"I was never going to be Scottish, or as good looking or charming. But I could raise my Sickboy flag high and proud through the singed follicles of my scalp, with three-inch spikes of pure salt-white hair jutting up like defiant stalagmites." Kirk Wisland: www.essaydaily.org/2025/12/dec-...

I was talking to my husband and said something about 9/11 and my six-year-old overheard, then came roaring through the room "nine eleeevveeennn" like she was saying "six seven." So, parenting in 2025?

ICYMI: ASU English alumni @leahenewsom.bsky.social, Daryn Orr and Sharon Enck along with other grads from The College chatted with Dean @jeffreyjcohen.bsky.social about how their #ASUHumanities degrees prepared them for careers and beyond. Watch: t.co/vSRoG9LOOV

Thanks to @literaryhub.bsky.social for co-publishing my new short story "Home Sweet NewHome," which also appears in the latest print issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. You can read it online at Lit Hub today!

Yesterday a student described Barthelme's "The School" as a proto-"shitpost core" story. And now I'm just convinced GenZ brainrot is postmodernism2. Hats off, kids.

Now that it's been a few days, I wanted to share some of my favorite pieces I wrote for Eater over the 6+ years I was there. First off, I got to write a lot about the intersection of food and queerness, culminating in this piece that got me a JBFA nomination www.eater.com/24162871/foo...

“'Classicism and Other Phobias,' contends with loss in its own way, by asking if classics might be used to combat forces, like racism, that give rise to profound losses... ” @newyorker.com @platanoclassics.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/books/book-c...

🐴 Fiction Friday: "That’s the key: the patterns. Without them, it’s just people in horse costumes." From "Horseplay" by ASU English alum @leahenewsom.bsky.social‬. Read the story in Daedalus, journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences: ow.ly/2LMN50WFv9k #ASUHumanities CC: @acmrs.bsky.social

I love @leahenewsom.bsky.social's writing, and her new story "Horseplay" is my favorite thing she's written. A wild work of fiction. Don't miss it!

I have a story out today in the new issue of Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The list of contributors is unreal, and I'm grateful to Ayanna Thompson for letting me get away with this wild story. (You can read it online!) www.amacad.org/daedalus/hor...

Birthright citizenship isn’t only a legal construct, but it’s also a reproductive issue. Any attempt to narrow who qualifies as a citizen necessarily burdens the women whose bodies become the contested sites of national identity. More from Dan-el Padilla Peralta on citizenship and biopolitics:

May 10: “Old Soul” by Sam Lipsyte I think Sam’s one of the best writers alive, which I never really *forget*, but sometimes take for granted. Then I’ll reread something, and go “holy shit” out loud a few times — sometimes surprised he went there, other times in awe of what he can do w/ a sentence.

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

my 14yo made a power point of what she wants her future to look like and this is my favorite slide

Finally, my pandemic salve show is getting the attention it deserves lol www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

AND ALSO WITH YOUSE

"This project really doesn’t have any right to... make quite as much sense as it does. But it is an absorbing, heart-racing, and thrilling production that gracefully utilizes this music to co-exist within powerful dramatic depictions of grief, fear, madness, and death." pitchfork.com/thepitch/rad...

"What interests me about the scramble for Kalaallit Nunaat is not so much ahistorical appropriations of the Viking Age for right-wing nationalist politics ...but rather how the recent 'scramble' for Kalaallit Nunaat conjures the specter of medieval colonialism." medium.com/@acmrs/76721...

False narratives about migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are nothing new. Teaching premodern migration histories can contextualize the present anti-immigrant rhetoric. Find Mayte Green-Mercado's full talk and exemplar syllabi on Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

Had the unreal luck of having 3 pages of LUMP, my screenplay draft, critiqued on Scriptnotes this week. Feeling very appreciative of the time and generosity of John August, Craig Mazin, and Drew Marquardt. (The shredding of the lump begins at 39:45). podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Money talks

@smathewss.bsky.social writes this as a novelist, an organizer and an immigrant who grew up under authoritarianism. I found it a centering and even calming experience to read it, arriving at a place to act from, variously.

I streamed two of this year's Sundance movies last night: ATROPIA, which won this year's Grand Jury Prize (and which I thought was really good), and BY DESIGN, which has the best logline I've seen in a long time: "A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair."

To continue her mission of uplifting Native artists, IAIA is establishing a scholarship fund in her honor. Contributions can be made at give.iaia.edu/give/659321/...

The art is a pointed critique of the notion that Native American people and culture have been dispersed and diminished. Quick-to-See Smith instead imagines the disappearance of white America. About this work, she has said: 'the culture's changing…this is what’s happening, the Browning of America.'

The artwork featured on the program cover and marketing materials for RaceB4Race Indigeneity is "The Vanishing American" by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The work was provided courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. We are saddened to hear of the artist's passing on January 24.

During the early pandemic, @leahenewsom.bsky.social and I hosted PLAY TIME on Zoom, gathering writers to do cold read performances of plays none of us had seen, with parts assigned by random chance. Last night we finally hosted one in “real life,” and it was a blast. Can’t wait for next time!

Battle cry for 2025.

RIP to the king

Please join us on Saturday, February 8 for the keynote event of Indigeneity: A RaceB4Race Symposium. We are thrilled to bring Tommy Orange to ASU Tempe Campus, and hope you join us for what is sure to be an incredible evening. Free and open to the public. Register at bit.ly/4gGUU6Z today!

In the last month, I've had two bonkers pieces of writing picked up: an essay about future mythologies of the Dirt Man AND a very long short story about people pretending to be horses in a post-water-crisis Sonoran Desert. And. Frankly. I think I have reached my ideal writing niche.

If you're not on the #Throughlines mailing list, you're missing out. Today we shared a history of colonial seizure of Native lands under the precedence of the Doctrine of Discovery, thanks to Scott Manning Stevens. #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #IndigenousLivesMatter mailchi.mp/asu.edu/thro...

I am thrilled and frankly kind of shook that they let me get away with this—I have a weird little piece on the tiktok phenomenon DIRT MAN and the aesthetics of the future-past Southwest out in Imaginary Papers today. mailchi.mp/asu.edu/imag...