Show me your holiday bakes!! 1/3 cakes in my kitchen today. A raspberry swirl cheesecake!

It is about this: because so many people do not give a shit about romance, shit gets tried in romance first. You should pay attention to romance publishing news and care about it, because they will try that shit here first.

Was about to post something snarky and cute and self-effacing about how I didn’t make Oprah’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026 list (har har) but THEN I learned from said list there’s a new Tana French in 2026 and now I’m not even on my own most anticipated list anymore.

I'm excited to share the most wonderful blurbs I received for MIDDLEMEN.

Yes, indeed!!

Un grand livre.

More details to come but… 🎉🎉 I just learned that my book has won the first ever Biennial Book Prize from MELUS, the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States! I’m over the moon! 🎉🎉 cup.columbia.edu/book/writing...

Very smart move by self, 16 weeks ago, to schedule haircut for the morning after grades due. Well done.

Lord, please never let me be hated by someone as skilled as that Vanity Fair photographer. Let all my haters be incompetent.

Very happy to introduce a new tool, BookReconciler! You can take spreadsheets with book data and add subject headings, descriptions, ISBNs, HathiTrust IDs, & more. You can also cluster editions & variations of the same "Work." Led by @thisismattmiller.com and supported by @post45data.bsky.social.

I get that they’re silly, but I don’t care: I’m weeping over my blurbs.

If you'd asked me which agent was most likely to publish a memoir, I'd probably have guessed Emanuel. If you were to ask me which agent I would MOST LIKE to publish their memoirs... well, I'd have a very different answer.

I’m teaching YA Lit for the first time this spring. I thought it would be a fun assignment, fill a dept need, and help us attract majors. But I’m beginning to see this class as really politically radical and profound, meeting our moment in important ways. I think this is what hope feels like?

It Happened to Me: kindergartener began saying “6-7” for the first time and I lost my shit in target.

Our School of Information Sciences is running four searches, and we can hire more than four candidates. Here’s the first link, for a job that might appeal to people working in history of information, history of science, or digital humanities. +

Finals week approaches! Tell me about your most immersive/propulsive light-ish but smart read of the year to get me through grading!

Thrilled to make my debut in @newyorker.com today with this piece on Trump’s new foster care exec order, which pairs an initiative to help kids aging out of the system with efforts to put the religious rights of foster parents above the civil rights of LGBTQ+ youth: www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Grad students asked me recently why I write collaboratively, and I struggled to give an answer better than “I have extremely smart friends and I love to hang out and talk about books with them,” but that’s really it.

Lots of fun presenting with @lbmcgrath.bsky.social and @jdporter.bsky.social at this week’s fabulous conference on the world of audiobooks! Thanks to @corinnanorue.bsky.social and @millicentweber.bsky.social for organizing. And watch this space for more on “Echoing: A Theory of the Audiobook”!

To all the parents of elementary schoolers “disguising turkeys” this weekend: godspeed.

Had my first book-related anxiety dream last night, in which a literary agent I interviewed accused me of getting him wrong. The good news is, the reality certainly will not be worse than my subconscious imagines! The bad news is, I guess this is my life until April.

I devoured @lbmcgrath.bsky.social’s Middlemen over the weekend! This is such a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the marketplace of contemporary literature (and reminded me of all the lunches I heard about but never attended as a summer intern at Carlisle and Company (now Inkwell)

Murphy’s Law, but for moms*: uour child WILL get sick and need to be picked up from daycare in the day if an important event you’re coordinating. *parent who has a “more flexible” work schedule

Hi publishing folk: I've got an amazing student graduating in December who's looking for an internship! She'd love to work in editorial, focusing on children's, but she's open to anything that'll get her Philadelphia-foot in an NYC-door. Any of you fine folks looking for an assistant?

Thinking only of Rosalind Franklin today, and what was stolen from her (and so many other female scientists alongside her).

When your dad finds out that your book is available for preorder…

You heard it here, folks. You won't find higher praise.

If you are an agent or want to be an agent or an editor who deals with agents or an author who has an agent or is trying to get one, you need to read this book.

Excited to reveal the cover of my book, MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN FICTION, which is available for pre-order now!

I cannot effing wait to read this, @lbmcgrath.bsky.social

AAAAAH BABY’S FIRST GALLEYBRAG!!!!!

This Halloween, I'm dressing as my middle school self's idea of A Cool Adult. (Or: wearing the exact clothes I would've worn in middle school, as a very uncool kid, but now trendy.)

Here's a Very Good Thing in Very Bad Times: my local mom fb group is working to connect members who are losing SNAP benefits with members who can "sponsor" them through the coming weeks. It's really beautiful to see everyone working together to make sure kids in our community aren't going hungry.

I would love to see more rigorous, popular criticism of contemporary children’s media. Love this, on Miss Rachel, from Sophie Pinkham. thebaffler.com/salvos/speak...

Thrilled to announce my new book (electronic version out now, print next month) — it proposes a new value theory grounded in the longue durée of literary institutions, 1800–present.

Today at my (bougie) gym, I was told “A third baby is the new Birkin“ and I just need to get this quote to whoever is currently covering the parenting/economics beat because there’s, um, a lot to unpack here.

Tracking sales figures, it’s very interesting to me that the topics that are doing very poorly in nonfiction are doing very well in fiction. We undersell at our peril.

So ready for the Barthelme renaissance.

Would like someone to curate a “what she’s wearing on tv” website dedicated to Jennifer Aniston in Season 1 of FRIENDS, so it can become my whole personality.

Long overdue, "Criticism LTD" has a stand-alone webpage with working links to every episode bibliography, etc.

DEAR GRAD STUDENTS, This March @post45data.bsky.social will be holding a free, online mini-workshop for grads working in the fields of contemporary literature and culture. More info / abstract submission here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 1/4

I love this brilliant, consequential essay on Eclectic Readers by my friends/neighbors/colleagues @jdporter.bsky.social and Jim English so much. It was such a delight to talk about on @bookriotpod.bsky.social and write about for my newsletter: laurabmcgrath.substack.com/p/the-omnivo...

I’ve mostly stayed out of AI discourse because the field I study (publishers) and my field of study (DH/computational lit) have very different points of view. But hoooo boy, are both groups just missing this lack of demand from their constituencies.

If it’s possible, there’s even less demand for AI than there was for “civic discourse”. Unless you are building war tools for a U.S. government program, new programs better have tremendous unmet student demand. I haven’t seen any evidence of that.

5yo’s first protest sign! (I helped)

In Philadelphia, #nokings goes back a long way.

For those local to Philly: next Wed., 10/22, our faculty director @whitneytrettien.bsky.social will join @mattseybold.bsky.social and Christopher Newfield to tape an episode of The American Vandal podcast. Join the live audience! 5-7pm in UPenn's Fisher Bennett Hall, room 135.

Have it on good authority (Gen Z Abby, my fab research assistant) that my book jacket is "iconic." 💅

Honestly, yes, one of the most personally embarrassing things is how a field so committed to parsing imaginary status distinctions suddenly cannot see that they’re pitching themselves as The University of Phoenix.

I have it on good authority that galleys are making their way to mailboxes! If you’re interested, let me know!