Naomi Kanakia's review of MIDDLEMEN on substack was featured in Arts & Letters Daily, with the wonderfully tantalizing pull quote: "Just 25 literary agents collectively represent half of all authors short-listed for major American literary prizes this century..." www.aldaily.com/new-books/

What I think I look like: Kerri Russel’s hair in The Americans. What I actually look like: Kerri Russel’s hair in The Diplomat.

My next book, a practical guide for how to write for mass media, publishes four weeks from today. I hope you'll consider ordering it now, inviting me to speak, and to tell others. Here's what @tressiemcphd.bsky.social said about my work. Pre-order here: www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

Going in week 2 of laryngitis, no real voice to speak of (lolsob). Give me your best, student-led/instructor-**minimal** classroom activities bc there is no way I’m ceding my class to asynchronous discussion boards.

Anyone who cares about, or is even vaguely interested in, the dramatic uptick in self-publishing needs to read @claireparnell.bsky.social's fantastic PLATFORMED INEQUALITIES.

How does a small group of agents shape our sense of what counts as literary? How come there are so many debut novelists but so few careers in writing? Why is the short story so important even if it doesn’t sell nearly as well as the novel? ALL THIS AND MORE IN… press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

I find it odd but great that I’ve spent ten years on this book and haven’t yet become bored with it. I find it implausible and humbling and the highest possible praise that @manshel.bsky.social, who has been reading pieces of it for just as long, can say the same after reading the finished book.

“But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending…studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers &organizations like UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learning”

For 5 years or so, I *begged* agents to let me observe them conducting an auction, but no dice. Everyone said no. (I explain why in my book.) So I was thrilled to listen to this episode of Planet Money, "Inside the Book Auction."

Hi! We're an alternative to Amazon's Audible, & here are a few things that people often don't know about us: 1. We have over 600k audiobooks in our catalog! You'll pretty much find whatever you want to read, other than Audible exclusives (but that's on them, not us)

Why yes, I will be giving a talk in NYC today while decked out in Phillies colors in honor of opening day.

Excited to be the keynote this Saturday for the University of Toronto's Book History and Print Culture Colloquium on Process, Practice, Praxis! I understand that this is free and open to the public, so if you're in Toronto and interested in making and + bhpcprocesspracticepraxis2026.wordpress.com

Sometimes I wonder what my young adulthood would’ve been like if I’d found HIS DARK MATERIALS instead of HP at such a formative time. I didn’t read HDM until much later, and it wrecked me, esp thinking of the kid I had been, who needed it but instead had such a paltry substitute.

I wanted to take a moment to let folks know that Ted Martin's extraordinary book _American Literature's War on Crime_ is out! The book surveys almost 100 novels to explore how the War on Crime was waged on the page & how fiction made the policies & ideologies of crime control legible. It's amazing!

I HAVE HELD THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME IN MY HANDS! ok, not literally, but I did hold my book *The Edge of Space-Time* in my hands for the first time! Preorder from your favorite local brick and mortar! B&N members get 25% off with code PREORDER25. 📚💙 www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817...

Very much as in Jurassic Park, you can tell from the vibrations that something big is coming

I will keep telling you until you do it: buy this book. It's brilliantly done and will give you a clearer picture of how (at least Big Five) books are made now than you'll find anywhere else

All you toilers in the Literary Industrial Complex need to read MIDDLEMEN.

MIDDLEMEN will be published one month from today! Celebrating this countdown milestone with the book's first big review, over at HARPERS.

If you are in New York on Thursday, March 26th, come uptown to hear @lbmcgrath.bsky.social speak about her book Middlemen, about literary agents and how they shape literature: at City College, at the Rifkind Center for Humanities and Arts, at 5 pm.

I would like for someone to make a mental load wage calculator. How can I calculate the cost of the hours I spend planning for childcare contingencies? Or, what does my salary amount to when I account for the crushing amount of work that I must do in order to do my actual job?

We are pleased to announce that Alexander Manshel's WRITING BACKWARDS is the winner of the inaugural MELUS Book Award from the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS). buff.ly/pdpaluy

My book, MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN FICTION, comes out in six weeks!It shows how literary agents went from "cankers" to "mere peripheral necessities" to "the center of the literary establishment" to "the biggest fish in publishing." press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Really looking forward to this conversation with Randy Winston on Read the Acknowledgments this week! With the brilliant @aliahanna.bsky.social!

I just had to pull out of a book festival where Jenna Bush Hagar (not even an author!!!) is the headliner and it is a sign of American moral bankruptcy that she was allowed to carry the Bush name not just onto TV but into being one of the biggest book influencers in the country

I’m very tired of rich-people content. Books, movies, tv, you name it.

The most exciting part about releasing an academic book, to me, is learning if and how folks will teach it. I’m so thrilled that grad students at CCNY and McGill will both be reading bits in the next month, and that I’ll get to talk to them about it!

*taps internet microphone* After months of work, a project i've been coordinating for @literaryhub.bsky.social in conjunction with @maris.bsky.social is now live ... We've commissioned 13 reviews of books by LGBTQ folks not covered by the NYTBR under Pamela Paul ... lithub.com/what-was-los...

Best parenting/quality of life decision I‘ve ever made was moving into a walking public school district.

Join us in Philly April 15th at 5:30 p.m. for a panel discussion about writing and publishing "difficult" books. We're joined by @aliahanna.bsky.social, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social, Nathaniel Popkin, and Declan Spring! Book sales by Head House Books. Free registration: www.amphilsoc.org/events/writi...

Hello! One month from today I’m releasing my new book about our majestic universe, which thinks with poetry, quantum physics, relativity, Zhou kingdom philosophy, galaxies, particles, Akan aphorisms, Black feminism, Star Trek, Alice in Wonderland. AND it’s for all readers. 📚💙 Please preorder it! 🧵

it feels like a small thing in context of all of the other things but it is a piece of the larger authoritarian project that there are fewer places to publish essays now and the carefully edited essay as a public form for thinking and responding and criticizing and analyzing is in trouble, i think

A big day to be a person with zero chill.

In this delightful-to-write profile 1) Patterson critiqued my latest book cover (👎), 2) I found out why he’s co-writing books with Viola Davis and MrBeast, and 3) I tracked down the first book he wrote (but never published), and it’s a genuinely excellent literary story collection. (gift link!)

My baby turns 2 this week, and my IG algo almost immediately began serving me cute newborn content. And now, just like a red light mask and barrel jeans and that Italian leather sling bag, I want one.

The Price Lab’s Critical Approaches to AI Working Group has released a white paper in which we advocate for AI-free instruction in reading, writing, & research. These are fundamental skills in the humanities (& in general), & with decisive action we can keep teaching them well in the age of AI!

Really can't emphasize enough that my main use for this site is not to be Taken Seriously By Media but rather to post that, in the original 1957 book, the Grinch is at least 53 years old. The Grinch has seen two world wars and a great depression. He doesn't need to hear shit from you

If you, too, are touring Vanderbilt today (with or without your lovable surly teen) and would like to hear me talk about Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction, swing by the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center at 2!

Campus-adjacent hotel continental breakfast scene: parents and kids getting ready for college tours. Everyone trying their best to look like they're OK and not scared out of their minds. It's all just too cute and too poignant to bear!

So thrilled to be joining JCA as Special Features Editor! Pitch me your clusters, conversations, rapid responses, interviews, and short vignettes!

CDH announces new role as publisher of @culturalanalytics.bsky.social! New website launches with expanded vision for cultural analytics scholarship, supported by @schmidtsciences.bsky.social HAVI program. JCA also joins @ojcollective.bsky.social. More on editorial team and new features below.

I hope literary scholars are proud of the fresh, grounded stuff coming out lately. Big Fiction, Teaching Archive, now Manshel on high school English, McGrath forthcoming on literary agents ("Middlemen"). All the concrete aspects of literature-as-human-activity we used to ignore. +

2x pie-eating champion has spoken! (In all seriousness, I’m very grateful for such a generous read from @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social)

Reading MIDDLEMEN as an ARC: it's sensational. As riveting as it is brilliant. Read it if you want to know how literature gets made now: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Also, newspaper arts and culture writing is often the only record that any of this stuff happened in the first place. As a professor and author, I see the slow elimination of this journalism as an attempt to quite literally erase history.

Giving my first book talk this week, at Vanderbilt’s Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center! Would love to say hi if you’re on campus. events.vanderbilt.edu/rpw/event/98...

Xander's project is among the most exciting works-in-progress I know about. It's such a brilliant idea and I love following along as he goes.

This book is gonna be massive — it’ll totally change the way the discipline understands itself.

As some of you may know, I’m writing a book on the history of high school English in the United States, and I’m excited to share a new article from that project—“High School English and the Making of American Readers”—out today in American Literary History! 🧵 academic.oup.com/alh/article/...

A barn-burner essay from @manshel.bsky.social in the recent issue of ALH!!! “High School English and the Making of American Readers.” academic.oup.com/alh/article/...