"With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings." - Robert Walser, Jakob van Gunten, translated by Christopher Middleton

Joy Williams on Rilke in the NYRB. She pulls out the most Joy Williams Rilke quotation www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

The info desk keyboard is broken. I tried to explain to the student workers that a lipogram in C and V is not hard, but put in a request with IT anyway

My story in the latest @exactingclam.bsky.social issue is constructed around a sleep cycle. Each paragraph's length and character is dictated by a corresponding sleep stage, and each contains one object from "The Pea Test" aka "The Princess and the Pea" www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-20...

70% of public libraries have a backlog of deferred maintenance and repair 43% of public libraries have a physical barrier to accessibility publiclibrariesonline.org/2026/01/majo...

How do I get to Earth's End? Walk around the protest and turn left at Spring

Deadline is January 30, 2026. Send us something fantastic

Pitch for a new library service model: visiting your family for the holidays. Staff pad around the library in bathrobes drinking coffee, and when you ask for a book we give you 10 and say you can take the leftovers home with you. There's also a dog that is psyched out of her mind to see you

A new digital platform is being established to preserve the archives of news outlets that have been shut down or are facing extinction in authoritarian countries. The platform, a joint project of PEN America and Bard College, is called Kronika apnews.com/article/cens...

“Architects transform their thoughts into images, and these images are transformed into rooms, buildings, houses, parks, cities, roads. You think you’re walking down a street, but you’re walking in the thoughts of a stranger.” - Laura Vazquez, The Endless Week trans. Alex Niemi

We say "I better head out soon or I'll turn into a pumpkin" and I'm realizing this means we identify not with Cinderella, but with her conveyance to the ball. Maybe we identify with the story itself: the container of the Cinderella arc

I’m taking a class on Tolstoy’s short fiction, and Father Sergius visited one of my classmates in a dream

What an incredible joy and privilege it is, in 2025 (or any time really), to open a new library

It took me 6 business days to cave and put Outlook and Slack on my phone

the Tom La Farge Award 2025 Please join us at the Grolier Club (47 East 60th St., New York City) at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday 16 October  to honor Zack Darsee, this year's recipient of the Tom La Farge Award for Innovative Writing, Teaching and Publishing. www.thetomlafargeaward.com

I created a form called a "migraine story" that uses the stages of a migraine, from trigger to rebound, as a structure. TYPO has just published the first migraine story in issue 12. Thank you, Norman Conquest! blackscatbooks.com/2025/10/01/n...

Writers, publishers, and/or educators: the application period for the 2026 Tom La Farge Award is now open. This $10,000 prize supports innovative work and community practice. Please spread the word! www.thetomlafargeaward.com

Tom La Farge's The Crimson Bears back in print, now in one volume as he always intended www.kickstarter.com/projects/186...

This is my last week in a public library before I move to an academic one. I am so excited for this opportunity, but I will miss the kids, and the older folks, and the weirdos

"Given the prevalence of hype and misunderstandings surrounding GenAI, unpacking discourse on GenAI and AI literacy is a powerful and necessary part of this work" www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2025/ai-feel...

Angelo Pastormerlo asked me to write little reactions to his collection of not-so-obscure objects of desire, and to write an introduction. The strange little book is out now from Book Whisperer Press with photographs by Norman Conquest. How can you resist? www.amazon.com/dp/B0FMKC3SYT

Yesterday was a good day in the library, in which I did all the usual democratizing information work, and I also helped a young person find comics and told a regular patron to listen to @wfmu.bsky.social 🤘

Do something interesting with language

“‘Sexual stealing’ has been a constant in American history and has held center stage in our literature since the moment of its inception.” SEXUAL STEALING by Wendy Walker is a beautiful, dangerous book. Available free in seven weekly instalments. Start here : temporary-culture.com/sexual-steal...

The summer issue of @northamerreview.bsky.social is here and I am thrilled to have my story "Barbara Blue" out in the world!

Congratulations to Zoe Darsee, winner of the 2025 Tom La Farge Award for Innovative Writing, Teaching and Publishing. Thrilled to celebrate your writing and community practice

Nest found in the library parking lot near the woods. I think it's a house finch's. I think/hope the chicks fledged and everyone moved out before it fell out of the tree

Often, patrons come to talk to me at the reference desk, and I can tell they are practicing making conversation with someone safe - maybe their therapist even suggested it. They are nervous, awkward, and earnest. I'm always happy to talk to them about the weather

“The @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social said funding cuts mean cuts to services, hours of operations, and in more rural areas, some libraries may be forced to close entirely.” wgntv.com/western-subu... #SaveIMLS

More and more worried about this. About the Talking Book and Braille Centers, about Interlibrary Loan, about all the research databases provided by state libraries to smaller public libraries

This is a great issue of Clam, Exacting Clam. Especially enjoying the short fiction

Snow Moon tonight, and I am over the moon to share that my story "Barbara Blue" won the 2025 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize northamericanreview.org/open-space/2...

Just one more week to apply! This generous prize supports folks working outside accepted literary convention

A couple times a week, our reference desk gets a phone call from a gruff man in his car who wants to know what song is currently playing on the classical radio station

This kid slightly misunderstood their homework assignment and we could not possibly love it more. 12/10

I searched "gold purse" to get images for something I'm writing and I found this purse made out of a cane toad. It costs $490 and your coins come out of its butt

Could you use $10,000 for an innovative writing/publishing/teaching project? One more month to apply! www.thetomlafargeaward.com

Dear Librarian, classify THIS! From my friend Angelo

Despite feeling this way, I just recorded a podcast segment for my library on books I'm excited for this year: 1) In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir with Appearances by Virginia Woolf a book by Heather Christle bookshop.org/p/books/in-t...

I read 52 books in 2024. Some of them were short, but one of them was Moby Dick. I finished the last one yesterday: The Way Things Go by Louis Bury punctumbooks.com/titles/the-w...

More interested in the books we least anticipate for next year

"These sentences will wind tightly around who we are and how we live and will grow habitations as they wonder; they will cleave from the ground in enclosures of grief and will knoll" -Renee Gladman, Plans For Sentences, Fig. 23

Baba Yaga Bi-Square — @causeatiger.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2024/10/15/b...

The Tom La Farge Award for Innovative Writing, Teaching and Publishing is now accepting applications through February 15. Send us your adventurous proposals. And please spread the word www.thetomlafargeaward.com