About us
Hi there! We're Difficult Friends, a community-run arts & humanities club: Website ⟡ Instagram ⟡ Substack
Our events are designed as intellectual challenges and creative experiments. We host workshops and discussions that push regular people to think harder thoughts, make cooler stuff, and connect more deeply across their human differences.
This is not an organization for the faint of heart. As our name suggests, we take pride in being Difficult Friends and in tackling ideas, projects, and friendships that are Difficult.
Meaning is Difficult. Embrace the Difficult.
Difficult Friends just launched in April 2026! So we're very excited to see all of y'all here. Welcome to this new group!
Our Mission & Values
There are things that can only happen between people really being themselves with each other.
Not performing, not managing, not carefully calibrating what they show.
Wholehearted creative collaboration is one of them. Real intellectual encounter is another. The kind of friendship that actually sustains people through difficulty is a third.
Difficult Friends is a community-run grassroots project in Austin. We tackle difficult projects in the arts & humanities together. In taking on these challenges as a group, we hope to develop the following qualities in our members:
(1) creative confidence,
(2) intellectual independence, and
(3) the subtle skills needed to form close friendships.
Re: that last point, we think it’s good to be a Difficult Friend.
Friendship itself is difficult to the degree that it is both genuine and built across difference. You will find our events creatively and intellectually challenging. They will put you in touch with people in ways that are energizing but unfamiliar.
But Difficult Friends are friends worth having.
Follow us on Substack or Instagram to get access to all our events. And please consider donating to us through our Meetup page. It really makes a difference.
Upcoming events
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Quiet Writing Club ⟡ All Writers Welcome ⟡ Silent Co-Working
Lazarus Brewing Company, 4803 Airport Boulevard, Austin, TX, USNeed quiet time to write this week? Join us for a evening co-working session at Lazarus on Airport. Get in some time with your manuscript/idea/journal, stretch, then join us for some casual chitchat if you're feeling up for it afterwards.
Quiet Writing Club ⟡ An Evening Co-Working Hour
This week, we'll be meeting at Lazarus Brewing Co. on Airport for a quiet evening co-working hour. No assignments or readings this week! If you'd like to see what we do when we're in event mode, check out our previous writing workshops on Origin Stories and Emotion, Memory, and Color.
Event Structure
7:00 – 7:15 ⟡ Arrival & Settle In Grab a drink and pull up a seat! I'll try to arrive early to make sure everyone can find where we are (look for a small Asian woman with a sign on the table lol).
7:15 – 7:25 ⟡ Check-In Brief go-around (names, pronouns).
To make the space feel as non-performative as possible, I will not ask what kind of project you’re working on. Feel free to bring whatever - from the next Great American novel to your Harry Potter fanfiction.
7:25 – 8:25 ⟡ Quiet Work Block Our main event: one hour of heads-down thinking time. Feel free to move around and sit somewhere else during your working hour. No chatting or interrupting others allowed.
8:25 – 8:30 ⟡ Heads-Up I'll go around to gently remind everyone that work time is wrapping up.
8:30 – 8:45 ⟡ Closeout We’ll go around and share one way we intend to keep making space for ourselves as writers.
8:45 onward ⟡ Casual Hangout Stay if you want, but feel totally free to head out.
And that'll be all! Thank you in advance for bringing your passion for writing to our group! I'm excited to see you there.
About Us
This group is a project by Difficult Friends, a community-run arts & humanities club: Website ⟡ Substack ⟡ Instagram
About Me
I'm a writer living in Austin with my dog, Cookie. If you're interested in following my thoughts, you can find me at https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong I love long essays, fiction, and philosophy. I also like to draw and go out dancing.12 attendees
Philosophy Night ⟡ Stoicism Over Dinner ⟡ Free 9 Page Reading
Arpeggio Grill, 6619 Airport Blvd, Austin, TX, USTired of boring book clubs and pointless small talk? Join us for a spirited debate about Stoic philosophy! We'll be discussing the value of practicing acceptance vs. fighting back when confronted with social and personal tragedies.
Difficult Friends reads non-fiction, literature and critical theory written by outsiders—texts that challenge the status quo—and uses them as frameworks to practice the art of dissent. In reading and talking through big ideas together, we hope to deepen our shared capacity for critical analysis. Come read with us to sharpen your intellectual skills and learn how to better argue, debate, and disagree!
The Enchiridion of Epictetus: Dinner & Debate
For our second Philosophy Night, we'll be meeting at Arpeggio Grill at 7:00 PM on May 4 to read and discuss The Enchiridion by Epictetus. Please find the reading linked here.
At our last meeting, we tried our hand at the intellectual exercise of drafting a moral code. Epictetus lays out a bracing take on the practical labor of living one. The Enchiridion—in ancient Greek, the word could mean either a "handbook" or a "dagger" kept close at hand—takes the abstract ideals we debated and tests them against the turmoil of reality.
A former slave who became a preeminent stoic philosopher, Epictetus offers an ultimate outsider’s perspective on honor. He argues that true honor is not found in social reputation, communal approval, or professional status, but in the radical sovereignty of being the ruler of one's own mind. Is he right or wrong on this front?
As we just did in our story club on Omelas, come prepared to debate whether the Stoic path is a form of ultimate freedom or a strategic retreat—and where your own 'code' draws the line between what you can change and what you must endure.
A Social Break From Structure
Since this week's meeting will take place at Arpeggio Grill, there won't be any formal structure to our discussion! Just come and enjoy a casual, free-wheeling dinner conversation with your Difficult Friends :-)
Everyone is welcome to join us for this philosophical conversation, regardless of whether you've attended any of our prior events! I'm really looking forward to chatting with y'all over dinner.
About Us
This event series is a project by Difficult Friends, a community-run arts & humanities club: Website ⟡ Instagram ⟡ Substack
Our events are designed as intellectual challenges and creative experiments. We host workshops and discussions that push regular people to think harder thoughts, make cooler stuff, and connect more deeply across their human differences.
This is not an organization for the faint of heart. As our name suggests, we take pride in being Difficult Friends and in tackling ideas, projects, and friendships that are Difficult.Meaning is Difficult. Embrace the Difficult.
Difficult Friends just launched in April 2026! So we're very excited to see all of y'all here. Welcome to this new group!
Statement of Inclusivity: Identity & Politics in Community Discussions
Difficult Friends is an inclusive community space, and we particularly seek to protect and welcome our LGBTQIA+, queer, transgender, and nonbinary members. Event attendees may be asked to share their preferred pronouns and will be asked to respect the preferred pronouns shared by other participants. Immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, people with disabilities, and neurodivergent folks seeking a diverse community are also especially encouraged to attend!
That said, to quote the progressive labor activist Maurice Mitchell, we do not accept “using one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, ‘As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.’ What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse—dismissed.
To be clear, personal identity and individual experience are important. And while it is true that the ‘personal is political,’ the personal cannot trump strategy nor should it overwhelm the collective interest. Identity is too broad a container to predict one’s politics or the validity of a particular position. There are over 40 million Black folk in the US. Some have great politics, some do not. One’s racial or gender identity, sex, or membership in any marginalized community is, in and of itself, insufficient information to position someone in leadership or mandate that their perspective be adopted.
People with marginal identities, as human beings, suffer all the frailties, inconsistencies, and failings of any other human. Genuflecting to individuals solely based on their socialized identities or personal stories deprives them of the conditions that sharpen arguments, develop skills, and win debates. We infantilize members of historically marginalized or oppressed groups by seeking to placate or pander instead of being in a right relationship, which requires struggle, debate, disagreement, and hard work. This type of false solidarity is a form of charity that weakens the individual and the collective. Finding authentic alignment and solidarity among diverse voices is serious labor. After all, ‘steel sharpens steel.’”
For a concise summary of my views re: identitarian politics as this meetup’s lead organizer, feel free to refer to his excellent article Building Resilient Organizations.
About Me
I'm a writer living in Austin with my dog, Cookie. If you're interested in following my thoughts, you can find me at https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong I love long essays, fiction, and philosophy. I also like to draw and go out dancing.
11 attendees
Past events
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