This holiday season, give the gift of “readable, timely, inventive…definitive”! Preorder MIDDLEMEN!

More details to come but… 🎉🎉 I just learned that my book has won the first ever Biennial Book Prize from MELUS, the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States! I’m over the moon! 🎉🎉 cup.columbia.edu/book/writing...

Very happy to introduce a new tool, BookReconciler! You can take spreadsheets with book data and add subject headings, descriptions, ISBNs, HathiTrust IDs, & more. You can also cluster editions & variations of the same "Work." Led by @thisismattmiller.com and supported by @post45data.bsky.social.

Sarah Wasserman, assistant dean for faculty affairs, was named co-editor of the eminent Oxford Studies in American Literary History book series. The scholar of 20th- and 21st-century American literature will lead the series alongside @ericafretwell.bsky.social of the University of Albany.

*you're

Today! All old & new books in @columbiaup.bsky.social's Literature Now series are 50% off, including POETRY AFTER BARBARISM by @xenoglossic.bsky.social; POETRY IN GENERAL by @keegancf.bsky.social; BIG FICTION by @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social; and WRITING BACKWARDS by @manshel.bsky.social! bit.ly/4rupQx9

🚨🚨🚨 Even though I find the phrase “Cyber Monday” deeply distasteful, the folks at Columbia University Press are offering my book at a 50% DISCOUNT today! Check it out, along with the other fantastic titles in the Literature Now series! cup.columbia.edu/book/writing...

Proposals due next Monday, December 1st! If you are (or know) a graduate student working on 20th/21st century literature and culture, this is a great, free, low-stakes, no-travel-required way to workshop a project with scholars and editors in the field!

I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ

Very proud of my former student, Mairin Burke, for this deep dive into McGill's faculty unionization campaign!

Cannot recommend highly enough!

Today and Friday, I am teaching @manshel.bsky.social article "The Lag: Technology and Fiction in the Twentieth Century". My students are very excited to read it. I'm hoping to inspire a turn toward empirical methods, too.

Just a reminder that the deadline for abstracts for this FREE, ONLINE, GRAD STUDENT WORKSHOP is a little less than two weeks away!

Lots of fun presenting with @lbmcgrath.bsky.social and @jdporter.bsky.social at this week’s fabulous conference on the world of audiobooks! Thanks to @corinnanorue.bsky.social and @millicentweber.bsky.social for organizing. And watch this space for more on “Echoing: A Theory of the Audiobook”!

"there is more than a little something constitutively utopian in the heist genre, from its depiction of competent work to its championing of collective action to its redistributive rather than retributive propensities"

UPDATE: I have cut the line entirely. Publication is just a number!

I regret to inform you that, while copyediting an article that’s been in the works for a while, I had to change a line about a book that came out the year I was born from “published over 35 years ago” to “published nearly 40 years ago”

Peter Coviello isn't on Bluesky, but this definitely should be: lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

remember school? it's different now

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!

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.”