Love, Chloé: An Interview With Writer and Creator of Popular Newsletter Chloé in Letters
Amid the chatting students and occasional unpredictable yell, Chloé Williams surveys Washington Square Park. She’s looking at the park in front of her, but remembering a different time, an era passed. Her soft voice carries over the noise, detailing past selves and lives in the same turbulent city.
“I've been so many different people here,” Williams says. “And I love that feeling like, you know, I bump into 20-year-old me who's just so desperate to be loved...and I have so much sympathy for her. I remember I used to be angry. But now I think, ‘you were doing your best…you did what you could and I'm proud of you.’”
Chloé Williams, a 25-year-old writer based in New York City, is the creator of the popular newsletter and social media account: Chloé in Letters. Her achingly tender poetry and creative non-fiction on love, navigating your 20s, and “the beauty of ordinary things” has created a close, online community full of hungry individuals.
While she believes she’s always been a writer, it took years for Chloé to realize it was something she wanted to pursue. She began writing poems as early as elementary school, and kept up with the practice throughout high school, jotting down words and phrases on the side of papers that would eventually turn into poems. Her love of poetry sparked a desire to take creative writing courses, continuing the craft in a new form.
While she grew to love writing, a comment from her mom was what caused it to all click together.
“One day when I was trying to decide what to do for college, my mom was like, ‘I always wished you'd be a writer,’” Williams says. “It was like a real epiphany moment for me, and I ended up doing writing after that point.”
Chloé’s six-year academic journey — including a year off to independently take creative writing workshops at Gotham Writers’ Workshop — ended with a Bachelor’s in English with a creative writing focus. In the Fall of her senior year, she began searching for what to do next. Reading a substack by a writer she admired spurred her to look into the concept, and eventually to create her newsletter that same year.
“A part of me was waiting for someone to say, ‘Alright, we are making you a writer, and now you're a writer,’” Williams says. “And I was thinking about it, and I came up with the conclusion that I’m almost done with my degree…I have all the skill sets…what if I give myself the opportunity to just be a writer?”
Although Chloé created her newsletter in October of 2020, her work’s popularity and social media presence grew with the stars. After she saw an astrologer say that January 1, 2021, was an opportune time to start something you wanted to last for a long time, she took it as a sign. While continuing to work on her newsletter, Chloé created TikToks in tandem with her monthly pieces. As her TikTok grew in popularity, so did her newsletter.
Her initial goal was to have 100 subscribers by the first anniversary of the newsletter’s creation. By the end of March — five months in — she had five times her goal. Now, her newsletter boasts more than 3,000 monthly subscribers.
While Chloé’s writing spans a variety of topics — the confusion of your 20s, the concept of home, identity — one topic occurs most frequently: love. The deep love of female friendships, self-love, and love for New York City are all prevalent themes in her work. However, romantic love is her driving, central muse.
“I write about my love life a lot; that's the peak interest to me,” Williams says. Her interest in the dynamic between two people in love, along with the small intimacies that occur in those relationships, plays a frequent role in her writing.
Chloé’s work focuses on the small details, including the brief moments in a relationship that at the time may seem trivial, but in hindsight are some of the most piercing. In various forms, tender moments of intimacy are frequent throughout her pieces.
“It’s interesting the way intimacy takes form and takes shape in very mundane aspects of life, because that's always fascinating to me,” Williams says. “What do we do for others to show them that we care?”
Chloé’s tumultuous relationship with her ex was one of the starting points of her writing about complicated, consuming love. “The pieces kind of fell together [and began to demonstrate] that I was in this very interesting relationship, which was a very strange dynamic. And to write about it, it was like a way of understanding it,” Williams says.
Writing not only helps Chloé understand past relationships with others but her relationship with herself. Whether it’s sorting through emotions or attempting to discover what’s missing in her life, Chloé uses writing — in addition to other methods — as a form of meditation with herself. Penning down her daydreams is one way she pays attention to her inner psyche; while putting to paper her mind’s desires, she discovers what she feels is lacking in her life.
In speaking with Chloé, you realize something quickly: her writing is so piercingly honest because she is. The work comes across as so vulnerable, so truthful because it’s her default setting as a person.
“I'm so sensitive,” Williams admits. “So I find that being vulnerable with people is like a natural state that I exist in.”
This ability is partially due to Chloé’s commitment to spending a generous amount of time with herself and her thoughts, working out why she feels the ways that she does. She’s a self-proclaimed “big therapy gal,” and attributes her work’s vulnerability and honesty partially to her commitment to practicing those qualities with herself first.
She admires and looks for people who can be truthful and open.
“To me, there's something attractive about that kind of communication, and I think everybody benefits from it,” Williams says. “I don't want you to have to guess how I feel, and I don't want people reading my work to have to guess how I feel.”
This authenticity is one of the most identifiable trademarks of Chloé’s writing and the Chloé in Letters brand. Her work doesn’t feel as if it’s gone through a filter. Some of the pieces focus on an idea she has been mulling over for a while, maybe even months (“Sometimes though, writing is the first inkling of an idea that I get,” Williams says). But, the intention and meaning behind the piece are clear and ring with the honesty you can only get by being truthful with yourself.
“I have no business in lying…I know if someone were to read my work, and I was lying, it just wouldn't be the same,” Williams says. “I have full confidence in my audience and I fully respect them…the Chloé in Letters brand is just me, it's just who I am as a person.”
“One of the biggest challenges is learning what to write, and what to keep for yourself,” Williams says. Reading vulnerable pieces by authors she admires — including the work of Cheryl Strayed — is what inspires her to be generous with her experiences in her writing as well.
However, choosing what to keep for herself and what to share with her audience has been a critical distinction she’s had to make. Once you write something down, it’s never quite a pure memory again, according to her. “There’s a fraction of humanity kind of lost in it,” Williams says, as the real-life experience is now seen through the lyrical eyes of the poem.
“If it feels difficult, then that’s the thing I’m not ready to say,” Williams says. “If I ever will be ready, then maybe, but sometimes stories are just yours.”
With a growing following and a devoted community, Chloé plans to continue her newsletter and online presence — not without adjustments, however. Hearing the daily obligations of maintaining the Chloé in Letters brand makes it clear it’s on par with a full-time job, not to mention the addition of her other work obligations (nannying and freelance writing), on top of living a life.
She’s working on making her corner of the internet as genuine and stress-free as possible, and giving herself the grace to find what works best for her. Whether that means taking a break from her newsletter’s book club or giving herself days off from posting, Chloé is working on formatting her work in a way that’s most beneficial for her time, her health, and her audience.
While she’s a seasoned writer and social media presence, Chloé doesn’t hide the fact that she’s still figuring it all out. Her newsletter and work will continue to change, just like she will.
“Your 20s are just so different, every day is so different, and I’m learning how to incorporate that into my life in a new way that works for me,” Williams says. “But I enjoy it so much…it’s very rewarding. It has its trials, but it’s just a learning curve in every regard.”
