I assumed that it was a cruel April Fool’s Day joke, but Andrew Sullivan assured his readers that he wasn’t pulling our chain in an email to us. Still, it was nice to get confirmation that Sullivan will be writing again, albeit, not blogging daily for us, but providing long-form content for New York Magazine; his first piece on Donald Trump. I’m guessing that Sullivan won’t be too keen on the Republican front-runner’s authoritarian tendencies, and I can’t wait to read it.

As a subscriber of the Dish, I have been a long-time reader of Andrew Sullivan and proud to call myself a Dishhead. Sullivan’s voice has been missed by his readers and our national political dialogue needs his voice. An English conservative with libertarian leanings, Sullivan doesn’t fit nicely into any American political labeling box, but he has always brought his conservative voice to important issues like marriage equality, cannabis legalization and civil liberties in general, in a way that makes people a more critical thinker, even when disagreeing with him.

I have had the pleasure of meeting Andrew when he delivered keynote addresses at the International Cannabis Business Conference in Portland in 2014 and San Francisco last February, and can attest that he is as genuine and authentic as he portrayed himself on his blog or on his TV appearances. With our nation facing a crossroads in many ways politically, I am so looking forward to reading Sullivan’s take on the issues of the day. As more states will be voting on legalizing marijuana in 2016, hopefully, Sullivan will have the opportunity to articulate to New York Magazine readers why ending cannabis prohibition is a conservative ideal.

I know that thousands of Dishheads and joining me in welcoming back one of the best writers and political commentators of our time. I hope that a whole new audience will get to enjoy his writing and spread the word.

Some of Andrew Sullivan’s email to his readers:

Dear Dishheads It’s now been over a year since we ended the Dish, and I’d be lying if I told you there hadn’t been a few moments this year when I have had one hell of a blogging itch. So many story arcs that the Dish covered have subsequently progressed and evolved – Obama’s long game as the liberal Reagan, the degeneracy of American conservatism, the Palin farce which paved the way for the Trump excrescence, the breakthrough with Iran, and the return of torture and grim advance of sponsored content. So am I going back to blogging? Nuh-huh. The year off was revelatory. It’s only when you stop being pathologically attached to each ripple in the web-stream that you see most clearly how ephemeral so much of it is, how emotionally and nervously draining it can be, and how our discourse can be fatally distorted as well as deeply informed by the onslaught of the social web. I hope to write about what I learned in detox – it culminated in ten days of silent meditation last fall – soon. This email is to let you know that I’m going back to long-form journalism, as I hoped to, at New York Magazine, edited by the incomparable Adam Moss (with whom I’ve worked, on and off, since the late 1980s). I start today and am already working on an essay on Trump. I’ll also be blogging the Democratic and Republican conventions – two discrete, unmissable moments for bloggery in real time. I know, I know. But if I keep the blogging restricted to two bouts of four days each, I’m hoping I won’t relapse.