over at @essaydaily.bsky.social we’re gearing up for our annual Advent Calendar (the only time of year we actually post daily); send us yer stuff if you want to join in the advent adventures!

"When the internet told me what Justice Alito had said, my first response was What’s a Gore Vidal?" @andrew-maynard.bsky.social on Pornhub, Gore Vidal, and other Epsteins www.essaydaily.org/2025/10/reth...

"the longer I write, the more interested I am in riffing and being kind of spontaneous": Matthew Morris in conversation with Hea-Ream Lee: www.essaydaily.org/2025/09/the-...

TUCSON ESSAY ALERT

"I’ve left nearly every person I’ve dated. I’m not just someone who leaves, but I am someone who feels compelled to leave. I feel it deep in my body." @beatroxel.bsky.social on leaving, returning, collecting, and The Free Table in Tucson: www.essaydaily.org/2025/08/bea-...

For @essaydaily.bsky.social I wrote about the power of flash as feminist reclamation, Jamaica Kincaid’s genre-blurring “Girl,” and writing my flash collection ABBREVIATE. www.essaydaily.org/2025/06/sara...

new @essaydaily.bsky.social piece from @sfmontgomery.bsky.social on Kincaid’s “Girl” and the flash essay www.essaydaily.org/2025/06/sarah-fawn-montgomery-though-she-be-but.html?m=1

Read @sfmontgomery.bsky.social in @essaydaily.bsky.social on her new flash collection ABBREVIATE and on flash CNF in general: "an essay does not have to be big in order to be expansive"

Submission opportunity for essayists (deadline 7/27): theseventhwave.org/announcement...

Fine, @leahmensch.bsky.social: tucsonessayclub.org/product/i-to...

An interview with Tucson essayist and poet Katherine Larson and an excerpt from her new book The Wedding of the Foxes: substack.com/profile/3663...

Tucsonans consider signing up for the free or paid options with @tucsonessayclub.bsky.social to keep in touch? This is a great essay by Katherine Larson. Pick up her new book Wedding of the Foxes too now from @milkweededitions.bsky.social

"We want affirmation but dislike the people we become to get it. We doubt it when it’s real and clutch it closest when it’s fake." Just read this good essay by Thomas Dai in @yalereview.bsky.social from a couple years ago: yalereview.org/article/thom.... If you like this his first book just dropped!

nice

"there’s a typical narrative arc for a lot of grief books that I resisted and don’t believe in": @madnor.bsky.social and Matthew Morris in conversation at @essaydaily.bsky.social: www.essaydaily.org/2025/01/this...

"I mean, besides the tedium of such a futile exercise, there's the inevitability of missing something or losing count and guessing or having to go back to the beginning and start again." Love to see @pcmadden3.bsky.social at @essaydaily.bsky.social. www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

CATS

My newest essay, “Enough,” on @essaydaily.bsky.social’s Advent Calendar: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"The only response you hear is a distant groaning, a giant media machine rising slowly to full height…The pile purports to know the right answers about damn near every human question." Lydia Paar, Dec 23 @essaydaily.bsky.social: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"On this first visit to my country my children have a tiny window into my past and it’s about to close…. How then do I bring them in?" Noam Dorr, Dec 20 @essaydaily.bsky.social: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"the act of reading revives the things written, happens them again." Dec 21 is the traditional date for @pcmadden3.bsky.social to join the @essaydaily.bsky.social Advent Calendar, and he delivers: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

Every time we open the front closet it's like a beacon goes up, alerting him that the opportunity to climb the slatted doors and trap himself at the top has arrived. He can't get down by himself, yet will bite those who attempt to help him.

I wrote an essay on becoming nostalgia, dressing funny, and buying old shit on eBay to make me feel better. Thanks to @essaydaily.bsky.social and @angermonsoon.bsky.social for the chance to share! www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

“By the time our senses reach our brains, we’re already perceiving the past. So we’re left trying to reconcile our forward moving bodies with our backwards looking minds.” 🚨🚨🚨 @jasonsepac.bsky.social on ‘00s nostalgia for @essaydaily.bsky.social advent!!!!!!!! www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

ruminations on safety signs, sugar eggs, and standees. Many thanks to @essaydaily.bsky.social and @angermonsoon.bsky.social for inviting me to the annual Advent Party. www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

An essay on Mick Foley? Merry Christmas to me.

"So I did what poorly aged 90s movies taught me you do in the face of aging: I bought some dumb shit." 12/19 in the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar is @jasonsepac.bsky.social on becoming nostalgia: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"And there it is. Like a sharp intake of breath, a gasp of thought. Every single time." In the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent 12/18 is Steven Church in an essay-convo with Lia Purpura (what a way to play with an essay!): www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

my most Objective Journalism to date is in print now — I wrote about my cherished OSU MFA & why we love COMMUNITY <3 oregonstater.org/the-writing-...

Hyped to have Matt Morris (his new book The Tilling @senecareview.bsky.social just came out you should read it; is great) on @essaydaily.bsky.social: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

" He said that the memories would be good ones, that I would have them in the years ahead, that this would be a gift (he did not use this word): the pleasure of recollection." Matthew Morris, Dec 17, @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"If you want to be a hero, all you have to do is to find something you love and love it completely and sincerely." Dec 16 @essaydaily.bsky.social: Jaric Sarmiento on the life-saving powers of PING PONG: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

for the @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar, I wrote about our greatest living Santa Claus impersonator: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

my favorite girl wrote about my favorite wrestler for today's essay in @essaydaily.bsky.social's advent calendar. has me thinking families should gather round the tv to watch wrestling matches instead of football games on christmas day...

"Kittens are little, kind of clumsy, and generally trusting. Due to those traits, kittens cuddles are reliable and easy to get." Pinch hitting today in the @essaydaily.bsky.social Advent Calendar is Athena C. Monson on the Cat Cuddle Spectrum: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

Ed Park spent his twenties writing two madly ambitious novels that never saw the light of day. Then he wrote a memoir, similarly unpublished. He found that manuscript decades later. And, on reading it, encountered a window into his artistic past.

ICYM my latest at NO SUCH THING AS WAS: some thoughts on SEMA 4, a Mod Revival band whose songs of adolescent joys and frustrations on two obscure EPs struck eternal chords. joebonomo.substack.com/p/i-understa...

"The thing about belief is that you have to opt into it." @k-e-c.bsky.social bringing you Christmas wrestling cheer: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

Halfway through the 2024 Advent Calendar and we've had some absolute bangers. Today's is Brooke Champagne's turn behind the little door: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"Was I testing her? Was I begging to get thrown on the ground by irritable TSA at 5 a.m.? Would I die for a dumbass, ill-timed joke? The answers to all of the above are “yes, and.” Dec 13: Brooke Champagne @essaydaily.bsky.social : www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

This is my letter to Richard Deming…my appreciation for a remarkable and tender book that so movingly speaks of our loneliness and what draws us together: Dec 11 in @essaydaily.bsky.social is @alisondeming.bsky.social, Of Loneliness: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"the authors of “Emory is Everywhere” remind me of contemporary physicists who understand that the far-flung universe and every particle within it are bound by webs of strings" @utopiaminus.bsky.social in @essaydaily.bsky.social's Advent calendar today: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

One of the most influential members of the Black Arts Movement, Nikki Giovanni taught me that poetry could be political and poems could be free. 🥺 www.npr.org/2024/12/09/n...

"I can see my life as a long struggle between the part of me that believes in second chances and the part of me that doesn’t." Dec 10 in the @essaydaily.bsky.social Advent Calendar is David Carlin on retirement and finding his way to fiction: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

"The grad student teachers are in favour of themselves eating." This rules. Margaret Atwood for the win.

"There's a special place in Hell for the horny." my beloved emily podwoiski on golden girls & dante's inferno for @essaydaily.bsky.social advent calendar 🖤 www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

An Advent calendar, but essays

"There’s a special place in Hell for the horny.… If Dante had looked closer, he might’ve seen Blanche sail by." Dec 10's @essaydaily.bsky.social advent is Emily Podwioski on the Golden Girls vs Dante: www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

I wrote about trying to find the original Lithium for Medea manuscript for @essaydaily.bsky.social www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...