guess it is December so here is my single award-eligible thing this year. fuck AI slop, the baby food of fascism

"The administration is claiming that a bureaucratic rule change has the power to nullify the democratically enacted protections of 'safe' states, attempting to shatter the legal firewalls these states have built to protect transgender youth and their families." via @erininthemorning.com

back to the Beinecke for a sliver of sneak research today & Bryher’s power to convince everyone in her circle to adopt & sign letters with fursonas continues to amuse: this is her analyst Hanns Sachs, aka Turtle

trans lit set in the midwest!! we love to see it!!

the way I mashed that preorder button

guess it is December so here is my single award-eligible thing this year. fuck AI slop, the baby food of fascism

Milwaukee, in snow

Frighteningly similar to what's been happening at Marquette, albeit (so far) on a smaller scale. utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/11/anat...

Midwest queer scholars: if you’re at this year’s MMLA at Marquette, I’m giving a paper on my mild obsession Bryher, the 20thc transmasc bajillionaire semi-known for being H.D.’s wife-guy, funding every Modernist ever, & saving people from nazis… www.midwest-mla.org/digital-prog...

my beloved "sad man tries to crack dream-Mary Renault's egg and she says no" story from 2024's @strangehorizons.bsky.social just got a lovely podcast treatment, produced by the excellent @darthj.uno and read absolutely beautifully by @ardenfitzroy.bsky.social! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

Midwest queer scholars: if you’re at this year’s MMLA at Marquette, I’m giving a paper on my mild obsession Bryher, the 20thc transmasc bajillionaire semi-known for being H.D.’s wife-guy, funding every Modernist ever, & saving people from nazis… www.midwest-mla.org/digital-prog...

Tonight!!

WI/Madison folks: come out to @roomofonesownbooks.bsky.social next Wed, Nov 5 at 6 pm to celebrate the magnificent new short story collection from @syr.bsky.social, WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE, out now with @stelliform.press! It includes an OPEN MIC, so come read! <3 roomofonesown.com/event/2025-1...

WI/Madison folks: come out to @roomofonesownbooks.bsky.social next Wed, Nov 5 at 6 pm to celebrate the magnificent new short story collection from @syr.bsky.social, WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE, out now with @stelliform.press! It includes an OPEN MIC, so come read! <3 roomofonesown.com/event/2025-1...

UKL award shortlist was absurdly good this year, and @vajra.me’s RAKESFALL is a masterpiece that richly deserves this honor. Please go read it if you haven’t yet! also the rest of that shortlist!

MKE, if you're seeing the Marcus Center's Les Misérables this fall, I'm doing a Q&A on the novel before the Tues, Oct 28 show. Come on out to learn about Hugo's 1300-page treatise on prison abolition, police brutality, & the necessity of perpetual revolution! www.marcuscenter.org/event/les-mi...

surprised to discover that Le Guin's Orsinian Tales are some of her best work, a melancholy exploration of what the 20th century, esp the Cold War, meant to central Europe. Its closest peer is Jan Morris's masterpiece Hav (you know something's good if I compare it to Hav, which has no real rivals)

such a clear statement of intent that the US is only invested in Palestinian death, nothing else, not even death as cover for a land-grab, just death

Now available everywhere!! this is my favorite of @isabelcanas.bsky.social's marvelous novels yet (!!! it's a crowded list!!!), and it has my absolute favorite villain she's written so far! GO BUY IT SO YOU CAN MEET HIM 🖤 💀

this week's (free) post is about the adage "deescalate all conflict that isn't with the enemy" and what it means to be an enemy, and don't worry I manage to reference both Sun Tzu and Tolkien so I've still got it margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/we-know-wh...

nearly all of the best new books I've read so far this year have been by trans writers, please keep making them I don't believe in the "oppression creates art via pressure like a diamond" myth: you all are just that brilliant regardless of the fascism. keep it up

It’s my birthday and I shamelessly would love you to buy my novel bookshop.org/p/books/okps...

"Every Ghost Story" is out in @reactorsff.bsky.social today! Edited by @jonathanstrahan.bsky.social, with art by @babswebbart.bsky.social. Incredibly excited to share this one (what do you mean I may be slightly obsessed with ghosts?) reactormag.com/every-ghost-...

Last check no support in a DAY for 6 families to eat...(The support today came from bold folks who clicked "weekly" or "monthly," which is often the only support we get.) We keep trying. We keep going. They're counting on us to eat & stay sheltered. 2205/2500 by Friday. chuffed.org/project/hope...

it would be very nice to be less exhausted all the time

The V*mpire was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award: locusmag.com/2025/07/2025... Congratulations to all the other finalists!

Props to my local paper for covering the threats to trans youth care well. www.jsonline.com/story/news/h...

I hadn't come across the term "economy of genocide" before; it's such a concise way of capturing the global financial infrastructure supporting this evil. www.ohchr.org/en/documents...

Deeply honored that my @strangehorizons.bsky.social story-of-my-heart "The Spindle of Necessity" is here! Thank you so much, @cypayseur.bsky.social and @rykaaoki.bsky.social <3 Adore this TOC--amazing list w some of my fav working writers--& the stunning cover art by @mspencerdraws.bsky.social!

speaking of buying trans fiction: go read this brilliant interview with @nassos.bsky.social about his new novel Sour Cherry & then buy the book, which is equally brilliant! electricliterature.com/sour-cherry-...

A/S/L is the best new book I've read this year, a formal tour-de-force with masterful character work. I hope it gets the plaudits it deserves (close runner-up/tie is Isaac Fellman's Notes from a Regicide, tho comparing them is apples & oranges). tl;dr spite SCOTUS, buy trans fiction

It's still pride so I should mention, if anyone on here liked "Spindle," that I wrote a gay little novel about a man whose magic power to grow plants cannot, to his dismay, save nature. Also WWI and Wisconsin history! Get it from the lovely @uwiscpress.bsky.social: uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/D/Dry-...

lord I see what you have done for NYC and also literally my city between 1916 and 1940, if we are going to repeat the 30s anyway the least Milwaukee deserves is a decent socialist mayor

"institutions of higher learning are about to be pummeled by the looming reconciliation bill which weaponizes working-class families’ debt financing college dreams. not only will it push millions to the financial brink, it will push them out of higher ed altogether." newrepublic.com/article/1970...

having bad flashbacks to the moment in 2003 when I was a senior in high school arguing about Iraq with a deadeyed bro who gleefully repeated "just nuke them all" & for the first time I realized he & many like him just didn't see anyone in the entire middle east as people

queers, if you want a book to hold your heart through the current awful, preorder this magnificent collection by @syr.bsky.social, out in September from @stelliform.press. it's a guidebook on how to love a world (& each other) through constant, unendurable loss. www.stelliform.press/index.php/pr...

time (again, perpetually) to start finding doctors who are willing to diagnose "unspecified endocrine disorder"

the evil my nation is doing feels really overwhelming tonight. I know it's not new or unprecedented & that our job is to fight, but between Gaza/Iran/ICE/medicaid/ecocide/trans kids/everything, it's a lot, & hitting harder bc I stepped away from the news for a week to go hiking so it's fresh again

If you love speculative fiction, then you owe a huge debt to @strangehorizons.bsky.social -- a magazine that successfully brought SFF short fiction online and expanded our ideas of what genre can do. It launched my career and many others. And it's still amazing. www.kickstarter.com/projects/str...

Back from a week of internetless camping to “The Spindle of Necessity” being an @theignyteawards.bsky.social finalist! I’m deeply honored. The Ignytes are so exciting & well-curated & principled, & this shortlist *rules*; I’m humbled to be among such brilliance. Thread of the stories follows!

isaacs-law.ghost.io/dr-alan-hart/ every day I stray closer to writing a novel about Dr. Alan Hart

oh neat: "The Spindle of Necessity" is one of the notable stories for this year's Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy! lots of faves here too: @p-h-lee.bsky.social's "V*mpire," @kurellian.bsky.social's "Evan," & Tamara Masri's "House of Wisdom"! <3 www.johnjosephadams.com/projects/bes...

my midwest jesuit campus is going batshit for ope pope

this was always the plan, but the fact that they feel emboldened to brag openly to the press about their genocide is damning beyond words. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

A sharp, formally thoughtful and eerily believable vision of what literary culture might look like in a few years, when the collapse happens (as it always does) unevenly.

Last fall MU’s trustees chose its current president against a vote of no confidence by faculty senate with 95% support from the biggest College on campus, Arts & Sciences; the most notable item on his resume was, as provost, union-busting the NTT union at that same College.

suspicious number of pieces in the local paper about how Milwaukee weathered the Great Depression, I wonder what people are worried about? www.jsonline.com/story/life/g...

boosting this: WI people, put pressure on AG Kaul. He is up for reelection in 2026, and if he isn't going to fight the FBI arresting sitting judges, he's not committed to the job.