Having grown up on and with the Internet, I have a multi-media approach to content creation and distribution surrounding media criticism and analysis.
From my YouTube channel, a sunny book nook, to interning at Maven Screen Media, I’ve read, watched, and assessed tens of thousands of pages and hours of media in evaluation.
Through years of experience building and maintaining online communities and audiences, I have cultivated multiple independent projects from the ground up. All of my work reflects my personal values and politics.
Goodreads friend request:
“Love your booktube so much—thank you especially for talking about wanting more butches in lesbian literature!”
YouTube comment:
“you are my favorite booktuber and you’ve helped radicalize me politically. the way you review is so insightful and itches my English major brain without being too highly academic/inaccessible. love you sunny, the recs NEVER miss.”
Spotify Podcast reply:
“Love, love love. I love how unscripted yet articulate each episode is. Words flow out but not in a fast overpowering way.”
Sunny Lu reviews books & runs the YouTube channel a sunny book nook, hosts & produces The Lavender Menace podcast, and serves as the Writing Director of Beloved Zine.
a sunny book nook
2019 – present
My YouTube channel, a sunny book nook, began as a passion project mimicking the channels of the booktubers I voraciously and consistently had watched for years. I didn’t start posting videos regularly until late in 2019. When the pandemic hit, I was reading dozens of books every month, and I used this online platform to discuss, review, and recommend them. As a creative and intellectual outlet, I find great joy in reading and sharing the books I read to an audience of over 25,000 subscribers. By consistently filming, editing, posting, and promoting my videos for almost five years now, I’ve taught myself video editing, graphic design, and algorithmic optimization. My subscribers regularly tell me in my video comments that they enjoy my unique book recommendations and thoughtful commentary. I approach every book and review with a critical, feminist and queer lens, and prioritize reading from a diverse and contemporary authorship across all genres, with an emphasis on literary and speculative fiction. Through a sunny book nook, I’ve launched sunnythoughts, my Bindery page where I write long-form newsletter blogpost reviews of books I read, post exclusive videos for paid members, and run a Discord community for me and my subscribers to chat about books.
The Lavender Menace
2021 – present
As a podcast co-host and producer, I collaborate with my best friend and co-host Renaissance Alexandre to create a media commentary show. It’s comedy, it’s politics, it’s lesbian-feminist-Marxist analysis of everything from niche online microdrama/discourse to the latest blockbuster in theaters. Our audience of young queer people, lesbian fans of Taylor Swift, and fellow overly-online Gen-Zers engage with our podcast across social media platforms. This small, independent, self-produced and operated podcast is a labor of love and collaboration. Renaissance and I collaborate with each other to produce the critical lesbian media commentary we and our audience have always wanted but never seen. I edit and write the descriptions and promotional material of the majority of our episodes, and we have over 60 podcast episodes that are have an average runtime of 1.5 hours each. Originally a pandemic passion project, Renaissance and I have built an audience of over 34,000 listeners and 16,000 podcast followers on Spotify Podcasts alone. We offer bonus content and early access to episodes on our Patreon, which we’ve run together since its launch in November of 2022. Across social media sites, we’ve garnered a following on our podcast Instagram of fans and regular listeners, successfully promoted clips of episodes on our Tik Tok, navigated multiple attempted Twitter cancellations, and written media-commentary essays on our Substack that ties into our podcast material. It’s quite the multi-media, multi-platform affair! Most importantly, it’s incredibly fun and a product of my and Renaissance’s passion for storytelling and ruthless critique of all that exists. Cultural criticism is our bread and butter, and thousands of listeners tune in to our conversations.
Beloved Zine
2022 - present
In my role as the Writing Director of Beloved Zine, I read, review, and assess hundreds of submissions of butch-femme writing and art for each edition. With three editions under our belt— 01 “Love Letters,” 02 “Renewal,” and 03 “Flesh” —we’ve built a significant community of artists, writers, and readers in the butch-femme community across the globe. While we are technically Beloved Zine, each edition we’ve published so far is a full-color 150+ page book filled cover-to-cover with art and writing. You can find print copies on our website (limited stock!), purchase digital copies, and get themed merch for most recent editions. From our stickers to postcards to tote bags to t-shirts, Beloved is entirely volunteer-run at the moment with a tiny team of less than ten people, so our merchandise and sales sustain our ability to keep producing the zine. Of course, Beloved is so much more than just a zine project. I was brought on to the team by Lottie Valiente, Beloved’s project head and Editor and Chief, in December of 2022, as the resident bookworm and creative writing specialist. As a writing editor, I’ve copy-edited and curated materials for publication, written and edited Letter From the Editors in the introduction of each edition, sent acceptance and rejection emails to submitters, provided Lottie with administrative assistance, helped create a content warning document for 03, and collaborate with our team of artists, designers, and editors to produce a high quality publication by and for butch-femmes.