Yet another person has died in Trump's concentration camps, a Mexican national named Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez. He was 63. Guards found him unresponsive at CoreCivic's Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas. There's no official cause of death listed.

this guy

Who’s involved in Thiel’s secret society? Jon Haidt, Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, Cory Booker…

All things come to an end. Friends move, pets die; your class ring slips off, your dad stops saying “I love you.” Short fiction from @patrickcottrell.bsky.social tells the stories of four mammals dealing with such inevitability:

In my newsletter I delight in two new books that feature three women finding each other and having adventures. I also vent about AI once more, and how ugly AI-generated art is. www.themarisreview.com/the-maris-re...

Ted Chiang on AI: www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...

LFG!! If anybody is going to guide us through the dark times and the darker ones, it's obviously @emilyhughes.bsky.social — this project is near and dear to my heart for a host of reasons and I hope you'll all subscribe, like I just did!!

The South Korean gov't has recently begun to investigate its role in fraudulent adoptions. For @thebaffler.com, I reviewed a new book about how a messianic quest to “save” Korean children created the intercountry adoption industry and is bound up with a familicide: thebaffler.com/latest/god-s...

Read the story.

I've spent the last 8 years of my professional book critic career focusing my efforts on YA books by and about queer/trans and BIPOC experiences, and I have also noticed the decrease in these stories being published. It's incredibly dispiriting, as a queer Black adult and as a high school librarian.

For your early weekend reading, check out Elisabeth's review of @patrickcottrell.bsky.social's fantastic novel Afternoon Hours of a Hermit!! You know it's important because we used two exclamation marks!! Do it‼️🍎 #booksky www.whoevenreads.com/a-double-exc...

Patrick Cottrell’s Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is compelling from beginning to end, so funny and weird and terribly sad and really just wonderful work. I want to read it again because there’s so much to think about, but first I want to go back and read his first novel, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace.

ARCs are in for our two Fall titles, both slender novels, both brilliant: Denise Rose Hansen's BLUE SUNSET and Brais Lamela's WHAT REMAINS (trans. by Jacob Rogers)! Out on October 6, 2026!

"Much of my book Afternoon Hours of a Hermit concerns memory and the techniques of fiction which I have tried to pass onto my students." Patrick Cottrell shared a playlist for his novel Afternoon Hours of a Hermit at Largehearted Boy largeheartedboy.com/2026/05/13/p...

I wanted to start AANHPI Heritage Month by sharing the works of some fellow AAPI adoptee authors. Our literature, like our identities as adoptees, is complex, vibrant, and rich with possibility. Consider reading an AAPI adoptee author today. 💖🥚

Introducing AFTERNOON HOURS OF A HERMIT, the much-anticipated second novel from Patrick Cottrell, publishing in the UK and Europe on 22 September 2026. ‘a novel of genius’ @aminamemorycain.bsky.social Preorder now: uk.bookshop.org/a/1044/97819...

For today's newsletter I wrote about two new excellent novels by Jordan Harper and Patrick Cottrell. www.themarisreview.com/the-maris-re...

so thankful for this long and searching review about my new book afternoon hours of a hermit by deb olin unferth for bookforum www.bookforum.com/print/3204/s...

Evander James Reyes interviews Patrick Cottrell about his new novel, "The Afternoon Hours of a Hermit." They talk about Milwaukee as noir, metafictional doubling, frustration as the mechanics of plot, and more! buff.ly/1VoMLhX

Whoever called the faction of the press who still want to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner the ‘Access of Evil’ I salute you

Happy pub day to @patrickcottrell.bsky.social & his genius novel Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, out w/ @eccobooks.bsky.social. A book that looks deep into the void & is also funny, about the unknown, (mis)perception, dead names & the dead, writing, investigation & the history of the novel itself.

Happy Pub Day to @patrickcottrell.bsky.social's Afternoon Hours of a Hermit (@eccobooks.bsky.social)! Cottrell joins us next month with Rita Bullwinkel and R.O. Kwon. RSVP here: greenapplebooks.com/event/2026-0...

“ ‘Curtis is definitely a murderer,’ he said. ‘No question about it.’ ” From “Curtis” by Patrick Cottrell in our new Spring issue.

I reviewed Lio Min’s debut Beating Heart Baby, a queer YA romance set in perhaps the most intense high school marching band in Los Angeles.

Wrote about some of the books I'm most looking forward to next year for @them.us: www.them.us/story/most-a...

This list features, among others, @blipstress.bsky.social, @patrickcottrell.bsky.social, @gabriellekorn.bsky.social, @hughryan.bsky.social, @thatames.bsky.social, and @jordyrosenberg.bsky.social!

Here I am laughing in joy during the beautiful book launch for TERRY DACTYL at the Seattle Art Museum, thank you all!!!! And, get ready for my upcoming events in New York, DC, Baltimore, and Portland, please spread the word, and let's continue this magic 💕💕💕

Amazing review of THE ENDLESS WEEK in The Washington Post today! "It’s rare to encounter a book as feral and lovely as THE ENDLESS WEEK, one equally fluent in the comedy and the horror of the world — and the word." www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/1...

MIT President Sally Kornbluth just issued a statement to the campus community saying NO to Trump’s authoritarian compact “And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.”

I wrote about how the road to fascism is paved with false equivalencies. lithub.com/the-real-thr...

Couldn’t be happier that the Nobel has gone to Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Back in 2012 I tried to astroturf a movement claiming him as the Next Big Thjng but it didn’t take off because he’s too difficult www.theguardian.com/books/2012/j...

Honey, look, it's a gorgeous final copy of TERRY DACTYL, out on November 11 from @coffeehousepress.bsky.social🎉🎉🎉 Book launch on Saturday, October 25, 3 pm at the Seattle Art Museum, and you can preorder signed copies from Elliott Bay Book Company, or preorder from your favorite indie, get ready 💎⚡✨

To have a new novel coming out by @patrickcottrell.bsky.social is thrilling. I love the cover; I am also very jealous of the title! people.com/patrick-cott...

Check out this excerpt from THE ENDLESS WEEK by Laura Vazquez, translated by Alex Niemi, in the new @harpers.bsky.social Readings section! Book pubs next week! 9/30! harpers.org/archive/2025...

PORTHOLE by Joanna Howard (@mcsweeneys.net). Reviewed by Martin Horn. necessaryfiction.com/reviews/port...

rachel cusk describes a man eating a huge amount of ice cream

This continues to be the biggest story in the country: DOGE has already squandered half a trillion dollars in 6 weeks. Not billion. half a trillion, $500 billion talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/irs-p...

Tonight an unbelievable **34,000 people** gathered for our Denver rally to take on billionaires and win our country back. This was the largest political gathering in Denver since Obama in 2008. Also bigger than the 2024 DNC. And the largest ever rally in Bernie’s career (and obviously, mine too).

This is why you fight these cowards. The moment you stand up to them, they crumble. Homan has nothing. The Fourth Amendment is clear and I am well within my duties to educate people of their rights. He can threaten me with jail and call names all he wants. He’s got nothing else.

so excited to announce that my second novel, ALL US SAINTS, is out next year from Bloomsbury ✨ it's about family, art, and the way a closeted trans girl's act of desperation is permanently warped in the cis imagination

The NYT asked me to write an op-ed on Musk and the Treasury and then took a pass. I hope it will still get read.

🖤

NEW: Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.

Here are the options on the table (which are not mutually exclusive): 1. House Dems bring articles of impeachment* 2. Senate Dems play constitutional hardball and obstruct everything 3. State AGs litigate (and prosecute) everything they can 4. Citizens march en mass

I don’t think we understand: Elon Musk is the most powerful man in the world, by far. Not just because of his money. But because of his access and control of all data at every possible point. He locked government officials out of their computers yesterday. Now this:

Once someone starts talking about what “can’t happen” in the USA because of checks and balances, it’s best to stop listening to them.

Dear humans, Just wanted to share something I've been quiet about, in the year of my loud self-doubt, with gratitude to @sarabandebooks.bsky.social and to many others whom I look forward to thanking in the coming months, MY HERESIES, forthcoming in April 2025.🖤 www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...