omg i made the @nymag.com copy editing newsletter from copy chief carl rosen!!!!!! (in addition to being a spelling bee kid i am a lifelong grammar stan 😎)

This whole recent @cdt.org report on the risks of AI in schools is worth a read, but this is the bit that surprised me most (maybe partly because I've reported on AI in schools but not on ICE in schools). cdt.org/insights/han...

my fifth grader and his friends have started a writing group that i'm helping with and the combo of genres is so excellent: nature poetry, realist fiction, essays, stephen king fan fiction, and fan fiction based on a book series about feral cats 😎✨

"Big Tech’s ambition is to create an archive of everything we do and everything we are—an aspiration that is unprecedented in human history. The only thing that comes close can be found in religion." I wrote about Vauhini Vara's Searches @thenation.com (free link!) www.thenation.com/article/soci...

The book from which this extraordinarily open-hearted and moving essay is excerpted in @theatlantic.com is out this week from @nxthompson.bsky.social. Buy it here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/678434...

I have such good taste! Or @thefrontlist.org does! or both of us. I blurbed and highly recommend two excellent books on this list — @thelincoln.bsky.social‘s METALLIC REALMS and @annanorth.bsky.social’s BOG QUEEN. and my SEARCHES is on there too! 🎉

In January, Sam Altman gave Donald Trump credit for OpenAI's success: "We wouldn't be able to do this without you, Mr. President." I keep thinking of this profile I wrote in 2017, when Trump was first elected. Here are some excerpts and a link. (1/x) story.californiasunday.com/silicon-vall...

Did your TV set interrupt you to hit the remote's AI sparkle button? Did (ahem) The Washington Post site nudge you to use an AI browser to get FREE ARTICLES? Have you noticed chatbots paying for phone pre-installs? Welcome to the PAY FOR OR NAG FOR DISTRIBUTION phase of AI. wapo.st/4hv3Eyp

"I know fictional characters when I see them. ChatGPT is one. The problem is that it has no author,” writes novelist @vauhinivara.bsky.social. If OpenAI has only tenuous control over the narrator it has unleashed, she asks, who is responsible for its output? www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

Last month, I discovered — and wrote in Businessweek — about how the buzzy AI private school Alpha has quietly been operating as part of a giant tech company with a surveillance-based business model. Now @toddfeathers.bsky.social has a great deep dive on the harms for some students. (1/2)

My 10-year-old is obsessed too! And I think it’s really good myself.

Arundhati Roy on John Berger —

oh my god i was reading people's recs for great magazine profiles and clicked on this new yorker profile of marlon brando by truman capote and have never read anything worse than this lede PLEASE SEND ME GENUINELY GREAT PROFILES TO CLEANSE MY SOUL OF THIS ☠️

nbd just me & SEARCHES on the @publisherswkly.bsky.social's cover for the best books of 2025: "Vara’s most inventive work yet is a soulful, perceptive take on humanity’s relationship with technology." (also: @annanorth.bsky.social's new BOG QUEEN!) ✨ best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-book...

Last time I did this talk, I was on Twitter with 15k followers, and right after I posted it, more than 100 people signed up. Now @bsky.app is my only social media, but I have just 600ish followers, and 1 person has signed up so far, I think because people don't know about it? Help me out by sharing?

pov guilted by ai for not responding to the first ai email

in which i compare chatgpt to humbert humbert

It's a perfect autumn morning in Atlanta, coffee shop is spinning Air's Moon Safari on vinyl, and Vauhini Vara (@vauhinivara.bsky.social) is speaking at Emory at 4PM this afternoon. Come on out! www.eventbrite.com/e/vauhini-va...

when chatgpt was new, ted chiang famously compared it to a blurry jpeg of everything on the internet. I wrote for @theatlantic.com about how that, these days, it’s more like a fictional character that people treat as real. ☠️ (gift link)

My son is at the age where he has discovered your mom jokes but also still wants to play with me which means having your mom joke contests with him. mine are all: “your mom is so smart that everyone is like omg how is your mom so smart????”

I told my son someone was a “baddie” so he would think I was cool for using slang and he was like “mom that’s so gen z“— as in, old-fashioned ☠️

Out today!!!!!

For @newrepublic.com, I wrote about John J. Lennon's THE TRAGEDY OF TRUE CRIME, which provides a challenging and bracing reckoning with guilt and the possibility of changing the narrative of one’s life: newrepublic.com/article/2010...

ahhh the latest from @annanorth.bsky.social (via @bloomsburybooksus.bsky.social) — and her most extraordinary yet — just came in the mail! If you want to hear a bog talk (yes, I said ”a bog talk”), I offer this preview. For more: Read BOG QUEEEN 👑

I'm running a daylong retreat — How to Write a Novel — with Hedgebrook on December 6th! There are only 20 spots, and registration just opened, so snap up your spot! ✨ hedgebrook.wildapricot.org/event-6352549

You can hear me read from Searches and talk to Stephanie Young at this free online event hosted by @northeasternu.bsky.social (Mills College) at noon PT on 11/4! 🔥 www.eventbrite.com/e/writing-cr...

Soft-launching: a new digital project on Indigenous Writers (Adivasi writers) from South Asia. I've been working on it this summer with a graduate student collaborator, Srishti Raj. Adivasi literature is another glaring gap in the archive, with a lot of materials untranslated and inaccessible. 1/3

I've met plenty of public figures and been left unfazed. Even secretly disdained all those fazed fanchildren. Then I met George Saunders—whose work transformed me 25 years ago—at Lighthouse in Denver (and he, as generous as is said!), and now I'm one of you. Such maniacal grinning. I'm unashamed. ✨

Atlanta friends, I'll be giving a talk at Emory with the AIAI Network — about what AI means for writing and reading — on October 16th at 4 pm. Come one, come all! www.eventbrite.com/e/vauhini-va...

“Impressive … Lennon’s ambition is not to turn human suffering into spectacle, but to restore complexity to his own story and those of the men around him.“ @pamelacolloff.bsky.social’s sensitive and admiring review of THE TRAGEDY OF TRUE CRIME.

The Tragedy of True Crime might be the first journalistic book written entirely from prison; it subverts true crime by telling the story of four men who murdered, but centering the social conditions for crime and punishment, not the salacious details. I got to interview its extraordinary author. 🔥

I’m so excited about this! come say hi!

Big essay out by @sdileonardi.bsky.social in @publicbooks.bsky.social today, drawing on 100 years of translations and bestseller data to show that the US has seen three waves of translation: European; Latin American Boom; Nordic Noir. And what this means for us. www.publicbooks.org/how-translat...

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

If you live in LA, Miami, Chicago, DC or Boston, you know what you should do? You should go hear John J. Lennon talk about his extraordinary new book The Tragedy of True Crime. (Stay tuned for events in New York, too.)

As I reported in Businessweek this year, it turns out Alpha has been operating as a subsidiary of a major tech company — and using its products with the children in its schools, including closely tracking them with webcams and microphones.

I hope those reporting on Alpha read this thread (or better yet, the article). bsky.app/profile/vauh...

I've gotten requests and want to make a more formal offer: I'll remotely visit groups of public K-12 students / parents / teachers (including in classrooms!) that would like to read and discuss this article. Here's a form where you can express interest. (Pls share?) docs.google.com/forms/d/1yn-...

Today Melania Trump met with execs in support of AI in education. It's part of a big push by tech companies and the Trump Administration to get AI products into schools fast. If there's an American child you care about, pls read my recent article about what's happening. Let's be informed.

This is as thorough and well-reported as promised. Really worth a read if you're interested in the current state of play on AI in K-12 education.

In-depth reporting by @vauhinivara.bsky.social on how AI tools are being integrated into K-12 despite a wide range of deep concerns and little research to support the push. My takeaway: teachers who are resisting when districts and ed institutions are selling kids out to tech cos. need support.

Still thinking about this, from @vauhinivara.bsky.social's piece about AI in K-12. An AI can of course do all kinds of things that are still worth doing but also, I'm trying to imagine the world in which high school kids only ever do the things that an AI can't do. Even if your goal was /1

Experts have voiced concerns that generative AI amplifies inaccuracy and bias. Thank you, @bloomberg.com, for sharing a painful example. #EduSky www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

You might have heard of the private school, Alpha, that says it uses AI to squeeze a school day's worth of learning into two hours. It's gotten coverage in the NYT, WSJ, and elsewhere. But I found while reporting this article that the story is more complicated and interesting than that. (1/x)

I've been working for many months on this article on Silicon Valley's under-the-radar role in bringing AI into schools across the US. I really hope you'll read it — here's a gift link — but I'll tell you some of the highlights in this thread. (1/x)

📣 applications are open for periplus, a mentorship collective serving writers of color! 📣 if you’re looking for mentorship & more community & you’re a writer of color, you can find more info below. this will be the sixth year our collective is active docs.google.com/document/d/1...

This is the only social media platform I’m on anymore, and I’m not sure if it’s good for this sort of thing, but I’ll try (Colorado people, help me by sharing this!): anyone wanna buy a pair of good tickets to the Pixies at Red Rocks on 9/2 for $250 total? DM me!

👇👇👇

Journalist community: Let’s support our incredible colleague @kwanetaharris.bsky.social with this fundraiser! 🎉🎉🎉

Jin Zhao's "Bad People" floored me when I first encountered it: It's so tautly written and emotionally complex — makes me think of Chekhov or Yiyun Li's early stories. I'm so excited that the rest of you can now read it at @narrativemag.bsky.social! www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stori...