PSA for @iowawriterswksp.bsky.social people going to AWP: RSVPs for this event, on the Friday of AWP, close on Monday! You can find it in the AWP schedule — you might also have an email in your inbox or spam from the Iowa alumni / development office. via always in-the-know @khaliah.bsky.social

This piece by departing OpenAI researcher Zoe Hitzig is terrific, partly because it explores concrete solutions to the problem of AI companies binding their financial success to exploitation of users. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

Join us! 👇🏾✨

in June, I wrote for @nytopinion.nytimes.com about how ChatGPT ads would fit into a long Silicon Valley history of companies hating on ads, then adopting them. Now the ads are here. Hope you’ll read If you missed it back then. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/o...

The first post is up and it’s great -- points out that the Post no longer has either a dedicated critic of Amazon‘s (and other companies’) tech products or a dedicated Amazon reporter. This is one to subscribe to. 👏 geoffreyfowler.substack.com/p/washington...

We caricature Thoreau for glorifying self-sufficiency but relying on his mom for meals. But he was an abolitionist too. I loved this essay, from a mother who also runs a major refugee resettlement agency, about how her appreciation of Thoreau has transformed over decades. lithub.com/turning-to-t...

Wait, what? Geoff, too? surely he’s already gotten a zillion job offers, but, if you’re reading this, you, too, should offer him a job. (Or, editor/agent friends: get him to write a book!!!)

I feel quite convinced that @nitasha.bsky.social must already have a number of job offers already on the table, but, hey, psst, publications, look at who you have a chance to snap up????? 🤯

After 20 years, I've been laid off at The Washington Post. substack.com/home/post/p-...

New paper on Why Slop Matters w/ great group of co authors (@hoytlong.bsky.social @eduede.bsky.social @ari-holtzman.bsky.social + others not on Bluesky) from ACM AI Letters. We try to move the debate re: AI Slop past normative, neg claims & towards parsing its social uses. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Whatever you think of the Washington Post at this moment, here's a chance to support the dedicated, hard-working journalists who were just laid off. If you have the means, your donation is most welcome. If you don't, a kind thought and maybe spreading the word to others is support enough 💙

This excellent piece, from a former Washington Post writer, is the most comprehensive I've seen so far, answering a lot of my questions: Why has the Post's business suffered while the NYT's has been sustained? What are some better possible futures? www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

It's time to apply for the second annual DAG Prize, celebrating innovation and supporting sustainable careers in the arts — $20,000 apiece for a writer, a musician, and a visual artist! Last year's winners were @michaelzapata.bsky.social, Elizabeth Ziman, and Ziba Rajabi. Please share widely! ✨

I hope someone good applies for this and gets the offer and then writes a tell-all essay about it in like the @yalereview.bsky.social or @thebeliever.net

SEARCHES won the Porchlight Business Book Award, alongside @karenhao.bsky.social's excellent EMPIRE OF AI and others — thank you, @porchlightbooks.bsky.social! ✨ www.porchlightbooks.com/blogs/news/c...

The deadline's in two days — apply, apply!

what a gorgeous syllabus and reading list!

This was so fun!!! Listen!!! ✨

In-the-know writer/agent/editor friends (@likaluca.bsky.social, @mtaeckens.bsky.social, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, @sugi.bsky.social, @ninamcconigley.bsky.social, @alexanderchee.bsky.social?): Which writing conferences with agent meetings actually regularly result in writers finding representation?

Fascinating and thought-provoking essay by @vauhinivara.bsky.social on AI-generated literature—drawing on research by @tuhinchakr.bsky.social, Jane Ginsburg, and @dhillonp.bsky.social. The piece includes an uncanny quiz (which I did terribly on) and a beautiful meditation on literature.

Tape collection. (There are dozens more.)

Waterlogged Sweet Valley Highs and Babysitters Clubs from reading in the shower

Giant NKOTB button circa 1988. ⚡️🔥

My mom made me take home a box of old stuff from her garage & look who was EDITOR of the SUMMER SCHOOL TIMES 32 years ago. 😎

Read this and you can take a quiz to see if you can tell my writing apart from A.I.; hear what Lydia Davis, Orhan Pamuk, Junot Díaz and Sigrid Nunez think; and let me tell you why Ngugi wa Thiong'o might help us see our way through it.

I just started this book from @yalepress.bsky.social and it is blowing my mind.

Hey, @publisherslunch.bsky.social says Searches is one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the year, according to a bunch of year-end lists they looked at! The only other one on here I've read so far is Arundhati Roy's, but I also loved it.

For Esquire, I updated my list of 2025's best books to include 8 more titles. @atriabooks.bsky.social @riverheadbooks.bsky.social @doubledaybooks.bsky.social @milkweededitions.bsky.social @graywolfpress.bsky.social www.esquire.com/entertainmen...

And this one, too, from Esquire's @adamm0rgan.bsky.social, whose year-end list I always wait for! www.esquire.com/entertainmen...

And the other is @constancegrady.bsky.social at Vox! 🔥

I'm so so honored that two of my favorite critics put me on their lists of the best books of the year! ✨ One of them is @maris.bsky.social at @annehelen.bsky.social's Culture Study. (You should subscribe to both Culture Study and the Maris Review, by the way.) www.patreon.com/posts/very-b...

Which canonical American authors are the public reading, and why? To find out, we analyzed library borrowing patterns for every author in the Norton Anthology of American Literature (1945 to the Present). Excited to share this new CHR paper & data! anthology.ach.org/volumes/vol0... #CHR2025

The first lawsuit against OpenAI that claims ChatGPT led to a murder www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

New this morning in The Important Work, from Babson English prof Shannon Mooney: what the em dash debate can tell us about why students use AI to write their papers--and how she's grappling with that in the classroom. theimportantwork.substack.com/p/chatgpt-an...

Mackenzie Scott is the best — and, not for nothing, the best writer — of the billionaires. I hope she writes another book one day. yieldgiving.com/essays/we-ar...

Happy book launch to this thrilling-sounding book!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Vauhini does the unglamorous work of reading OpenAI's documentation and finds something very very interesting.

When I shared my concerns with the OpenAI product manager responsible for these guidelines, she said she could see my point and would take it back to the team, saying, “Hey, maybe we need to adjust the sentence.” It's part of a long history of people / institutions negotiating how objectivity works.

I thought at first that OpenAI was breaking its promise of objectivity. Then I realized it’s just redefining how objectivity functions — something that’s happened over and over. (Gift link!)

If you’d told me when I was in high school that only one song on the radio at the time would be regularly listened to by my kid‘s generation, I would not in a million years have put my money on Smash Mouth’s All Star.

Fellow members of the Class of 2000, this one — another @emilygouldnymag.bsky.social delight — is for us. ☠️✨ www.thecut.com/article/midd...

A clear-eyed celebration of being an English professor in 2025. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

Apply to the CSU MFA program in creative writing and work with this all-star cast: Andrew Altschul, Ramona Ausubel, Dan Beachy-Quick, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Matthew Cooperman, Camille Dungy, Nina McConigley, Sarah Perry, and Sasha Steensen! ✨

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com. We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans. washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

I’m so looking forward to this too! ✨

Just 5 years ago, tech companies made pledges to increase diversity and inclusion in their workplaces. Now, they seem to be backing down, and we’re losing key transparency into the industry’s workforce. www.wired.com/story/google...

This is a really cool first: My book SEARCHES on Kirkus's list of the best nonfiction books of 2025, along with a book by one of my Book Project mentees: John J. Lennon's THE TRAGEDY OF TRUE CRIME! ✨ (& my old boss @nxthompson.bsky.social's THE RUNNING GROUND!) www.kirkusreviews.com/best-of/2025...

In case you missed this one: @vauhinivara.bsky.social looked deeper than the usual at AI in schools. For sure, AI can do some good things, but I get skeeved when billionaires hope to make more billions pushing anything on children.

My son was trick or treating in Boulder, CO, on Halloween, and at one house got this offer: candy or a mystery coin. He chose the coin. (1/x)