diff --git a/additional_notes/0.5.3/header.md b/additional_notes/0.5.3/header.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1bb88cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/additional_notes/0.5.3/header.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+
+*Friday, Aug 30, 2024*
+
+We’re happy to announce the release of napari 0.5.3!
+
+napari is a fast, interactive, multi-dimensional image viewer for Python. It’s designed for exploring, annotating, and analyzing multi-dimensional images. It’s built on Qt (for the GUI), VisPy (for performant GPU-based rendering), and the scientific Python stack (NumPy, SciPy, and friends).
+
+For more information, examples, and documentation, please visit our website: https://napari.org/
diff --git a/additional_notes/0.5.3/highlights.md b/additional_notes/0.5.3/highlights.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c51e3b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/additional_notes/0.5.3/highlights.md
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+This is primarily a bug-fix release, including fixes for a couple of nasty
+regressions in 0.5.0 ([#7184](https://github.com/napari/napari/pull/7184)) and
+0.5.2 ([#7201](https://github.com/napari/napari/pull/7201)). However, we also
+have a couple of *excellent* user-facing improvements:
+
+- In [#7090](https://github.com/napari/napari/pull/7090), new contributor [Bean
+  Li](https://github.com/beanli161514) fixed a *very* long-standing issue in
+  napari: 3D picking didn't work when using a perspective projection (rather
+  than the default orthogonal projection. The result is glorious:
+
+  ![animated gif showing picking of points in 3D filaments using a perspective projection camera](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/58036c3c-5776-4f13-bb49-562334b53834)
+
+  There's still a lot of work to be done in perspective projection (dragging
+  planes, for example, still doesn't work), but this is an exciting first step,
+  and we are thrilled that it came from a new community member! Thanks
+  [@beanli161514](https://github.com/beanli161514)!
+
+- In [#7146](https://github.com/napari/napari/pull/7146), napari team member
+  [Grzegorz Bokota](https://github.com/Czaki) fixed a long-standing issue in
+  napari: Layer.get_status used to be computed on the main thread, which meant
+  that layers for which this involved heavy computation (such as large Labels
+  layers, or Shapes layers or 3D surface layers with lots of polygons) would
+  slow down the viewer refresh rate. Grzegorz's changes move the computation to
+  a separate thread, which will dramatically improve performance in many
+  situations. 🚀🚀🚀
+
+Thanks as always to all our contributors, and read on for the full list of
+changes!