The @marchxness.bsky.social anthology is out today! I love this tournament, and I’m so glad to have one of my essays from years past got included: “The Best Christian in the World,” about Creed’s “My Own Prison” and my own fallout with Christianity, among other things. So much good writing in here!

Happy Publication Day to the Official @marchxness.bsky.social Selection Committee, @angermonsoon.bsky.social and @meganc.bsky.social, and the long awaited, never duplicated HIT REPEAT UNTIL I HATE MUSIC: THE MARCH XNESS ANTHOLOGY!!! www.splitlippress.com/product-page...

THE March Sadness National Championship: (6) Ben Folds Five's "Brick" & @cicilybennion.bsky.social against (1) Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" & @mfitejohnson.bsky.social! Listen to the songs! Read the essays! Which is the saddest? YOU DECIDE (by 9am AZ time 3/31): marchxness.com#/sadnesscham...

Ok while we're getting tomorrow's Championship Game ready we just dropped some new merch in the merch store: the I Heart Sad Songs and I Cannot Lie / Final Four shirt (feat. this year's Final Four) + 2 Sadness Mugs (a camping mug and a ceramic one): marchxness.com/merch

So excited for this @marchxness.bsky.social anthology from @splitlippress.com! I will be reading at @fandmcollege.bsky.social as part of their #emergingwritersfestival, which begins tonight, 3/30/26 and HIT REPEAT UNTIL I HATE MUSIC will be there, sold by @pocketbooksshop.bsky.social. 🔥💓🎵

A few hours ahead of @marchxness.bsky.social voting, I wanted to share two last covers that hopefully will help you hear “My Heart Will Go On” the way I hear it—not cheesy, not overblown, but honest and sad. First, here’s Zack’s beautiful acoustic version at a dog’s funeral on Gilmore Girls:

Ben Folds Five vs Queen Celine in the Final! Now there’s a GAME.

More signs (on the backs of the ones I just made)

This is great. Can folks buy em online? Happy to boost the signal if so (and maybe buy one ourselves)...

I had a terrible time deciding. Both essays are sad in the best way. I thought @cicilybennion.bsky.social had me completely and then I re-read @susannadonato.bsky.social's essay on Ani and remembered my first Ani concert in 1994 & being ghosted by people I loved & voted Ani. @marchxness.bsky.social

Both of these songs and essays slayed me. But I had to vote for Ani and Susanna! Vote vote vote!! It's very close.

Hello @marchxness.bsky.social people! I made this account and sang this song in the hope that it would persuade you to vote for Brick. Let's take it to the championship! Big thanks to @elainehickb.bsky.social and my brother Kimball for doing all the heavy lifting with the music. youtu.be/v6eMu-Tm6Cs

Fun fact: My seed (13) is lower than all the other seeds in the Final Four combined (1+1+6)! Voting starts at 9 PT/12 ET TODAY! #CinderellaStory

Vote vote vote, obvs—but I also had a little time today to reread these @marchxness.bsky.social essays, & y'know what? I recommend doing it. It's a very different experience than the firehose-drinking of Round 1.

The @marchxness.bsky.social tournament has been fun. But what brought me in was sadness: the grief and self-recrimination of Ani DiFranco's achingly beautiful song. Here's one more dive, this time with feeling. Hope you'll vote for me, but if not, I'll go out singing. youtu.be/IGK-JBgBwNg

Two good, sad songs today. Two skillful essays. Two contrasting sadnesses. Oof.

This @marchxness.bsky.social game is very close right now and my vote goes to @mfitejohnson.bsky.social's moving essay about Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." Also writing a kick-ass essay *WHILE* teaching high school is an amazing accomplishment says this former h.s. English teacher. Go Melissa!

These are both such terrific @marchxness.bsky.social essays! Congrats to @mfitejohnson.bsky.social on winning this round and amazing run to @mlfaliveno.bsky.social whose video and singing were just beautiful & knocked my socks off.

Listen and vote! Glycerine & You Had Time! @marchxness.bsky.social

I'm sticking to my established @marchxness.bsky.social practice & voting cringe, which is to say voting for Gavin & Ani. But man, these are tough calls. Sweet 16, y'all.

Guys, this is gonna be epic. The first time in @marchxness.bsky.social history that two writers who grew up in the single-stoplight town of Mount Horeb, WI go head to head. Whatever happens, the Trollway wins. See you out there tomorrow, sad 90s kids!

Today's Sweet 16 games (Crows vs Wilco, GnR vs Vince Gill) are tipped off at marchxness.com. Have a great game out there. 3 vs 10 / 1 vs 12. Who You Got? Read, listen, vote by 9am AZ time Friday! (+ 75' to play in yesterday's games)

YOU GOT TIME, 50 MINUTES EXACTLY

Brilliant from @andrewarthur.bsky.social... "That’s what makes the song’s emptiness so striking. It’s the opposite of melodrama. It doesn’t sound like someone clinging to love; it sounds like someone learning how to say goodbye to a version of herself who still believed the love was mutual."

My essay about the summer of '97, Cat Power, and my metal heart is up on marchxness.com. Vote!

I love how this year's @marchxness.bsky.social is mostly Gen Xers writing about our '90s youths. That will always be my favorite.

TWO essays in the @marchxness.bsky.social bracket (partly) about befriending crows! @silashansen.bsky.social is great on "Linger," w/ a reminder that songs can be sad by reflecting your experience & also sad by, y'know, not.

I had to vote for @modaviau.bsky.social 's essay here, too--and not just because I loved Northampton in the nineties and also went to a women's college, but that helped. There's still time to vote! Read the essays @marchxness.bsky.social and hopefully below here, too, if I posted right.

AWP Book Inspector, Joey Ramone, says all volumes appear to be in good order! @sejalshah.bsky.social @marchxness.bsky.social @avitusbcarle.bsky.social @andrewbertaina.bsky.social @alternatingcu.bsky.social @mooncityreview.bsky.social

Also a reminder that most of you are Springing Forward today, but ARIZONA IS NOT. So as of now AZ time = Pacific time. Games going up henceforth start and end at NOON Eastern / 9 Pacific

Love this essay by @brianoliu.bsky.social -- read, listen, vote! @marchxness.bsky.social And I did (do?) love No Doubt, too!!!

@emelkrishnan.bsky.social ‘s beautiful essay about Savage Garden is much further back in the rankings than it deserves to be, when it so beautifully demonstrates that being 13 is universal. Also check out the interesting structure with the lineages paragraphs.

I became a Morphine fan because Collective Soul covered them, funny enough. Their music is a *mood* I could never describe until I read "the soundtrack to a noir set on the moon". Digging this essay for driving through deserts alone, the Fitzgerald namedrop, & the hallucinated concert description.

Happy AWP Day 1! We'll see you in like an hour at booth #644: make sure to stop by during one of today's Author Residencies, because we'll have @seanseanclan.bsky.social from 11-12, @marylynnreed.bsky.social from 1-2, and Shanda McManus from 3:30-4:30!

WHEW! Congrats to all the players, readers, writers, voters, musicians, folks sobbing sadly at their screens 😭 Cowboys lives to see another day!

I loved this @marchxness.bsky.social essay by @emelkrishnan.bsky.social: "These were the things I knew to be irreversible: the cracking of an egg and a crush to obscure another crush. It was 1996 or 1997, and I was a 13-year-old girl in South India without a vocabulary for queerness."

"But the crows don’t sound sad at all. They caw and caw, calling to each other, a community whose collective word feels far too violent for its nature." @mlfaliveno.bsky.social's @marchxness.bsky.social essay on actual crows & Counting Crows! marchxness.com#/1stround-co...

"Once, I let slip that I couldn’t take my eyes away from the senior who played Bassanio in the school production of The Merchant of Venice." An excellent blend of school & Shakespeare in M.L. Krishan's @marchxness.bsky.social essay on Savage Garden: marchxness.com#/1stround-co...

2 truths & a lie, @marchxness.bsky.social style: During the writing of this essay, 1. my tooth fell out & i had to leave a writing residency for emergency dental work 🦷 2. i learned that paula cole came out as bisexual 28 years after "where have all the cowboys gone" was released 🐴

Me @ 40 Paula Cole @ 54 🤝 coming out as bisexual in midlife My @marchxness.bsky.social essay is alive! Shout out to @paulacole.bsky.social ❤️‍🔥

OK, this essay is brilliant: "the song is about having been sold an image of what your life with a man will be like, and then coming to the realization that it’s actually a pile of crap. Hello heteronormativity, my old friend." Cast your vote for @erindorney.bsky.social's essay on Paula Cole.

Fans of Mensch's Dylan Sadness essay should get on this

The Boys need your help! Vote by 11 AM ET tomorrow! #backstreetboys #bsb #marchxness

Digging Danielle's neuroscience-informed take, & "Ordinary" is a banger—but I've been snoozing on this 3rd Eye Blind song, & I'm compelled by @brianzitzelman.bsky.social on the aesthetic experience of MISSING (or avoiding?) a song's darkness. 2-ish hours to go in this @marchxness.bsky.social match!

45 minutes to go!! (I did not do the time conversion)

Dylan needs a few more votes here! I loved this essay about Kate Braverman. Please vote by 9:00 AM Eastern! @marchxness.bsky.social / marchxness.com/1stround-mye...

I feel like this sums up a lot of the Sadness issue: "The veracity of any such declaration depends on the complex interplay of factors including, but not limited to, the song, listener, and medium of sound." from Danielle Geller's essay. marchxness.com/1stround-rai...

15 minutes left! Get your votes in!!! I can't believe it, but I'm still rooting for BSB and definitely want the Bob Dylan / Kate Braverman essay to win. Bonnie Raitt and Portishead was tough match, too. @marchxness.bsky.social

I can't believe I cast a vote for Backstreet Boys & "Show Me the Meaning..." but I'm in love with Lydia Pudzianowski's essay, which is so funny and so smart and tucked me right back in the nineties: marchxness.com#/1stround-ba...

I love some humor with my sadness, and Lydia Pudzianowski nails it for me in her BSB essay with lines like "At any rate, putting a song called 'Backstreet’s Back' on your debut album is some legendary shit" and "worth every penny (RIP, penny)" marchxness.com/1stround-bac...