Aaron Gwyn
@americangwyn.bsky.social
📤 2329
📥 156
📝 806
Novelist & Professor. Author of ALL GOD’S CHILDREN, WYNNE’S WAR, DOG ON THE CROSS, THE CANNIBAL OWL
pinned post!
My new short story, “Last of the Cowboys,” just went live at Panoptica. Very proud of this one. If you’re interested, you can read it for free by clicking below:
www.panoptica.ai/a/last-of-th...
loading . . .
Last of the Cowboys
A short story written by Aaron Gwyn exclusively for Panoptica and our upcoming Stories of America series.
https://www.panoptica.ai/a/last-of-the-cowboys/
2 months ago
1
11
4
Just found my retirement home.
about 19 hours ago
1
16
1
László Nemes’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Southern Gothic fairytale, OUTER DARK, is set to start filming early next year.
1 day ago
1
5
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
SACosby
1 day ago
open.spotify.com/track/701oRF...
loading . . .
Whipping Post
https://open.spotify.com/track/701oRFDRzsz3WdhCFOtUJj?si=CdiAA95KRfmXEljtBBTYtg
1
28
3
We are poorer as a society for allowing politics to saturate every aspect of our lives: our relationships, our Literature, our idle entertainments. I suppose it might be less regrettable if we’d gotten something in exchanging our souls for the pursuit of power, but we haven’t.
2 days ago
1
6
1
The conditions fiction writers face today are far less grim than the ones James Joyce faced in 1914 when he began writing ULYSSES. While Europe became a slaughterhouse, Joyce wrote on. Artists are called to create works of lasting beauty, no matter the conditions. NOT doing so is grim.
4 days ago
0
4
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Benjamin Percy
4 days ago
I'm hearing that The End Times (a short novel told in the form of a newspaper delivered over the course of a year) is printing its first edition today. You've still got a chance to sign yourself or a friend up with
@badhandbooks.bsky.social
right here :
badhandbooks.com/preorders/th...
loading . . .
The End Times by Benjamin Percy with Stephen King (Physical Subscription) — Bad Hand Books
FEATURED IN FANGORIA and FORBES : A YEAR OF EXPERIMENTAL STORYTELLING FOR ONE LOW PRICE. WE’VE EXPANDED OUR ORIGINAL PRINT RUN, BUT DO NOT WAIT TO BUY. Get ready for an immersive, seria...
https://badhandbooks.com/preorders/the-end-times-physical-subscription
17
289
80
This week reminded me of Will Rogers’s famous quote: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
5 days ago
0
7
1
Louis C.K. was on Maher a few weeks back, talking about his novel. He bragged about not doing any research for it (“I just made it up”), which struck me as a bizarre thing for a writer to admit. I’ve read a few paragraphs floating around SM and research ain’t all he didn’t do. This is AWFUL prose.
6 days ago
5
7
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Keith Roysdon
7 days ago
My tale of gunplay and regret in a convenience store has been published by Pistol Jim Press.
pistoljimpress.substack.com/p/filthy-hab...
loading . . .
Filthy Habit by Keith Roysdon
from Nails in the Coffin: a Pistol Jim Press series
https://pistoljimpress.substack.com/p/filthy-habit-by-keith-roysdon
1
8
6
Don’t know how many times I read “Sailing to Byzantium” before I realized it rhymed. Chalk that up to Yeats’s craftsmanship or me being an idgit (or a combination of both).
6 days ago
0
6
0
Senate Democrats voted to end the shutdown right when their upper middle class donors started missing their flights.
7 days ago
0
6
1
I don’t care how good A.I. gets, it’ll never approach Yeats. In a million years, ChatGPT couldn’t produce “disheveled wandering stars.” It couldn’t even produce “deep wood’s woven shade.”
7 days ago
0
24
2
Watching this 1998 production of KING LEAR with Ian Holm (best Lear I’ve ever seen). Lear truly wants to be just dead enough to enjoy it (“while we unburdened crawl toward death”), and it occurs to me that this particular desire destroys an awful lot of people.
8 days ago
1
7
0
This morning I was thinking about something Brian Evenson told me, that Michael Ondaatje’s THE ENGLISH PATIENT contained some of the finest prose in the history of the language. Sounded a bit hyperbolic to me then, but I think Brian was onto something…
12 days ago
1
7
0
“Not trying to be a jerk here” is a great way to start a post where you’ll excel at being a jerk.
13 days ago
2
5
0
William Faulkner on writing SANCTUARY: “I began to think of myself again as a printed object. I began to think of books in terms of possible money. I decided I might just as well make some of it myself."
13 days ago
1
5
0
No reputable literary agent will ever ask you for money. No reputable agent will charge a prospective client a “reading fee.” A legitimate literary agent takes a 15-20% commission from your book advance. If the agent doesn’t sell the book, s/he takes nothing.
14 days ago
0
1
0
EXCLUSIVE: I sat down with Curtis Sliwa’s campaign manager (pictured below) to discuss their strategy for Tuesday’s mayoral election.
15 days ago
1
3
0
To take my mind off my aching back, I built another Stevie Ray Vaughan “First Wife” Stratocaster: 22 Jumbo frets, rosewood fretboard, maple neck, alder body, Fender locking tuners and Texas Special pickups, Greer Amps neck-plate.
16 days ago
0
11
0
This morning, I ranked Cormac McCarthy’s best novels (my ranking changes from year to year).
16 days ago
2
3
0
A map of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha.
16 days ago
0
4
0
Cleanth Brooks’ THE YOKNAPATAWPHA COUNTRY is the best one-volume study of William Faulkner’s fiction I’ve read. If you’re a fan of Faulkner, you should absolutely check out this remarkably insightful little book.
17 days ago
0
2
0
My 90-year-old grandfather (on the right) is performing at this community center with his country band tonight. He’s gone full-Nashville. Or, at the very least, full-Branson.
18 days ago
0
5
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Electric Literature
18 days ago
“Then I get to thinking about what would be enough, and if it’s even out there or possible, a job that recognizes my efforts and keeps me close to who and what I love.”
loading . . .
Sometimes the Worst Job Is the One You Love Most - Electric Literature
I go out of my way for students, and the university goes out of their way to pay me less and less. What is exploitation if not this?
https://buff.ly/0hkA73I
0
5
1
It’s amateur blacksmithing season again. Might make a new knife, might make a mess. Time will tell.
18 days ago
2
8
1
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Casey Stegman
20 days ago
I was very lucky to find a great agent. But boy have I heard some horror stories. And this is one of the reddest of red flags.
add a skeleton here at some point
1
16
2
I find it interesting that once T.S. Eliot convinced Virginia Woolf to read James Joyce’s ULYSSES, Woolf objected to the novel’s frank portrayal of working class life and bodily functions—not the prurient or blasphemous material that riled up censors in the US/UK.
20 days ago
1
6
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
T. J. Stiles
21 days ago
Low-stakes hills I will die on: • Hanging toilet paper underhand (rolling toward wall) is utter barbarism. • Using an apostrophe with a plural S is not protected speech and must be criminalized. • Plantain is pronounced “PLAN-ten” not “plan-TAIN.” Violators should be forced to eat scotch bonnets.
0
2
1
Big congrats to the great Keith Rosson!
add a skeleton here at some point
21 days ago
0
3
0
Your American Prometheus is Robert Oppenheimer; mine is Robert Johnson. We are not the same.
21 days ago
0
8
1
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
David Hayden
about 1 month ago
My short story ‘The Unspoken’ online
@grantamag.bsky.social
granta.com/the-unspoken/
2
89
13
True Detective reboot looks promising.
23 days ago
0
6
2
A fantastic history of 19th century America, one that demonstrates how every social reform in the US—abolition, women’s rights, etc—grew out of American Protestantism, specifically its Puritan New England strain, the heirs of which turned those movements into a secular religion.
23 days ago
2
4
0
Have always loved this photograph of the giants of literary Modernism.
24 days ago
0
12
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Matt Bell
24 days ago
Time for some Friday afternoon backyard reading!
5
36
4
Who else up waging sex warfare?
24 days ago
0
2
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Nick Kolakowski
25 days ago
RELEASE DAY: RIGHTEOUS TRASH, the third book in my Boise Noir trilogy, is out today! It's got: 1. The wildest robbery I've ever written. 2. More rounds expended than a Peckinpah film. 3. Snarky sibling rivalry. 4. Tons of stuff done blown up gud. 5. Link in 🧵!
2
18
16
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Paul J. Garth
24 days ago
I love this book so much and I am so excited it’s out in the world now. If your weekend needs a little mayhem, you absolutely can not go wrong with RIGHTEOUS TRASH.
add a skeleton here at some point
0
4
3
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Irina Dumitrescu
25 days ago
There's a special pleasure to being in the UK and picking up a copy of
@thetls.bsky.social
with my column at the back. Because I write for publications based abroad (i.e. not in Germany) it's a rare experience.
0
26
3
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Triada US Lit Agency
25 days ago
Congratulations to
@caseystegman.com
on the sale of KILL CURRENT!
#TeamTriada
#BookSky
6
33
19
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Casey Stegman
25 days ago
Thank you, Uwe! This is a dream come true.
add a skeleton here at some point
7
24
2
25 days ago
0
17
3
I’ve known quite a few Marines and they were all tattooed: none had a Totenkopf, though. The majority had the standard USMC bulldog, a few had (impressive!) American flag sleeves, some had the names of fallen comrades. The SS tat can’t be a common choice.
26 days ago
0
3
0
He’s an open one?
27 days ago
1
4
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Robert Brockway
27 days ago
It's physically dangerous for me to be more hyped about
@keithrosson.bsky.social
's Coffin Moon after his incredible Fever House duology. A bleak and brutal vampire/vampire hunter revenge story in the vein of Near Dark. Feel free to mentally cast sex beast Bill Paxton.
2
24
3
Teaching BLOOD MERIDIAN this time, I’ve convinced myself that the Kid refuses to shoot the Judge in Chapter XX because: A) he’s not a murderer B) he can’t risk proving to himself that the Judge is immortal C) he doesn’t actually want to divest himself of Holden
27 days ago
4
6
0
In spite of the disruption to Amazon’s services, my Halloween costume was delivered today.
28 days ago
1
11
0
Next up in my American Villains class: William Faulkner’s SANCTUARY
28 days ago
2
9
0
You could drop this passage from Barbara Tuchman’s A DISTANT MIRROR right into BLOOD MERIDIAN with very little revision:
29 days ago
1
6
0
reposted by
Aaron Gwyn
Steve Weddle
about 1 month ago
Lou Berney has some picks.
0
6
1
Load more
feeds!
log in