“Saying I is also a form of experiment” The sublime Lisa Robertson talking about what’s my book of the year so far.

It’s 50 years since Renata Adler’s incomparable novel ‘Speedboat’ was published: illuminative and dangerous as a lightning strike, bitingly funny, caustically insightful and marvellously stylish. Pub in US @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social, just reissued @wnbooks.bsky.social with intro by Hilton Als.

"Well, Genet had a phrase that I repeat often: ‘Difficulty is an author’s respect for the reader’, or rather, making him or her think, collaborate – the work is incomplete without the reader’s input…" - Juan Goytisolo

16, attempting to hitchhike to Maine, standing on the shoulder of a highway onramp near Albany, with night coming on and 3 dollars in my pocket, when a guy in a white Ford Pinto rolls up and hands me $60 and a King James Bible. "Thanks man you saved my ass" I said. "No, God saved your ass," he said.

Well this is pretty much as insane as I expected it to be.

5 years of Socrates on the Beach... McElroy, Gass, Tudor-Sideri, Musil, Grill, Ariel Porte, Moore, Ulven, Blackwell, Craig, Theroux, Sims, Valéry, Stefanescu, Wood, Cărtărescu, Lutz, Hall, Haskell, Nutt, Ryder, Cárdenas, Khi Nao, Olsen, Handke, DeForest... socratesonthebeach.com

Our editor (in a silly hat) talks about her latest book (Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other from @coffeehousepress.bsky.social) and being a Dorothy fangirl at @cincinnatireview.bsky.social . . . www.cincinnatireview.com/interviews/a...

Renata Adler, bringing the goods in PITCH DARK. Extraordinary passage, extraordinary novel.

Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates melancholy from happiness. -- Woolf, Orlando

"Representing the canon that scholars of Asian American literature have built, it is the most expansive dataset to date on Asian American literature." Data and essay: doi.org/10.18737/092...

The thing people who are terrified don’t understand about cities is that all you need to know is what is your business and what is not your business

Ah, the sour smell of fallen, trampled fruit fermenting on city sidewalks. It's one of my favorite smells of the year. Fills me with a great inner peace. We are nearing the end of the torrid heat.

Sitting in my office, starving, receiving updates from daycare that my daughter is being fed "sun butter and jelly sandwich, green beans and fruit cocktail"

Great new review of Jen Craig's Wall up over @greggerkesocrates.bsky.social's Socrates: "Her novels are at once obsessive attempts to give a full account of grief-laden lives, & a demonstration of the impossibility, the ridiculousness, even, of such a pursuit" socratesonthebeach.com/gus-oconnor-...

Found the hand-drawn cocktail book that my wife and I made during our drunken shut-in covid days.

Got a lil bagatelle at beloved @hexliterary.bsky.social

Sunday morning writing mantra, via DeLillo, from inside my cocoon of dimmed lights, closed doors, and noise-cancelling headphones: "A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it."

say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

I believe these are the first four academic books to cite an episode of American Vandal, which, like, there will be prizes.

Wrote 1000 words on Gabriel Blackwell's DOOM TOWN, a strange and deeply affecting novel that I won't soon forget.

We're excited to start off our featured author posts with Elvis Bego's work "A Part"! Check out the rest of his work on our website (link in bio) in our Summer 2025 Issue out now!

I've been reading Trieste by Dasa Drndic for the last few days and it has absolutely wiped me out. Reading it next to Celan, Pound, etc., and my head is spinning. What a work of fiction - as well as a historical and documentary indictment of the world that reads it.

Happy Bloomsday to all who celebrate

New work in @havehashad.com today! Another cheesy little dad piece that might be the cheesiest little dad piece I’ve written yet (while also maybe the one I had the most fun with?)

My 17 month old daughter has developed an allergy to mosquitos and I'm frankly annoyed that no one, from my wife to our pediatrician to her daycare providers, seems to want to use the official name for it.

“I don’t want to overstate the case, but what’s at stake is life and death”: An Interview with Ben Libman (@benlibman.bsky.social) —Cristina Politano (@monalisavitti.bsky.social) minorliteratures.com/2025/05/29/i...

This is my ego as a novice lit mag editor talking, but I imagine someone, somewhere will benefit from reading this entire issue whole, preferably in order of presentation. yourimpossiblevoice.com/issue32/

Off here for now, but here’s a photo from today’s writing: Virginia Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House, from a 2023 visit. The fireplace features a painting by her sister Vanessa Bell of Godrevy Lighthouse in Cornwall, where they visited as children, and said to be an inspiration for To The Lighthouse.

Everything about this is a tragedy, every level, from cheated freelancers to authors obscured to readers who don’t get served either.

Took the Substack plunge (yes, sorry, I know) and wrote a little thing about Redbud trees.

"Despite the weakness of the light, the path ahead was still visible to everyone. Then Brother Kelpius answered [...] that if he could not find his way among lesser lights, then he would never find his way at all ..." — @unpaginated.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2025/05/15/b...

Still my favorite thing I’ve written, so I guess why the hell not share it again minorliteratures.com/2024/06/20/o...

hollowing Virginia Woolf, from ‘Mrs Dalloway’

Wife is horrified than I’m still eating peeps from Easter.

"I would say my bottom line has always been language, form, and hallucination." I've been dying to read this interview with Diane Seuss, and it really does not disappoint. I love this bottom line.

"how did it get there, he wonders, do the deer travel in the wind like ghosts, like spirits, and he raises his rifle, he steadies it against the metal frame of the stand and he fixes the deer in the crosshairs of his scope" Don't miss this piece by the always excellent @sephmurtagh.bsky.social

'Divertimento' by Julio Cortázar is finally getting translated into English, published next January. Vintage UK also bringing a few of his books back into print with new covers:

Finally got around to watching A Complete Unknown, and while I don't think Timothée Chalamet made a very good Bob Dylan, I think Ed Norton made an astonishingly good Pete Seeger.

"They were told ‘this is a goddess,’ and they hated her, but for the most part, they just said ‘okay.’ And it isn’t as though this goddess appeared to them. No one had visions of her." If you haven't yet, or if you wish to again, read this masterful work from @adamsorardor.bsky.social

Yes, we received *that* email. Courage and strength to all our fellow small, independent presses doing the important work of celebrating diverse and original voices, whether its poetry or nonfiction, translated or not. Literature is not going anywhere.

Some of our favorite May Day graphics from @tamimentlibrary.bsky.social 🧵

Man this novel floored me. Absolute gut wrench.

Wife is now using the verb “to “brodernize” to refer to the vilification of any hobby that is objectively harmless and fun.

Pleased to report that the redbud blossoms have arrived in Upstate NY.

Loved this essay on Renata Adler, comma master: "Her punctuation jars, and turns abruptly, like a skater’s blade stopping and sending up shards of ice."

There are plenty of waterfalls in Central NY, lots of little lieutenants and capos, but this one here is the top don. Taughannock Falls, highest straight drop waterfall east of the Mississippi.

Today we're featuring "Waiting in the Woods," a fiction piece written by @sephmurtagh.bsky.social and featured in our Spring 2025 Issue, OUT NOW!

Micro up at @rejectionlit.bsky.social Hope you enjoy! rejection-letters.com/2025/04/16/b...

The first three chapters of my novel-in-progress are up at Terrazzo Mag. It’s about a city forester who is trying to write an urban forestry master plan while simultaneously taking care of her 3-month-old baby. It’s called THE TREE PLAN. Big thanks to Gina Nutt for publishing this excerpt!

Well, I suppose mistakes are the portals of discovery.