Look at the trophy I won this weekend! The NB Book Award for best poetry book in 2025! Thanks @gaspereaupress.bsky.social for being awesome publishers, thanks to judge @hollay.bsky.social, & to all my family & friends! What an honour to be shortlisted with friends @rsalazar.bsky.social & Nick Thran!

Congratulations to this year's winners: Hajer Mirwali, Karen Solie & @rsalazar.bsky.social. @talonbooks.bsky.social @houseofanansi.bsky.social @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social

Conservatives *want* the vagary inherent in the law because it makes them, and their police, the arbiter of morality. They don't like the idea of justice being blind. "Of course we won't go after Shakespeare!" they say honestly, and they're correct. They'll decide what drag is "appropriate."

Here's the thing: If legislators didn't intend for HB 249 to be used against women wearing leggings and low-rise jeans, if they didn't mean for it to be used against trans people existing... THEY COULD FIX THE LANGUAGE. They drafted it that way for a reason. It's naive to think they won't use it.

Media needs to stop with "critics say" and just quote the actual language of the bill. HB 249 creates a new category of "seminudity" which can be used to arrest women who aren't nude, but are wearing clothing — leggings, t-shirts without bras — that religious groups feel is too provocative.

They didn’t just double tap. They hunted her like an animal. First they sent her death threats. They struck her, then followed her to where she tried to take shelter & struck her there. They struck the rescue workers who came for her & only after hours, after she died, did they allow retrieval

"The rich want war, the youth want a future" Seen in Stuttgart, Germany

According to sources inside the IDF they measure success in Lebanon by the number of buildings destroyed per day. This has nothing to do with Hezbollah, their primary objective is to target civilians. It's a Lebanese Nakba.

To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world.

In my latest for @publisherswkly.bsky.social, I interviewed 10 LGBTQ+ authors about their upcoming nonfiction or historical fiction books about queer and trans community building and safety in the face of oppression and violence.

I hope one of the things we will take away from this moment is that if we want survivors to be able to come forward immediately, then we need to be willing to protect them no matter how much we like, respect, or fear their perpetrator.

In a conversation between June Jordan and Angela Y. Davis, published in 1990, Jordan said she was concerned about how much despair there is cuz people often take it out on themselves. She said she wanted a return to rage, where it’s taken out on the system.

This week on GET LIT we talk to Aisha Sasha John & Rebecca Salazar about poetry. Specifically, their latest collections, which came out in March. The reading pile is truly staggering. 1230pm on 93.3 / cfmu.ca or pods or: tinyurl.com/mr6aebzc @rsalazar.bsky.social

Anastassia Matheson interviews @rsalazar.bsky.social about their McClelland & Stewart poetry collection, "antibody," for the Miramichi Reader:

🚨Must read/listen: “After COVID infection, the immune dysfunction usually…lasts a few months, & then it does begin to recover. But…people are often catching COVID more than once a year. And that would keep you in a permanent state of immune dysfunction…because you just keep adding infections…”

New: A comedian set up a fake ICE tip line as a joke. Then 100 calls flooded in: neighbors ratting on neighbors, a teacher reporting a kindergartener. Fans say the viral TikToks revealed deportation's "banality of evil." Conservatives say he should be in prison wapo.st/4kM4qbF

This @drewharwell.com story about a man who set up a fake ICE tip line, and the sheer range of people who called in, is gutting www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

New: Immigrants in MN are being released from detention without their IDs, work permits, social security cards, and other key documents that prove their status to begin with www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

I wrote about the US funneling pregnant children in immigrant detention to a Texas facility where their rights can be more effectively restricted. I hear echoes of disappeared parents and kidnapped children in Argentina decades ago. In each case, the intent is to inflict deep generational trauma.

Happy to have my review of Rebecca Salazar’s antibody up at periodicities this month! Such a great collection of work! Thanks to @periodicities.bsky.social and @robmclennan.bsky.social @rsalazar.bsky.social

Federal immigration authorities detained a woman seeking medical care at the National Institutes of Health’s flagship research hospital after the patient presented a non-real ID while passing security.

Anti vaxx rhetoric is dangerous. Not only does it promote the spread of contagious and preventable disease, but it radicalizes people. The disinformation campaigns prey on people’s fears. The Emory gunman appears to have been targeting the CDC because he believed the COVID vaccine hurt him:

It’s like nobody remembers the corpses spilling out of refrigerated morgue trucks for 18 months before the vaccine existed. Your health issues are not from the vaccine, they’re from the damn virus you keep catching because nobody masks and we collectively refuse to clean the air in shared spaces!

Gaza has reached catastrophic levels of famine, according to aid and human rights organizations, which raises the stakes of each fundraising campaign and even each post on Bluesky. The impact of donating to individual campaigns can be immediate www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

New: Israel is starving Palestinians, forcing them to beg for donations on sites like Bluesky. Their accounts keep getting flagged as spam. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This Rümeysa Öztürk hearing is radicalizing. I've been a court reporter for many years, and I've never covered anything like this: A student deeply committed to her studies, imprisoned solely over writing an op-ed, being made to testify under oath for her own freedom. Dark, dark stuff.

holy shit Rümeysa Öztürk has been released! may all others kidnapped alongside her be released also and may their prison burn and may the social order that built these prisons come to ash with it

Two headlines in the New York Times today.

Trump is pushing for mask bans. @governor.ny.gov is trying to do his bidding by hiding one in the New York budget. Say #NoNYmaskBan

Mahmoud Khalil's attorneys to ICE: "Mr. Khalil's wife has just gone into labor this morning in New York City, eight days earlier than expected. A two week furlough in this civil detention matter would be both reasonable and humane ..." ICE's reply: DENIED storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

fighting tears

Fuck the UK Supreme Court, fuck transphobes, and fuck J.K. Rowling in particular. Trans lives matter. Trans women are women. Buy trans books, and support trans people and trans rights now and always.

Thanks to your reports, we have created a tracker of college campus Visa revocations. Please continue to let us know if you hear of these (names of colleges and number of revocations). www.wearehighered.org/campus-abduc...

TODAY on @queerfmvan 🎙️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ we have a jam packed @queerfmvan April 1st 8am PST • 11am EST • 4pm GMT 🏳️‍🌈🎙️Join Hosts Barb @megamouthmedia.bsky.social Snelgrove / #DJDeniseFraser + guests Author @rsalazar.bsky.social and band #chromeharvest + #LGBTQIA tunes n talk! Streams www.citr.ca #lgbtqiathreads

April 1st @queerfmvan Hosts Barb @megamouthmedia.bsky.social Snelgrove & #DJDeniseFraser welcome Author/Poet REBBECA SALAZAR @rsalazar.bsky.social to chat about their new book of poetry “antibody”. Visit our Insta 4 details & guest bio! Streams at www.citr.ca 8am PST • 11am EST • 4pm GMT #queerbooks

antibody was officially published this week alongside excellent books by @toluini.bsky.social Aisha Sasha John & Chris Bailey. i am honoured to be in such company, and can't wait to hear them read at the M&S launch in Tkaronto next week.

Finally: LONG COVID. Post-Viral Epidemiology is up. -symptoms -why it happens -who believes in it -why it sucks so bad -what you can do Dr. Wes Ely is THE guy when it comes to Long Covid. Spread this around to anyone it might help -- which is everyone. www.alieward.com/ologies/post...

tomorrow ✨️ feat. the first review of antibody by @selenamercuri.bsky.social in @theseaboardreview.ca , with many thanks for such a thoughtful read 💜

The latest issue of The Seaboard Review is out! Poetry, Fiction, Horror, and Hot Takes! www.theseaboardreview.ca/p/the-seaboa...

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