A new special issue of English Studies I'm really keen to put together! Please consider submitting and circulate widely! @drchrislouttit.bsky.social bookshoplit.com/cfp-booksell...

If you are an agent or want to be an agent or an editor who deals with agents or an author who has an agent or is trying to get one, you need to read this book.

Excited to reveal the cover of my book, MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN FICTION, which is available for pre-order now!

Going to inscribe @manshel.bsky.social into the American HS canon by assigning this essay to my 11th graders next week www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

"[A] striking example of the power that cultural history can lend to narrative studies, and vice-versa." Congrats to Alexander Manshel, whose book, WRITING BACKWARDS, was awarded the 2026 Perkins Prize. bit.ly/4oqeqbQ @manshel.bsky.social #LiteratureNow @columbiaup.bsky.social

I cannot effing wait to read this, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social

huge if true

Just learned that WRITING BACKWARDS has won Narrative's 2026 Perkins Prize, "awarded to the book making the most significant contribution to the study of narrative in a given year." A true honor, especially given the prize's past recipients! www.thenarrativesociety.org/barbara-and-...

I had the distinct pleasure of hearing parts of this book at a conference a couple years ago and I can’t wait to read the rest of it! Congrats, @acolton.bsky.social!!!

DEAR GRAD STUDENTS, This March @post45data.bsky.social will be holding a free, online mini-workshop for grads working in the fields of contemporary literature and culture. More info / abstract submission here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 1/4

We're excited to host a virtual workshop where graduate students can present work-in-progress that engages with data from the Post45 Data Collective in some way. Editors from the P45DC, Public Books, Post45, and the 19th Century DC will be there to offer feedback. Proposals are due December 1!

DEAR GRAD STUDENTS, This March @post45data.bsky.social will be holding a free, online mini-workshop for grads working in the fields of contemporary literature and culture. More info / abstract submission here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 1/4

I didn’t get the wording down precisely, so I won’t quote it, but one of the things that hit hard in the room: Reactionaries waging culture wars against the humanities have a more accurate account of our power than we do. And our humility is not admirable, but an abdication of responsibility.

Join the Department of English for the Fall 2025 Open House at McGill University! Come and chat with English faculty members and students, and learn about our different streams, programs, course offerings, community and more! Saturday, October 25 10 am–4 pm Arts Building Lobby 853 Sherbrooke St. W

All these people avoiding m-dashes because “AI uses them” simply means that there’s more for me!

All fiction is “commercial fiction.”

Did you know that if you buy my book on Amazon, Jeff Bezos makes 5 times as much as I do on each copy sold? Sharing some behind-the-scenes book math on why buying directly from presses is best for EVERYONE (except Bezos) in my newsletter today! aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/book-math

We need to expand the use of “ha ha,” as in “it was funny, but not funny ha ha.” How’d you like that new book? It was interesting, but not interesting ha ha. Cool bar? Divey but not divey ha ha.

Teaching a session on audiobooks this week. Anyone have any favourite/interesting/quirky examples? Or interesting reading about the audiobooks industry?

I've assigned reading by @manshel.bsky.social & @lbmcgrath.bsky.social & J. D. Porter, lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-... and Sheri-Marie Harrison, post45.org/2020/08/ill-... & talking about work by Karl Berglund

I wrote about the divide between high school and college English, and what we might do to bridge it, for @publicbooks.bsky.social—part of an excellent roundtable on higher ed under Trump organized by @dennismhogan.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/toward-the-h...

Two+ years late to this great unpacking of the audiobook industry, how narrators mediate our experience of books, & the invisible labor of audiobook production at LARB by @manshel.bsky.social, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, & @jdporter.bsky.social. lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Could not be more excited for this book to come out! If you’re interested in the history of American literature, or why the current literary scene looks the way it does, or how publishing actually works, MIDDLEMEN should be top of your list for next year!

Baby’s got a pub date! And some juicy catalog copy. MIDDLEMEN coming your way on April 26! (Cover reveal soon!)

It's the end of The Best American Poetry. I wrote about the forty-year anthology project, poetry’s place in Big Five publishing, and editor David Lehman's culture wars vision of American verse. defector.com/good-riddanc...

I think Jill Lepore said that reading a book you’re going to teach is like eating a meal to figure out the recipe. Love writing the recipe/am so glad I work somewhere that lets me write my own stuff.

reminder:

Michiganders! I'll be giving a talk at MSU next Tuesday afternoon. If you're interested in "High School English and the Making of American Readers," I'll hope to see you there!

The American Lit kids are going to cut up our first three texts tomorrow—a 1493 Columbus letter, an excerpt from De Las Casas, and a Lenape myth—to make little collage poems, using art books/photography books as backdrops. Glad I teach HS so I can do arts n crafts/curious what they do.

I keep coming back to the Robert Frost line that “a liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.”

For about fifty bucks you, too, can have the power (temporarily) vested in you

This past weekend I had the distinct honor of officiating the wedding of two dear friends. Wondering where to put Ordained Minister in the Universal Life Church Dot Org on my CV

Very cool piece from Jed Kudrick and @sdileonardi.bsky.social on the history of translation in the US literary scene!

FrostBot makes it so you don't have to choose whether the world will end in fire or in ice/AI-driven climate crisis will suffice.

FrostBot makes it so you never have to stop by a woods when it’s inconvenient, saving you miles so you can sleep, saving you miles so you can sleep

And, for that matter, has the Vice President read King Lear? Was he rooting for Tom and Daisy in the end? Does he think John Proctor deserved what he got?

To Kill a Mockingbird, Gatsby, and the rest of the high school canon are as much a part of common culture as the Gettysburg Address or “I Have a Dream”

Is Mary Oliver embarrassing? Maggie Millner reckons with the poet's reputation as an unserious poet—and finds new meaning in her work.

A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.

I have a book cover!

it's official--my first book will be published by @columbiaup.bsky.social Such a Thing as New York School: Print Culture, Publishing Communities, & American Poetry--an account of how publishing practices give material forms to American literary communities & the group labels that describe them.

High school English is where lifelong readers are made! How many students (and teachers!) today are being pushed toward test prep or reading excerpts, instead of spending time with these and other great books?

TOM CLANCY by Charles Dickens

(Guy who does not enjoy the humanities) the problem with the humanities is no one enjoys them

My work is in here. Is yours?

the force of this writing - its humor and verve - is its own confirmation "the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals. They want to build a genie to grant them wishes, and their wish is that nobody ever has to make art again."

(Teacher sitting backwards in chair) Yeah, I'm pretty invested in the big engagement...my STUDENTS' big engagement with the novels we're about to read

Jeff VanderMeer, ANNIHILATION (2014)

I had a great time talking with @lefigaro.fr's Adrien Jaulmes about GATSBY LE MAGNIFIQUE and its impact on American culture... www.lefigaro.fr/internationa...