About The Usonian
I’m a writer, journalist, and screenwriter—and The Usonian is my newsletter. “Usonia” was a word coined in 1903 by a writer named James Duff Law as an alternative name for the United States of America. The Usonian considers the intersections of architecture, urbanism, travel, and literature (particularly that of the Mediterranean) to help strive for a better world.
Newsletters come out on a bimonthly basis on Thursdays at noon ET. If you subscribe, each new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox. Paid subscribers get an exclusive post in the Usonian+ series on a monthly basis.
More about me: I earned an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno and graduated from Princeton University. I’m the Editor of Innovations for Successful Societies at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, co-editor of L.A. food magazine To-Go Zine; I’ve previously been a reporter in Northern New Mexico and a Fulbright scholar in Cyprus. My work has also been supported by grants from the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Truman Library Institute. My writing has appeared in outlets like The Los Angeles Review of Books, The California Post, The Brooklyn Rail, Literary Hub, The Santa Fe New Mexican, and Ploughshares; I also consult on film and TV projects.
My novella, Someone Will Remember Us, will be published in 2027 with Running Wild Press. I am also the co-editor of the forthcoming book, Greece at the Turning Point: Remembrances of U.S. Foreign Service Families Living and Working in Postwar Greece (Routledge, 2027).
My professional website can be found at harrisonblackman.com. I can also be found on “Twitter” at @HWBMan.
In 2021 I launched The Cyprus Files, a limited newsletter series that exists as a subset of The Usonian’s main mission—dispatches from my Fulbright year and beyond on the island of Aphrodite.
In 2023, I launched The World Planner, a series about the life and times of global architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis (1913-1975).
In 2025, I added Clanker City, a series on automation in Los Angeles.
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