writers at Work Founder and Director and former Paris Review interviewer, Sarah Fay. Over 300 people showed up to this live recording of the Substack Live Podcast to hear Emily Farra and Jessica DeFino talk about how they built newsletters that became something bigger than the platform itself, including: * Why having tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers doesn’t mean the Substack writer has it easy—far from it * How to create your own platform and not to be platform-dependent * Why it’s ill-advised to try to write a “genius essay” every week on demand and it’s better to create a framework you can apply consistently * Why consistency is everything—unless it’s not * And so much more… Jessica DeFino is an award-winning beauty reporter and critic (the New York…
People in this episode
Host: Sarah Fay
Guests: Jessica DeFino, Emily Kirkpatrick
Topics covered
- newsletter creation
- platform independence
- writing consistency
- Substack insights
- beauty reporting
Keywords
- Substack
- newsletters
- writing
- beauty reporting
- platform independence
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Substack, New York Times, Sunday Times, Vice, Vogue, Allure, Guardian, Adweek
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