2025: Another year of celebrating tsundoku …

The Holdovers is my new Christmas movie tradition. Any movie where the hero smells like fish and is generally unapologetic about it …

It’s amazing to find, after so many years writing, novel approaches to drafting something new and how almost always those exciting methodologies require a sense of play. “Fun” is the operative and generative word.

a good time to bump this

A screen recording of a 60 Mins segment about the CECOT prison in El Salvador, which was intended to be aired today but was pulled last minute for "unclear reasons." Despite being pulled, it aired on Global-TV in Canada anyway: archive.org/details/60mi...

May I find the joy this Christmas that the Temptations have on their Christmas album cover.

I made it 21 days before being Whammed. To be honest, Christmas isn’t complete without George.

“All the way through Austen’s novels you have references to women working.” Women’s work in Jane Austen’s novels is ubiquitous, continuous, and economically very important. youtu.be/no989hLT0rY?...

"It blows my mind that 2020 saw one of the greatest uprisings in modern history, and our novelists and short story writers are acting as though…we were all just inside talking about fruit ninja. Solely because they are afraid of being called didactic." countercraft.substack.com/p/processing...

I've had a great time selecting some pieces to mark the solstice and year's end at @necessaryfiction.com, and am grateful to the writers who shared their work. Here is the first gathering of lights, with three more to follow in the days ahead.

It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans. 🧵 1 of 9

In partnership with Fitzcarraldo Editions, Giramondo and New Directions, Granta is pleased to presents extracts from the eight shortlisted collections for the Poetry in Translation Prize 2025. granta.com/the-poetry-i...

fucking NO.

Every Friday afternoon since July, I’ve held a two-hour, online writing accountability group. Since my time at Versal, I’ve been missing the literary community a journal creates locally. Though not as nearly ambitious, and a lot less work, this group is becoming something like that.

I have always died on the David Brooks is an asshole hill. This comes as zero surprise.

Cormac McCarthy line sticking with me this morning, from The Passenger: “Evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure.”

Really dig this one.

Check out my story, “Conflagration Kills Five” in the new issue of @smokelong.bsky.social ! Thank you, @kplumhoff.bsky.social for sharing your favorite line. Can’t wait to read your story (and the others in this issue) once I’m done grading!

This is such an incredible essay that both critiques and inspires. Bravo.

The loss of cultural criticism and criticism as a professional field is making society manifestly worse.

I cannot breathe without the great oracle Zoltar telling me how to do so! All praise the great mechanical sage!

Look what just came in the mail. @greensbororeview.bsky.social

Netflix buying Warner Bros. is all the reason I need to go back to buying DVDs again. Monopoly guy’s top hat falling off in cartoonish shock.

Felt this one in my bones (from Elizabeth McCracken's A Long Game): "I have never doubted that I am a real writer... I have only doubted and loathed my writing and excoriated myself for not working harder."

Finally, some good news.

Crossed into Germany for the Christmas markets. Have not seen one smile in hours.

Short Story, Long updates: • gonna open submissions in January • for 2026, going to increase payment to $150 (for story publication, and also for artists) ashortstorylong.substack.com

As an American living in Europe for almost 20 years, one thing I can confidently say about Trump is that he knows very little about the European character. In fact, I think I can safely claim he knows very little in general. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/w...

This is hilarious. And also very frightening. And also so absurdly funny you'll forget why it's frightening.

It's simple — @propublica.org workers should not be replaced by artificial intelligence. Our contract proposal specifically says that generative artificial intelligence ("GAI") should not be used to replace employees. Management struck out this entire section in their response to our proposal.

Can’t sleep, so here I am again, reading this

"That the Dutch far right did not win the election is less important than the fact that their worldview has permeated parties that claim to oppose them. The true danger ... for Europe more broadly, is not a far-right takeover but the quiet hollowing out...." thewire.in/world/the-du...

"You just cannot underestimate the massive difference in writing out of female anonymity. It blows all the styles out of the water." - Eileen Myles, Long and Social

Look, I know we’re all rightfully pissed about the current Epstein stuff, but you should really set aside some time and read this piece. There’s a reason “mitigating the effects of climate change” is one of my key policy positions.

At about 8:24, as @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social describes a gig economy app for nurses (on which pay fluctuating daily according to demand) a gentleman in the audience shouts "fuck that shit". Let me tell ya, my heart grew three sizes. Fuck that shit indeed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dMI...

Speaking of 80 year olds: happy birthday Neil Young. If I could live with one person’s voice in my head, it might be his.

The new Pynchon is kind of a crazy thing for an 88 year old to write.

Was reading Your Silence Will Not Protect You, an Audre Lorde collection from Silver Press, on the plan and I find it (maybe not so) amazing how urgent her writing feels in this moment.

“You simply cannot learn and know at the same time, and this is a frustration all artists must bear.” -- Mary Ruefle

David Brooks is exceptionally good at writing articles full of "duh" statements and passing it off as "insight." His solution to Trump? Re-envision America! Um ... ok. How will we do it? Platitudes, apparently! www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

I was published in this wonderful journal a while ago. Faculty editor Sarah Anne Strickley and the rest of the editorial team over there do fantastic work. Support them!

Whenever I ponder the question of what comes after postmodernism, I always think about this passage from David Foster Wallace’s “E Unibus Pluram: Television & U.S. Fiction” (1990). It’s a spectacular essay, very prescient, and a clarion call to novelists, poets, and critics.

baseball is the best preparation for death because it does not come with a clock that tells you when your suffering will end one way or the other

Cleaning out a leaking barn, so giving the bike a quick service before putting it into storage.

“These books ask questions about what it means to belong to somewhere, whether you are welcomed or not, what it means to stay or leave, or to exist in-between.”

bro what 😭