Kate Malay reviews TEN in our September 25 issue.
PHOTO COURTESY KATE MALAY

The Hook will welcome Kate Malay, a.k.a.. “lilith,” who found that not having a byline with your real name wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, as our newest food reviewer next week.

“My experience was similar to former Gawker editor Emily Gould’s,” says Malay about writing anonymously for local gossip website cVillian, which she co-founded, referring to a column Gould wrote in the New York Times Magazine, “though on a much smaller scale.”

Toward the end, Malay says it got bad. In addition to having her IP address tracked, and having nightmares about being humiliated in her legitimate job or getting confronted by the people she was writing about, “There was this uncomfortable dichotomy between the perception of my identity I wanted to convey and the perception of my identity that people actually found appealing,” she says.

Recently, Malay says a tech-savvy friend asked her what she saw for the future of “new media.”

“I honest-to-God think there will be some kind of authentication process to account for all of the identity play that takes place,” she says, ” so there’s not so much disparity between real and online personas.”

Writing as herself for The Hook, we hope she’ll be able to straighten some of that out. In fact, writing for us may have been in the stars for Malay. Back in May, she sent in a letter-to-the-editor, as herself, saying how much she loved reviewer Ned Oldham’s contribution to our “The Eater” restaurant review column (note: Ned’s reviews will continue). Of course, we had no idea she was “lilith” at the time, though we should have guessed by the way she ended her email: “You may have read some of my work…” She also asked to be considered as a reviewer if the opportunity ever arose.

Look for Malay’s upcoming review of TEN, online and in print next week.