If you can get to Rome over Thanksgiving, for $550 you can do a writing retreat in a Tuscan monastery including room, board, & transport. 6 days. $550. I’m teaching fiction, Chuck Carlise poetry. Program thru Ashland U but you need not be affiliated. #amwriting #writingretreat

any literary agents here near Cleveland or Columbus, OH?

Happy pub day, Lucas!!

Today in @texasmonthly.bsky.social, @dgachman.bsky.social writes about THE SLIP, about the real gym that inspired it, and how a gay Massachusetts twentysomething with artistic aspirations (me 👋🏼) ended up there. 🥊

Just finished reading a collection of Van Gogh's letters and loved the peek into his mind. What other collections of letters by artists, writers, or otherwise fascinating people do you love?

Met Gala looks as book covers thread! ✨ How'd we do? Did your favorite make the cut? Kicking things off with Zendaya x "Beloved" by Toni Morrison🕴️

Today, we're officially leaving Twitter, along with our friends @literaryhub.bsky.social. We're happy to be here on Bluesky, but we hope you'll also connect with us the “old-fashioned” way: by getting our emails and going to our site! Read the full statement from Halimah Marcus: buff.ly/4aNcHae

@dennemichele.bsky.social highlighted Mac's Backs and @kellyluce.bsky.social The Bottom

Fellow authors, I love you, and I know it feels like we don’t have a choice, but B&N and Am*zon both scheduled sales this week to preempt Independent Bookstore Day, a hugely vital source of income for indie bookstores. Please don’t promote their sales; please promote your local indie this week.

Hey friends, just in case this is useful information for anyone, bookshop.org is doing a special sale on climate and community organizing books for the next couple of days, there's some very cool stuff for 20% off.

Wish weather apps alerted us about rainbows and not just rain

A story about being the only person in your family who hasn’t blossomed yet.

📢 It's free to submit, and we pay! 📢

The first assessment of THE SLIP has arrived, and it’s a starred review from Kirkus. I won’t play it cool—this was definitely on the writer bucket list! Grateful for their kind words. THE SLIP comes out 6/3 from @simonbooks.bsky.social!

An irreverent — and illustrated! — riff on Mary Oliver’s iconic poem “Wild Geese.” (@miriamjayaratna.bsky.social, @amandalehr.bsky.social, Jenny Kroik)

Celebrate Trans Day of Visibility by revisiting our Both/And essay series, filled with stories of invisibility and hypervisibility, sexy stories, dreams and love and grief, told fearlessly and honestly by trans and gender nonconforming writers of color.

Two poems about the tense relationship between a queer person and his less-than-accepting mother. (@mickiepoet.bsky.social)

gotta hand it to @electricliterature.com for taking a stance and not applying for nea funding under this administration. here's part of their reasoning from today's email -- this is a MUST-READ for writers.

After many years of reporting and writing, the day is finally here: THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US is out today. I poured everything into this book, and I hope it ignites outrage at the fact that so many people in the richest nation on earth have been deprived of one of the most basic human necessities.

Stand with us!

This small, beautiful essay by @kellyluce.bsky.social: "Mary, remember when it snowed during dinner last week and you screamed? I would like to be more that way." SAME. www.craftliterary.com/2025/03/12/m...

🙏🙏 The editorial process with CRAFT was maybe the best I've ever experienced. They accepted my piece within 24 hours of submission, gave me a pub date and stuck to it, had the best edits, were always professional and kind. The finished piece looks great. Writers, put them at the top of your list!

My child just asked if the x in SpaceX stands for explode. 😭

👍

It’s only March. 290 days left for a history-defying reversal.

That time @macdowell1907.bsky.social when my face ballooned up and poet Mary Ruefle gave me a lift...

This is so embarrassing to say out loud but as a new(-ish) parent it’s honestly been striking to realize how much the practice of being a good parent is analogous to the practice of being a good government

Happy pub day to @elongreen.bsky.social, whose brilliant new book, THE MAN NOBODY KILLED, is out today. "Green’s grimly vivid telling of this story and its aftermath...is part elegy for Stewart himself, part portrait of the city that failed him...Swift, unsparing." www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/b...

At today’s protest in Hartford @50501movement.bsky.social

Poems about the human condition in the suburbs and the existential voids on the playground. (@julialundy.bsky.social)

Outlive these fucking ghouls

Narrative Magazine: 1) kept $20K+ in contest entry fees but didn't choose (or pay) winners 2) calls itself a religious org to avoid taxes 3) pays its founders $150K and $144K a year 4) charges $26 for subs They're a scam. Great reporting here from Becky Tuch litmagnews.substack.com/p/q-can-we-t...

Narrative Magazine has been a scam since it was founded in 2003

In an attempt to shake up my news intake a bit, I now start the day with Australia's version of The Onion

These beauties by Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer Mandy Shunnarah have been scheduled for months; the timeliness of their publication given recent news feels uncanny

God has not forsaken us yet.

📝 If you’re interested in escaping into craft this year, I have LOTS of workshops coming up and I’d love to see you there! Sign up for my workshop mailing list for updates. Link in bio. XO

Uhhh, hi! It's me, Bookshop.org, a place to buy books online where every purchase financially supports indie bookstores instead of some billionaire.

Every so often I think of the karaoke place in Austin where it shows the lyrics as “I guess it rains down in Africa”

This is the story of a marriage, told through an email being drafted in real time. It takes about five minutes to read/experience. Huge thanks to genius Matthew Baker and CODE Lit, a magazine dedicated to digital-dependent literature. codelit.com/between-the-...

"I’ve always loved insanity narratives. As a kid, I was like, “Well, that place honestly sounds kind of nice.” And all your friends are there!" I will take one thousand copies please.

Cannot stop thinking about how the fire burned everything else, including what was concealing the mural. “I don’t know how, but the fire took away the stucco, took away the sheet rock, & has left this mural undamaged,” Harris said. “Nothing else in this entire [area] is left except for that mural.”

This is the good shit

Now that congestion pricing has kicked in, I get where I’m going more quickly, and am disappointed by whatever I’m doing earlier and for a longer time.

Want to see Jhumpa Lahiri’s archive? Look no further than the New York Public Library.

A great source via @literaryhub.bsky.social for how to help LA right now https://lithub.com/heres-how-you-can-help-fire-affected-angelenos/

Looking for a private service that can help me get this camel through the eye of a needle. I’ll pay anything