#52: Biz Sherbert
"I’m a writer who sleeps in a time when most writing sounds like the Adderall it was written on."
Biz Sherbert (@bizsherbert) co-hosts the wildly popular
podcast and, as of last month, writes the now-wildly popular American Style newsletter.
She’s also one of few contemporary fashion / youth culture writers whose work actually feels like it has soul. (Sorry!)
Could this be due to her anachronistic sleep habits? Her intuitive Cancer moon? Or, perhaps, her penchant for a slice of homemade strawberry cake before bed?
Dear reader, there’s only one way to find out…
Health Gossip with Biz
Libra Sun/Cancer Moon
Responses logged April 17, 2025
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
Being healthy is less about what I put into my body and more about knowing what makes life feel like a smooth ride. Of course, life is never a smooth ride. But what makes it feel like it is?
For me that’s minimal disturbances of the mind, body and spirit. In technical terms, this often means no fight-or-flight. I can measure this through the quickness of my heartbeat, but also through things like how bothered I am by minor disturbances. How quickly am I able to recover from bigger ones, and what does that look like? Do I feel moved by life’s pleasures or are they of no interest to me? Or worse, do they feel like a sort of joyless opium against discontent or malaise?
Health, right now anyway, is about being in touch with my body and heart and feeling, if not always peace, then a sense of belonging together.
By far the most important consideration for me in matters of the body (mind, spirit) is sleep. I think if you don’t have sleep you have very little. I know this isn’t true for some, but it is for me.
Sleep is important to me personally and professionally. I’m a writer who sleeps in a time when most writing sounds like the Adderall it was written on. Last year I was working on a magazine assignment with a very tight deadline in LA, mostly writing from the Hollywood hotel I was staying at. It was the sort that has a DJ up on the pool rooftop but also down in the lobby. The air conditioning was seemingly broken in my room so I was sleeping very hot, sharing a bed with my friend and a bunch of designer clothes for the shoot accompanying the piece. I tried to write in the lobby with little success, and eventually realized I needed to take matters into my own hands. So I moved us from the hotel in Hollywood to a cottage in Laurel Canyon that was listed on Airbnb. My friend knew I was working against the clock to write this assignment, so she thought it was funny when the first thing I did when we arrived was announce I’d be taking a nap. “I know myself,” I said. I was able to get proper sleep on demand at the cottage, which apparently was built by Harrison Ford when he was still a carpenter. The piece was filed on time and “I know myself” entered my friend and I’s shared vocabulary. Use it — it’s the only reason you need to leave the party, it’s the only reason you need to stay.
The piece was filed on time and “I know myself” entered my friend and I’s shared vocabulary. Use it — it’s the only reason you need to leave the party, it’s the only reason you need to stay.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
I’m working all the time right now but my work is somewhat bohemian in nature. So I’ll write for the whole day and then repeat, but I’m transcribing interviews and writing about a concert I went to.
Right now I think my life is about enmeshment of work and leisure, which sounds a bit Notting Hill but it’s true. So I try to find a flow and balance between going out, seeing things and people, which I need to write and to live, and writing and sleeping enough to be able to write well.
How do you start and end your days?
Every morning I have Nespresso with milk (sometimes whole milk, sometimes half and half, sometimes over ice) if I’m at home. Every night I eat something sweet right before bed. I hate when I don’t have this. Right now it’s a piece of milk chocolate with hazelnuts in it or a little bit of this delicious strawberry cake I bake in a cast iron skillet.
Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
I was a somewhat poorly child, if I was born a few generations ago I would’ve been sent to the seaside to convalesce. I once came across the grave of Anne Brontë in Scarborough, in a rocky graveyard near a cliffside, and thought about moving there.