If you live in the northern hemisphere, the Big Dark is here, and bookshop.org has you covered with this list of mood boosting books: uk.bookshop.org/lists/mood-b...

"Library data shows that banning a book tends to boost its circulation by about 11–12%." Love to see us exercising our freedom to read! www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/free...

My 3 favorite books from this year's reads. 💙 shepherd.com/bboy/2025/f/...

"I don’t believe in pure genres, we no longer live in single genres." -Georgi Gospodinov

I'm reading from THE RIVER PEOPLE at Hugo House in Seattle tomorrow, Nov. 5, at 6:30. It's free but we're asked to dress up and bring some donations for the food drive to support our local food bank. SNAP might not be helping our neighbors this month, but we can.

6:30 at Hugo House Nov. 5, I'll be reading from THE RIVER PEOPLE alongside some of my author friends. Come listen to some stories and feed your artist brain!

Third Place Books in Ravenna still has some copies of THE RIVER PEOPLE on the shelf. It's my hybrid creative nonfiction / historical fiction / memoir / found poetry novel based on a true story of PNW migration.

I tried to make the novella into a novel but it's not going to stretch more than 30,000 words. Not sure if I'm incapable of longer works after writing short stories or poems for so long, or if it's just the length that this particular story demands.

I learned a new word today for something I've been suffering from most of my life: "prostalgia," a sentimental longing for a better future. For me, it started with Star Trek. 🖖

"the holiest word i know is no" - Sam Sax

I'll be reading from THE RIVER PEOPLE at Hugo House in Seattle Nov. 5. Come say hi! www.arielbasom.com/collections

I am so happy to see Can Xue on this list! www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

"Even today, when the planet is dark, there still is hope. Don't lose hope. If you lose hope, you become apathetic and do nothing." -Jane Goodall

I'll be reading at Hugo House in Seattle at 6:30 PM Nov. 5. Come say hi! www.arielbasom.com/collections

Love this quote from Shunmyo Masuno. "...there’s no point worrying what is the right choice. If you’ll eventually get to where you need to be no matter which option you choose, then all that matters is that you do your best with the choice you’ve made."

Happy equinox, Earthlings. 🌍 May your diurnal cycle be balanced.

Volunteered at work to build mason bee houses for local elementary schools. I learned that native mason bees are about 100x more efficient at pollinating than honey bees! 🐝 Crown Bees made the bee house kits, their video is very informative. youtu.be/Gu44_4qYyrA?...

Just canceled my Hulu/Disney+ plan because ABC Disney canceled Kimmel. Gonna support viewing platforms that support freedom of speech.

Erica Bauermeister's JOY FOR BEGINNERS has the absolute best breadmaking scenes I have ever read. It's also a master class in character building. I've yet to read a Port Townsend author I haven't liked. Must be something in the air there. bookshop.org/p/books/joy-...

"Trees, I want to die and die in you. No other arms. No other branches coroneting the sky. No other aviaries for corbeau and kiskadee. Kiss me." -Shivanee Ramlochan poets.org/poem/meaning...

"Computers & technology, science fiction & fantasy, travel, memoirs, cults, social aspects, magical realism, small town & rural, women, autism spectrum, intelligence & semantics, coming of age" - What Amazon says is in my Kindle library

James is an incredible writer and you should get this book.

Went to a flying saucer party. Ate sushi with friends. Saw these stickers at a bookstore in Chehalis, Washington.

After weeks of 80F+ weather, yesterday dropped to the low 70s and I felt so energized. I was born in the spring, but fall in the PNW is really my natural climate.

A sweaty hike in Seattle's urban hills to a pocket park with gloriously tall cedars and Doug firs, followed by revisions and tuna sandwiches. What a late summer Sunday should be.

If you're over 40 and you weren't making out to this song in the 90s, what were you even doing with your life? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yam5...

Scene cards for the fourth (and hopefully final) revision of my WIP novel. I decided the work needed more character development, including some new scenes. This is working much better than scrolling up and down in a Word doc or laying 100+ pages out on the floor.

"It was a time when the future could have been anything, been anywhere. It was so open that it could actually crush her." -from "Office Hours," Ling Ma Photo by Eugene Triguba on Unsplash

When revising a promising piece of writing, usually for the third or fourth time, I often reach a point where I go back and forth with myself on the right wording or story event. That's when I know it's done, or as done as I can make it. That's when it's time to let it go out into the world.

"Art should be a nail in the eye, a spike in the flesh, gravel in the shoe." -Ai Weiwei Photo by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash

Part of the art of telling a good story is getting the pace right. I have to stop myself from rushing it, because a story that hurries tells itself before it gets there, and then there's no surprise (and no satisfaction).

"Stupefied by the light, we leafed through that great book of the holiday, in which the pages were ablaze with splendour, their sickly sweet pulp, deep within, made from golden pears." - from "August," Bruno Schulz Photo by @kent_pilcher on Unsplash

“Write for whatever holy thing you believe in, not for your (writing) workshop fellows.” -- Mary Oliver

Katie at @unsolicitedpress.bsky.social designed this incredible cover for CLOISTERED, my upcoming flash fiction collection. She's created three book covers for me so far and does a beautiful job every time. Can't wait to see the finished book next February!

Every time I hear someone say "OK Boomer," I think of how boomers started the civil rights, gay rights, anti-war, and pro-environment movements. Then I use the phrase on my Xennial spouse whenever he reminisces about driving his friends through cornfields in his mom's minivan in the 90s.

My favorite part of writing is getting into a flow state. Pure dopamine.

Based on its call and crepuscular activity, I suspect a great horned owl has been hanging out in the trees near my apartment for months. I've seen one of these birds at a raptor event and I'm amazed something so huge has been able to hide from me so long.

“...we are starving for story, our greatest hunger, our greatest terror; and we love most what we must have but can never have; and so on we go, west and then west.” -Brian Doyle

‘Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you – Ye are many – they are few.’ -Percy Bysshe Shelley

If we don't learn to make a balance between control and surrender, if we only know how to control, we end up in a world shrunken to the bits that we can still control. The raw wild world develops and leaves us behind, playing Solitaire on our phones. -Brian Eno & Bette A.

"fuck it-go outside, be different, be so different they have to loosen their grip on the world because you are proof there is so much beyond them. Live fully, feel it all without apology, be weird and powerful and amazing." -Cherie Dimaline

"Creating without looking over one's shoulder at what everyone is thinking or into the future at potential value results in agency." -Elissa Altman

"Every writer is a subversive, whether we believe ourselves to be or not; every painter, every photographer, every artist who creates something from nothing is, in the doing, a truth-teller." -Elissa Altman

Published an essay about Puget Sound, learning to stand up for myself, and the intertwined fates of nature and the human race. Bonus narrated version by yours truly, followed by an interview with the brilliant Martha Highers. 💙 underthesunlitmag.com/blue-state-l...

My 3rd-great-grandpa fled Ireland for America during the Great Famine of the 1840s. Discrimination was so bad he had to enter the country under a false surname. I wish I could say the U.S. has changed for the better since then. I wrote about him in The River People. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Bruno Schulz was a Jewish artist & writer who was killed by the Gestapo in WWII Poland. His crime? Walking outside of the ghetto past curfew to bring home a loaf of bread. His stories are visual, vibrant, magical, astonishing. I understand why the fascists were threatened by him. Art is true power.

"A night in July! What can be likened to it? ....Shall I compare it to the core of an enormous black rose, covering us with the dreams of hundreds of velvety petals? The night winds blow open its fluffy center, and in its scented depth we can see the stars looking down on us." -Bruno Schulz

"I think ideas exist like fish.... and if you sit quietly, like you're fishing, you will catch ideas. The real beautiful big ones swim kinda deep down there, so you have to be very quiet and wait for them to come along." -David Lynch youtu.be/TqZpi8zAqe0?...

I used to be afraid I'd die before I could write everything I wanted to. But what I was really afraid of was living. Now I know that whatever I make, I make it better when I'm living a healthy, well-rounded life.

Chef Khampaeng Panyathong isn't only talking about pizza here: "The secret ingredient is giving a shit. If you want to do something special, if you want to be proud of it, you gotta care. You gotta do it the hard way." www.thestranger.com/asian-verifi...