Brought some folks home today. RIP Will and Martha.

If you’re driving through Atlanta on the 20, where would you stop for lunch? (I had a great cauliflower sandwich in The West End once, but that place seems to be gone.)

Curtis Mayfield (June 3rd, 1942 – December 26th, 1999)

“He knew the world in a deep and extraordinary manner. He was himself a deep and extraordinary world.” An Obituary for Franz Kafka by Milena Jesenská; tr. George Gibian

On my last trip to a city I dislike, I find I dislike the city a bit less—but still never wish to return.

After years of finding US publishers uninterested in Dorothy Richardson's modernist masterpiece, Pilgrimage, I decided to reissue it myself. Here are some reflections on why I feel so passionate about Pilgrimage and becoming its first US publisher in 50 years. neglectedbooks.com/?...

Submissions Open We are reading Poetry, Blended & Beyond, Flash Fiction and Creative Nonfiction through June 15th (CNF and Flash Fiction will cap at 40 submissions)

“Why can’t we give love that one more chance?”

What are the books you've re-read and then wished you hadn't? Books that didn't hold up or otherwise disappointed the second time? Or whose re-reading papered over the original sublime reading experience?

I never miss a library sale in Tulsa. The last visit netted a beautiful edition of the works of the tragically short-lived Muscogee (Creek) poet Alexander Posey (1873-1908). His readings in Plutarch gave him the right perspective on the question of “great men” and their empires.

PSA: It's not easy to open a permanently sealed marble urn. Plan ahead.

What are the books you've re-read and then wished you hadn't? Books that didn't hold up or otherwise disappointed the second time? Or whose re-reading papered over the original sublime reading experience?

I like to vote in person on Election Day, but today I joined many SC residents in voting early. The mood was cheerfully serious.

Seconded.

Some person: "You're not spending your free time with people you don't like." Me: "That is correct."

I submitted a short story in February 2024. Maybe today will be the day I receive an acceptance or rejection. Maybe it will happen today.

The lesson I would take from this is that solidarity across ranks and including students works.

My father's death has brought me into contact with some of this country's kindest people and some of its biggest assholes. The thrift-store guys who took away most of his furniture this morning were absolute aces (even though they called me sweetheart ninety-seven times).

Part of the Granta/AI story: notions of what the Caribbean is and should be and how the judges think about 'exotic." (As in "there's some dreadful writing, but it's so lush and illogical.")

"When a breathtaking book like yours enters our book club circuit, the results are truly transformative." Yeah no.

if anyone wishes to review ‘Peter Lebrecht: A Tale Devoid of Adventures’ (1796) by Ludwig Tieck, tr. Douglas Robertson, for a literary or scholarly rag, drop us a line this is a work of peak German Romanticism, you could say. here is an exceedingly lovely passage asterismbooks.com/product/pete...

Glad to see one of my favorite flash writers collected.

People have just wildly misjudged how the youths feel about the "we will replace you with software lol ps your student loan repayment plans will change monthly have fun" era

Spent a "writing" hour battling Word's grammar check. Do you have a favorite minimalist/distraction-free writing app (Omm, Calmly, et cetera)? Or: is Scrivener worth the time to learn? (I'm writing a research-heavy book, and I read that Scrivener offers organization and a minimalist writing screen.)

Totally!

This is my district. (The SC legislature doesn't always act as you might expect it to.)

Once again hoping there’s a hell.

Mass market paperbacks in every grocery store, drug store, and gas station.

Starting a new novel.

I miss Warren Zevon.

Spent the afternoon in my deceased father's house, running the small tragedies and triumphs through my fingers. Up next: four storage lockers in Alabama, full of family photos, my stepmother's mycological papers, and a metric ton of plastic chairs and broken lamps.

“I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.” ― John Fowles

The therapy-style didacticism around emotion that's become common in fiction lately really does bother me, just as a pure reader. What's the fun in thinking about a character if the author tells you exactly, note for note, what's going on with them

The 2026 Oversound Chapbook Prize is open for submissions! www.oversoundpoetry.com/chapbook $1000 and 50 copies to winner. $18 to enter. (or $21 to enter and receive a back issue or previously published chapbook) April 1st-May 31st, 2026 Manuscript length: 15-30 pages. Judge: Ari Banias

I had the pleasure of speaking with Nancy Pearl on her Book Lust show recently. Here's a clip about the importance of recovering forgotten books, a constant mission for the Recovered Books series from @bhousepress.bsky.social The full interview is on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=muJ8...

The last two novels I've read that were published in 2025/26 have not merely unlikable narrators but narrators who are aggressively unlikeable. Like truly committed to the bit. (This is an observation, not a criticism.) Is this a general trend?

Doesn't make me miss the home state.

This was fun.

Percival Everett at The Open Book: today, 6 pm, Johnson Performance Hall, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. (Though registration is sold out, walk-ins will be offered any seats still open at 5:45 pm. Entrance is free.)

What’s a Spanish writer who’s reasonably easy to read for someone living in Spain and learning Spanish?

This is a *fantastic* new site that will list the top independent presses selling on Amazon. It will change your definition of "publishing" if you spend time with it. Buy some books using the bookshop.org links to support it.

"The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with." —Renata Adler "Much fiction depends on people who never forget. This clinging, this refusal to 'get over it,' is very useful in fiction, however inadvisable it may be in real life." —Joan Silber

This is incredible. If you know the work, it's just added clarity compared to the existing recordings, but somehow the effect is transcendent.

Admirable and enviable, from Hans Ulrich Obrist: "I have a ritual where I buy a book every day" www.culturedmag.com/article/2026...

“Everybody’s using AI for everything nowadays, and if you don’t, you’re a misfit outsider who should be stoned to death in the town square, and then resurrected virtually from your data so you can be stoned to death in the virtual town square, for infinity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...

This Colby Hall shitshow is a reminder to all journalists, editors, writers, that if you use AI—“in a limited way,” “like many editors” as “part of your editorial workflow,” etc—it’s a matter of *when*, not if, your entire reputation will be thoroughly fucking trashed. Take note.

For fate may hang on any moment and at any moment be changed. ~Jeanette Winterson

Can't believe a good thing has happened

Really wish the Atlantic had thought to ask the southern publisher (that's also bringing nancy's books back into print) if they had thoughts about Americans exoticizing the south. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...