It's 2026 and I'd choose a handwritten note over an AI-generated response any day of the week, Axios' Natalie Daher writes.

• I also practice what I preach. I've shared written correspondence with friends, former co-workers and family members since I was a kid.
• 📝 I wrote my cousin, who was a Navy Seal deployed to Afghanistan in the early 2000s, and actually heard back. I wrote thank you notes for birthday gifts, as my mom required. I even wrote Britney Spears (radio silence there).
• 🖋️ As an adult, I've accumulated fancy stationery, a fountain pen and more stickers than I'll ever use. Like my colleague Aïda Amer, I treasure snail mail.

📖 So when a novel arrived that put letter-writing and emails at its center, I didn't just read it — I organized a multi-generational book club.

• "The Correspondent," the epistolary novel by Virginia Evans, became a sleeper hit last year — and it resonated with me deeply enough that I wasn't surprised to find I wasn't alone.

📬 Elizabeth Passarella wrote for The New York Times last week about receiving a surprise letter from her sister, who had been inspired by Evans' book.

• The novel's main character, Sybil Antwerp, is a Maryland-based retired lawyer who exchanges letters with everyone from an ancestry company employee to her adopted brother who lives in Europe to novelist Joan Didion.
• Through those correspondences, we learn about Antwerp's experiences with aging, grief and a long career in law — and the major secrets she's kept along the way.

Evans' novel reminded me why the act of writing itself matters, not just the sentiment behind it.

Tips for getting started:

1. ✏️ Keep the bar low. My stationery might be extra, but yours doesn't need to be. Plain paper works. Don't overthink your message — start with a shared memory or a quote that reminds you of your recipient.
2. 🚐 Make it easy for yourself. Passarella recalls a friend who keeps notecards in her minivan so she can write while waiting for school pickup. Or switch up your usual journaling routine and write someone a letter instead.
3. 👋 Reconnect with an old friend. Falling out of touch doesn't have to mean forever. A surprise note puts you out there with no pressure. There's no guarantee, but you might be glad you tried.
4. ❓Pose a question. It gives your recipient an easy reason to write back, and suddenly you have a correspondence on your hands.

💐 I'll add one: Write notes to the people you live with (no postage required).

• Partners, roommates, family — it's the most charming of gifts, akin to flowers but better in my opinion.

Between the lines: There are real benefits to writing by hand, even as technology gives us plenty of reasons not to bother.

• Putting pen to paper activates parts of the brain associated with creativity, memory and the senses in ways that typing simply doesn't, Passarella writes.
• And beyond the neurological, there's something irreplaceable about the physical artifact a letter becomes. They form a record your loved ones can return to long after you're gone.

The bottom line: Writing letters isn't just meaningful — it's personally enriching in ways that a text or email rarely is.

• Start with a simple dispatch and see where it goes.

Tell us about your correspondences! Have you received or sent a note spontaneously or over time? Did that lead to a reconnection or simply an enjoyable habit? Write us at [email protected] for the chance to be in a future edition.

Axios editor Alex Fitzpatrick, also a recreational pilot, snapped this shot of the sun rising above Vermont's Green Mountains in February.

• Next week, more from Alex on learning to fly!