Goodbye, Amy! Hello, Eric! Baltimore native R. Eric Thomas to write new advice column

When the Baltimore-born writer R. Eric Thomas begins his new job July 1, he won’t be the only Black person to pen a mainstream advice column, and he won’t be the first gay man. But the 43-year-old Thomas suspects he might be the answer to a future trivia question:

“I’m probably the first nationally syndicated advice columnist to come from West Baltimore,” he said.

Amy Dickinson announced Friday that “Ask Amy,” the syndicated column that has run for the past 21 years in more than 150 papers in the U.S. and Canada, will end in late July. In its place, the Tribune Content Agency, a national syndication and publishing company based in Chicago, will run “Asking Eric” by Thomas, a playwright, novelist and screenwriter known for bringing a questioning mind and a light touch to the often mind-boggling and at times absurd realities of life in the 21st century.

Dickinson, 64, said that she’s been considering quitting her job since last year, when “Asking Amy” celebrated its 20th anniversary.

“One thing about being an advice columnist,” she said, “is that I actually have spent a great deal of time pondering my readers’ problems and having my own problems versus actually living my life.

“It’s such a pleasure to be thought of as a sage person. Now I want to go out and be sage.”

“Ask Amy” will continue on her website (amydickinson.com) and on the author’s Substack newsletter.

“But I don’t have to do it seven days a week,” Dickinson said, “and I don’t have to pretend that gender reveals are the most important thing in a family’s life ever. I can be much more frank.”

As is often true of any changing of the guard, the choice of a gay Black man to pen a general advice column represents an effort to reach a new audience. It is a recognition that mainstream America in 2024 includes people of color. It includes those who are LGBTQ+ and nonbinary. And it includes those who, like Thomas, grew up in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. He has written that the street he lived on as a child was so infested with drugs that scenes for HBO’s TV series “The Wire” were shot outside his front door.

“We’re building a different kind of tent with my new column,” Thomas said. “My sexual orientation, my marital status, the different levels of economic access that I’ve had over my life have given me different insights. I hope that most, if not all, readers will be excited about it.”

Jack Barry, vice president of operations for the Tribune Content Agency, said the company conducted a nationwide search before selecting Thomas as its new columnist.

“Eric wrote great sample columns that were empathetic and smart and funny and entertaining,” Barry said. “And the fact that he offers some diversity in the landscape of advice-giving is a wonderful bonus.”

Barry said it was helpful that Thomas already has a track record as a columnist, saying, “He kind of reminded us of the friend who could deliver tough advice but do it with a smile and a warm heart.”

In 2022, Thomas wrote Slate’s much-loved “Dear Prudence” feature for four months in 2022 while advice columnist Jenée Desmond-Harris was on parental leave. Before that, he spent four years on the staff of Elle magazine, where he wrote the “Eric Reads the News” column that featured his often-comic take on world events.

Thomas has written a handful of plays, two of which were produced in Baltimore in 2022, and he was a screenwriter for the final seasons of “Better Things” on FX and “Dickinson” on Apple TV+.

Thomas views “Asking Eric” as the natural next phase in his evolution as an author and human being.

“It’s an opportunity to infuse a little bit of humor into an advice column,” he said, “and also to touch on the part of me that is interested in empathy and invested in hope.”

Those are attributes that Thomas developed in Charm City, where he shuttled back and forth between Baltimore’s Black butterfly and white L. When he was growing up, he left his home in West Baltimore on weekday mornings to attended the upscale Park School of Baltimore in Brooklandville — where he unknowingly stumbled on his future career.

“I took part in a peer counseling program when I was in middle school,” Thomas said.

“A faculty member gave us some training, and we sat in the art classroom, and we would wait for students to come in and talk about their problems. No one ever came in, so we gave advice to each other.”

Though Thomas no longer lives in Baltimore — he and his husband, David Norse, a Presbyterian minister, moved to Philadelphia in 2022 — the city clearly still exerts a hold on him.

Both of his memoirs — “Here for It, or How to Save Your Soul in America” which was published in 2020, and “Congratulations, the Best is Over,” which was released in 2023 —are set in Baltimore, as is his 2022 young adult novel, “Kings of B’more.”

“Glitter in the Glass,” a play that will have its world premiere in Philadelphia next year, is about an artist who returns home to the same neighborhood where Thomas grew up.

He told the Sun last August that after he and Norse moved back to Mobtown in 2017, where they stayed for the next five years, “Baltimore opened up for me, and I came to see it in a new way. I found a different version of myself in Baltimore.”

Penning an advice column might seem to require a different skill set than writing plays, but Thomas said they are different aspects of the same process.

“As a writer, I get excited about thinking really clearly and curiously about what it’s like to be in other people’s shoes,” he said. “I am always trying on other people’s lives.”

In preparation for the July debut of “Asking Eric,” Thomas has been putting together a list of experts he can consult on behalf of his future readers, from therapists to veterinarians to attorneys. He has been soliciting questions for “Asking Eric” on his website, rericthomas.com.

While it’s still early days, readers are seeking his counsel on relationships, work issues, barking dogs and wedding etiquette. Thomas is game to provide whatever help he can, from existential crises to home decorating.

“I hope someone will write in and ask me if wallpaper is back in vogue,” he said. “I will say, ‘Yes, it is and we should all be excited about it.'”

____

(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)