I wish more of the cultural gatekeepers interested in ye zeitgeist's (mostly bad!) flavors of masculinity would engage w transmasc fiction, not as a fun lil sideshow but as an exploration of the same ground that often looks beyond reifying (while pretending to overcome) the same old turgid stoicism

I wish more of the cultural gatekeepers interested in ye zeitgeist's (mostly bad!) flavors of masculinity would engage w transmasc fiction, not as a fun lil sideshow but as an exploration of the same ground that often looks beyond reifying (while pretending to overcome) the same old turgid stoicism

“The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel cited Othman Atta, the executive director of the mosque, as saying that deportation documents focused on Sarsour's arrest by Israeli authorities as a teenager living in the West Bank to argue he ​provided material support for extremists.” Sarsour is 53 years old.

rough trans news week, rough dayjob week, rough writing week, would like to be Rxed a W by doctor universe, thanks

glad for the vetoes, obviously, but it doesn't feel great that these bills made it all the way to the governor's desk www.jsonline.com/story/news/p...

ahaha the guy here is giving the hideous-lazy 90s fashion of gundam wing, all 5 of whose pilots were, canonically, trans

I forgot I had this saved for when I'd announced TRANSLUNAR. Anyway, this is TRANSLUNAR (2027), get ready.

the 2 best new books I’ve read in 2026 so far have been brilliant unpublished MSes by trans writers; I can’t yell abt one but I can yell abt the other! This novel is a masterpiece—a reckoning w truth & art & memory, an archaeology of the c20 & its echoing violences. we’re v lucky to be getting it.

really sad tonight even beyond the horrors & have to find a way to do the second shift (writing)

Hugo Nominations close soon!!!!! my novella, The Death of Mountains (from @lethepress.bsky.social) is eligible! if you're wondering if it's any good? it's a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Nebula Award. please consider small presses in your Hugo Nominations. thank you!!!

feeling feral so reposting one more time before the Hugos deadline when AI slop discourse is happening; for me "slop" refers not to quality of prose (humans write bad prose lol) but the soulless mush of art w humans removed, a sort of Excel AVERAGE of human thought & feeling, a sauce of no apples

feeling feral so reposting one more time before the Hugos deadline when AI slop discourse is happening; for me "slop" refers not to quality of prose (humans write bad prose lol) but the soulless mush of art w humans removed, a sort of Excel AVERAGE of human thought & feeling, a sauce of no apples

Next, @nassos.bsky.social's Sour Cherry. Hugely impressive in overall effect, but if I was to pick out one thing specifically, I did not read a book last year, debut or otherwise, better written on a sentence level. Just absurdly good prose.

teaching a Romanticism class in the fall again and keep thinking about how we're doing PBS's "England in 1819" as a checklist www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45118/...

aaahh love to see SOUR CHERRY by @nassos.bsky.social here!! <3

There are many great books in 2025 but especially do not forget SOUR CHERRY, NOTES FROM A REGICIDE, MAD SISTERS OF ESI and WORKS OF VERMIN!

one of my favorite stylists & best commentators on early 20thc WI is getting a reissue of his brilliant early collection, which is, like many midwestern stories, about ambivalently leaving it for the east

lol. in addition to the other reasons this is rightly getting ratioed, accusing students (many of whom have now graduated) practicing political expression of "bad faith" & a Dem smear campaign tells me a lot about your disdain for education & also that you don't talk to many 18-21 yos

worldbuilding thought: many second-world fantasies deal in grand/unsubtle emotions--like classical tragedies--bc subtler feelings rely on a rich social context that's nearly impossible to recreate save in "second worlds" closely modeled on real ones. (not a sleight on the genre! a wise choice imho)

many of the best new books I’ve read lately have been ekphrastic (both last year’s faves, now the new Brandon Taylor); I‘m sure some of it is just my preference but I also wonder if there’s something in the water. maybe the world‘s so hyperreal these days that ekphrasis feels like a natural choice

hey AWPers, I’d love to see you if you’re around! Baltimore will only be my 2nd AWP & I’m still a bit intimidated (it’s Too Big, like mega-MLA), so friendly faces will be welcome. I‘m doing 2 events:

wake up to more of our death cult murdering children & media op-eds stating in firm adult voices that This Isn't Necessary, as if murdering kids *could* in some other universe be necessary, as if necessity is an appropriate argumentative ground for this level of gleeful evil

lots to like here, though the definition of lit fic as "books where powerless characters simply accept rather than change the world" relies on a narrow reading diet in contemporary lit fic & a circular account of realism as "that which merely represents & doesn't alter the world"

both a de facto mobility ban on trans people in Kansas--drive anywhere and risk arrest--and an easy way to incarcerate many people very quickly. only a few steps, now, behind the concentration camps where ICE/DHS is already imprisoning anyone non-white or undocumented.

the kids (specifically at my place of employment) are all right when even the edgelord barstool insta account is mocking your commencement speaker choice, you've made a grave error

this year testing the small bright nugget of self-regard transitioning gave me, as I've written a great deal of stuff I love that no one will ever see. is it selfish to spend my energy writing when I could be doing more clear, actionable good for the world? idk.

The end of "Scars Poetica," the penultimate poem in Patricia Smith's magnificent 2025 collection The Intentions of Thunder:

tussling with draft thought: second-world SFF & free verse both require creating new structures to push against, & the challenge is to make them seem as rich as extant structures (real life; a sonnet) that arrive w histories/contexts full of friction. a magnificent sleight of hand, when done well

There's still time to kill these bills, Wisconsin:

"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...

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