Hot Tongue: Profile of Anne Elizabeth Moore
by Reagan Ross
Hot sauce hits you where it hurts: the mouth.
I swear I didn’t profile culture critic Anne Elizabeth Moore just to plug her hot sauce. But somehow her latest project — hot sauce with flavors like “BLOOD” and “MUD” — perfectly sums her up.
“Hot sauce can be kind of painful,” Anne says. Her business, Tinkertown Provisions, aims to take men’s money and give it to women and queers. Hot sauce hits you where it hurts: the mouth.
A lifelong creator with roots in the Chicago punk scene, Elizabeth’s written work critiques everything from comics to political corruption. She came up in the 90s with riot grrls like Andi Zeisler and Pussy Riot. Her work exposes injustices, especially as dealt to women and people of color. Anne transitioned from underground zines to The Onion to The Guardian and now writes books of critique. Publisher’s Weekly called her book Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes “irreverent” and “ruthlessly accurate.” NPR named Gentrifier: A Memoir a Best Book of 2021. But women who speak out get burned. Especially on the Internet.
Anne’s 2022 piece about systemic housing corruption and racism in Detroit led to horrific harassment.
“Some [messages] said, ‘Kill yourself, b — ,’ some said, ‘Kill yourself now,’ and some said, ‘F — kill yourself,’” Anne says.
Instead of killing herself, Anne created a podcast: My Inevitable Murder. The podcast explores true crime from the victim’s perspective, mocking armchair sleuths and showing off Moore’s humor and journalistic rigor. The podcast also allows her to build community in Delaware County, the sparsely populated and under-policed area where Anne gets death threats and makes hot sauce. She interviews her neighbors about what violence against women looks like even in such a “safe” area.
“I think it’s basically good when more people say more stuff they think about the world,” Anne says during a sit-down at a dark, uncool boba cafe on Canal Street. She drank a mango green tea and seemingly read an entire book, Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, prior to my arrival. Although she makes biting critiques (she calls the Cambodian government “charmingly fucked up”), Anne names kindness as a core value. This surprises me because, at first impression, Anne is not nice.
“Fail flagrantly,” she taunts her summer school students with a mischievous grin. The first day, her expectations suck the air out of the room. But the next time class meets, students rise to the challenge. After each shared essay, she reverently whispers, “Nice.” Sometimes, kindness looks like high expectations, for both students and society.
It would be easy for someone like Anne, an outspoken female journalist, to retreat to the Catskills. Disengage. Disconnect. Make hot sauce. She might have had the means; after her 2007 book Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, Moore says advertising execs “started throwing money at me just to tell them why they were shitty.” Moore chose creativity over capital. “My brain was not made to spank you people,” she said of the would-be sugar daddies. You probably guessed this, but Moore also values intellectual engagement. That’s why she teaches and continues working in the punishing field of journalism. Like her hot sauce, Anne might burn you at first. But if you have the money, you’ll beg her to take it. And she won’t. Because, as with any journalist worth her salt, the work is not about the money. It’s about the truth.
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This piece was written for “The Art of the Profile” workshop instructed by Adam Harrison Levy during the 2024 D-Crit Summer Intensive Residency at the School of Visual Arts. The next Summer Intensive session will take place June 2–13, 2025. Apply by April 15th.
