new Patricia Smith collection finally came in at the library & I’d never read her Olive Oyl sequence before—delightful & miraculous. Smith’s been GOAT for ages now, so it‘s not news to anyone that she can do whatever she pleases in a poem, but just listen to this: voca.arizona.edu/track/id/56239

"Medusa's Ship, or the Thing About Bodies" is out now! Formally Experimental Greeks in Space, anyone? www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/medu... @bcsmagazine.bsky.social also did an incredible job podcasting the story. Listen, I am in awe: www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/audio/bcs-35...

world bad but walked through a furcon on my way home, so my Friday is blessed

having written upwards of 90k, fiction & nonfiction, about-or-thinly-veiled-about my favorite Modernist antifascist wife-guy Bryher (pictured), there's now the possibility I might get to publish a bit of it in essay form this/next year. fingers crossed it happens, & grateful for the chance.

having written upwards of 90k, fiction & nonfiction, about-or-thinly-veiled-about my favorite Modernist antifascist wife-guy Bryher (pictured), there's now the possibility I might get to publish a bit of it in essay form this/next year. fingers crossed it happens, & grateful for the chance.

I thought this was one of the scariest and most relevant stories I edited all 2025, so if you didn't read it then, be sure to read it now!

"Teaching with AI... is a case study in how even well-meaning educators operating in good faith can become inadvertent agents of a pedagogical de-skilling & institutional dehumanization."

oh hey my "fuck-AI-in-the-literature-classroom" story from @lightspeedmagazine.com back in January made the Locus Recommended Reading list! rad, and also fuck AI in the literature classroom! (story here: www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/tell...)

locusmag.com/2026/02/2025... Notes from a Regicide made the Locus list!!

It really is worth understanding what an escalation this is by the feds to be teargassing the big family friendly march

had a sad week for stupid whiny private reasons (in addition to the ongoing state evil) so am rereading LOTR for the first time in about a decade. good life choice

It's esp shameful how limp these 'demands' are given the fash will simply make a promise & then immediately violate it. The dems know that (like they know only abolition/defunding will actually stop ICE). They're too chickenshit & conciliatory to even demand a stronger lie.

enough people at the Wed-night -20C protest in MKE to block the downtown thoroughfare during rush hour; gives me hope that the city can mobilize to do the work & protect our neighbors when ICE shows up here

President of a police academy: what if the answer to cops is more cops Supposedly Northern Essex CC (said cop academy of which the author is proudly president) is also an HSI, which is extra gross context I haven't yet seen in the many apt bodyings of this asinine piece.

This novel is wise & gorgeous & has made me cry in both versions I've read so far. It's about memory & family & fascism & theater & resistance & diaspora & cultural heritage (& the joy & disappointment of all these things). If there were ever a book for right now, this is it. <3

feel gross self-promoting when ICE is murdering people so I keep reposting & then immediately un-reposting, but it's awards season & I'm proud of this story. anyway fuck AI, the baby food of fascism.

A friend passed this on. Please share and help besieged folks in Minneapolis: www.gofundme.com/f/critical-r...

Top Wisconsin Dem electeds (including top electeds in Milwaukee) could afford to be at least this clear that we won’t stand for an attack on our neighbors and that we need to defund and abolish ICE now.

this photo. minneapolis. 💜 📷️ Alex Kormann/Star Tribune

oh my goodness yes

omg -- literally this week I restarting Merrill's Changing Light at Sandover & whining to the universe that I was craving narrative verse w bitchy queers & foodie sensuousness & a tasteful soupçon of allusion & a couplet or five, but, like NEW & sometimes goddamn the universe delivers

horribly exhausted this whole week, bc I guess grief and rage are tiring? (I know some folks are energized by rage; unfortunately I’m not one of them). bracing for another term of trying to find teaching energy amid all the evil

They don't have capacity to terrorize more than 2-3 cities at a time. Which means they rotate teams to new cities without relief. Which means consistent resistance by fresh activists in each new city will break them over time. Which means if you're city's not occupied, rest up and get ready.

Good morning. They're going to sell you the lie of provocateurs. margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/theyre-goi...

The US withdrawing from the Freesom Online Coalition, GCERF, Global Counter Terrorism Forum, ECECHT and a bunch of other international organizations and alliances, including UN agencies tonight is certainly...a move... www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

still thinking abt a 1928 letter I found in the archives, where Bryher’s husband writes her abt a trans man who died by lying down on a railway & was outed in death, & then begs Bryher to go to therapy. Letter ends: "One survives grinningly." Bryher lived to be 88.

watching the limp responses roll in from the Chuck Schumers and Mark Carneys of the world, this is right, but idk if it's a brainwashing in favor of law > morality so much as a cowardice that can hide beneath law's cumbersome, convenient shield.

A little early this year, here's my 2025 year in reading. 2025 was terrible; books were my lifeline. Thread of some favorites, new and new-to-me, to follow. www.bpladek.net/2025/12/31/2...

reread T.H. White's The Once & Future King for Xmas & realized I've always loved it bc its core story is of ppl trying to create a good society, failing, & persevering anyway bc even a failed attempt is worth it (aka my gestalt belief) anyway happy holidays. keep trying; it matters.

"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...