Hello there! Welcome to The Magpie, a newsletter that serves as a collection of shiny objects about writing, creativity, hopes, and obsessions. My current obsession is diaries and the people who keep them. Since I started keeping one at age eight, my diary has been a place of exploration and intensity, of lists and favorite quotes, of ticket stubs and wildflowers. It is a place to remember and a place to dream.
This is a Show Me Your Diary interview, a series that explores diaries and the creatives who keep them. Every week, I ask a new person to give us a peek inside their diary process, complete with photos. Yes, we are very nosy!
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Michelle Shain in her natural habitat
Aaaaand….we’re back! Today’s interview is with illustrator, author, muralist, and all-around amazing human Michelle Shain. I knew her work before I knew her and was not surprised to discover that in person, Michelle is her paintings embodied: colorful, lush, generous, gorgeous. A little wild and a lot of fun!
Michelle has her hands in so many creative pots. She is a painter (full disclosure, I’m looking at one of her paintings on my office wall as I type), a teacher, and an advocate. She runs creative retreats, creates murals for the sides of buildings, and has written and illustrated multiple children’s books, featuring animals like roosters and cows—her most recent is called A Flying Flock? about a courageous goat who saves Christmas. Most importantly (imho), she is a fellow suburban nerd, finding pleasure in the feral dissonance of Long Island.
At one of her recent art shows, I was gobsmacked to see a table of books alongside her artwork. She invited people to page through her diaries, which were bursting with texture and felt like storybooks themselves. Most pages were illustrated, and the chalky smell of the gouache reminded me of school. When I realized these were her journals, I knew I needed to highlight her here at The Magpie.
A writerly directive from Michelle’s books to take into the new year!
Michelle’s work seemed perfect to highlight at the opening of the new year because it is so effervescent and now, almost two weeks in, I need it more than I anticipated. My goal now for this first post of the year is for this conversation to be a kind of electric eel lighting the way into these murky waters of 2026. The hope that typically comes at the turn of the new year has been unceremoniously smashed, of course. In an attempt to resist complete despair, I keep returning to another bright moment from last year to sustain me: Lynda Barry’s visit to my university in October.
The amazing Lynda Barry presenting at Hofstra University. (I sat in the first row, obviously.)
These days, Lynda works mostly with children at her university lab, studying the creative impulse in the fragile moments just before it is typically snuffed out. This is what she called her audience back to, this state of hope, belief, and trust in ourselves.
I was able to bring my class to a workshop with Lynda the next day. Lucky us! She taught us how to make a comic, and the importance of starting by drawing a frame stuck with me. Of course! How simple! Just like in writing, cartooning is about tricking our brains to get started. After leading us through exercises, she walked around the room and invited us to do the same so we could see how we each drew mermaids with our eyes closed, or people as fruit.
Lynda with students and the amazing novelist Martha McPhee, who I get to teach with and who brought Lynda to our campus!
After a break, all of our drawings were hung along the walls, turning the conference room into a gallery. The students loved walking around, trying to find their own column of illustrations or guessing which one their friends drew. I especially loved seeing my students in this new light, watching what came to life on their pages and seeing if I could recognize their creative nonfiction voice in their illustrations. (Spoiler alert: Yes, I could!)
The thing both Lynda and Michelle share is this expansive feeling of throwing their arms wide open, trying to encircle the whole world. They are driven by joy and curiosity and community. I covet this courage and often find myself writing in my own journal about trying to mine this vein, especially in this dark new year that feels bashed in before it had a chance to begin.
In October, along with her drawings and illustrations, Lynda shared some of her visual diaries with us. I keep coming back to one page, in which she commonplaced (yes, I’m making this a verb) a Tennessee Williams quote and drew alongside it.
A page from Lynda’s journals I keep coming back to even many months later…
Here is the quote again, in case you’d like to copy and paste: The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love. —Tennessee Williams
I hope this quote and these artists and diaries help sustain you as we move into 2026 together. Thanks for being here. xo
In the SHOW ME YOUR DIARY interview this week, Michelle and I talk about the art of travel journaling, daily habits like zoom painting and coffee drinking, and the delicious privacy of the diary. And below, Michelle shows us some of her diaries!
Art imitates life—yum!
THE MAGPIE: Team Diary vs Team Journal? What do you like to call it?
MICHELLE SHAIN: Journal. Just journal. There’s no team. Just me, with a deep-down need to put things on paper, often. Via brush. Or pen.
How long have you kept a journal?
For 39 years!
That’s a lot of journals!
What do you hope will happen to your diaries once you are gone?
I hope my boys keep them. And share.
I have one of my mother’s diaries…and many of the letters she wrote to her parents from college. All are cherished.
A picture perfect travel memory
How were you introduced to journals?
When I first started, I didn’t know I was journaling. I was water-coloring my travels with painted scenes and painted words. I hung the paintings all over my studio. Then I ran out of wall and ceiling space. So I got a journal, painted the pages, and never looked back.
The privacy of a journal is everything. Not for secrets…but for musings and colors and compositions and experiments—that don’t need to be displayed.
The privacy of a journal is everything.
I love this scene in Oz, too!
When do you write in your diary?
Every morning. With my coffee. Overlooking the garden and bird bath.
Sometimes my dad (the bluejay) visits. :)
Sometimes it’s just a 5-minute entry.
Sometimes 30.
I zoom paint a lot with other artists. And their coffees.
One of my favorite pages…
Has anyone ever read your diary?
Yes. Lots! I often share then because I want people (and my students) to understand that an art business is 90% practice and experimentation. A journal represents freedom, to me. Freedom to make mistakes. To paint and re-paint. To Re-interpret. To discover what you love.
A journal represents freedom, to me. Freedom to make mistakes. To paint and re-paint. To Re-interpret. To discover what you love.
Do you ever re-read your old diaries?
Love doing this! Besides revisiting bygone days and journeys, old journals reveal the artist I was and how much she’s changed. Just like Location x3 is the best real estats advise, so is Practice x3. I see so much improvement over the years and it inspires me to keep going.
When life gives you lemons…paint them?
My journal gives me space. It is not one $44 canvas but 64 pages of canvas. At less than 33 cents a page, I am free to compose, blend, go over, redo, white out, re-write, misspell, skew, and distort. This is creativity to me. The exploration.
At less than 33 cents a page, I am free to compose, blend, go over, redo, white out, re-write, misspell, skew, and distort. This is creativity to me. The exploration.
Michelle Shain has a paintbrush in hand whenever she is on the road, boat, or plane. She’ll sketch in a cafe, on a park bench, mountaintop, or at a picnic. Her education, background, and professional career iin graphic design helps her use lettering, striking composition, and playful scale juxtapositions to tell painted stories. Client list and more info available here.
Check out Michelle’s brand new book, A Flying Flock? Written and illustrated by Michelle, A Flying Flock? tells the story of a sheep that lives in the French Alps. One Christmas Eve, he has a dream and courageously finds a way to make it come true. Woven throughout the tale are lessons to prove that diversity and change are good and that hard work pays off.
Thanks for reading The Magpie by Kelly McMasters! As always, more of what I’m up to can be found on my website, and you can follow me on Instagram for day-to-day updates.
I love that you are back, and with such a lovely post!
Thanks, Beth. Glad to be here :)