Nothing like receiving a lovely certificate recognizing your teaching with a tacked-on sentence inviting you to workshop on how to integrate GenAI into your teaching, which was likely appreciated in the first place because you would never do that.

Spending the day with someone in the ER, and the doctors and nurses really are quite amazing. Going to sign on for season two of The Pitt. (While hoping to go home soon.)

Yep. That just about sums it up!

Still working on the novel today and let me say this again: my worst day as a writer is a thousand times better than my best day at any other job.

And students want this.

The world is what it is but books continue! Agents + writers: looking for deeply researched and imaginative nonfiction manuscripts about the South, for publication in 2027/28. Literary nonfiction, personal/reportage & cultural criticism are highly welcomed. DMs open for pitches or [email protected].

Quotidian struggles here as well.

Computational Cultural Studies replaces Literature and Cultural Studies sounds like a David Lodge novel without the humor.

CALL FOR PITCHES @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not. Details below!

“Everything you tell me now, I hear for the first time in my life,” is such a better and funnier answer than “is there a sportsball happening”

RIP Fred Smith of Television — one of the coolest bassists of all time.

“All these years later, I hang my feet off the pier at noon on the first day of each new month, even when it rains, which it often does.” I love the sense of place in “Gulf” by Elise Blackwell up today @jmwwjournal.bsky.social

Want a novel on the challenging side with an independent voice? Caleb Klaces, Mr. Outside (Prototype Press) or Rebecca Grandsen, Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group (Tangerine Press). Mr. Outside comes with photos. sebald.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/r...

A blessing on those who read pieces in literary journals and send kind words to their authors.

'Do not expect too much of the end of the world', she said.

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.” Frank O’Hara

Just did something I should have done a LONG time ago--joined @literaryhub.bsky.social. Take those Amazon dollars and spend them at indie books stores and the places that still support literature, culture, and real thinking. lithub.com

The Washington Post book review section once called me "aggressively soft spoken," and I still loved them. This is a huge loss.

"This town I once touched on a map is small enough that I see the same faces at the market, at the laundromat, at the diner by the railroad tracks." This is beautiful. Elise Blackwell up at @jmwwjournal.bsky.social

new new: "Franchise," by Elise Blackwell: wigleaf.com

The terrible truth.

Congrats to my kid, now a tenure-track assistant professor of mathematics at a college in her favorite city. She stepped away from the intensive research track after finishing her PhD, quite intentionally, to spread the gospel of math and play a whole lot of beach volleyball. Really proud of you, E.

Flash Fiction: Gulf by Elise Blackwell When people talk about the ocean, they don’t mean here.

This is horrible. The WaPo's Books section has a brilliant band of critics and editors and has developed a genuine identity in the book world. I'm heartbroken for a staff that has done such consistently great and dedicated work.

A fellow writer needs some help for her family, and it might be a good day to pick up a copy of Every Galaxy Is a Circle.

All Good Books handles sales for The Open Book, stocking the titles in advance, selling books at the events, and offering signed stock after. Here's this spring's line-up and more info: sc.edu/study/colleg...

Book mail from All Good Books in Columbia, South Carolina. They have really great author events and will get a book signed and send it to you.

yep.

Skip to about 57:30 to hear my oddball thing about how books are telepathy and reading your own books is weird telepathy with your younger self. I really enjoyed this conversation with Robert. There's a lot of good stuff in here about approaches to short fiction, as well as my 52 Fictions project.

I stopped using Pinterest when it started pushing AI images and commerce; now I've fully deleted my account. Does anyone recommend an alternative? I used it for visual boards of asemic writing, old typewriters, weird dogs, and (true confession time) decor and style inspiration. Thanks!

Cleaning the shelves, clearing a path in Salty Towers – as we prepare to send out 100s of review copies from our seasonal list. Started the calendar year with our best January in over a decade. Unexpected and thrilling. Already it feels like Salt’s Big Year. #BookSky #WritingCommunity

The swing last night in Texas was so extreme that Dems literally won a town called White Settlement

Category: Brooks.

Yes to Mel and Albert; no to David and Arthur.

While analyzing our 2025 submission data, I noticed that the US is now the primary producer of slop submissions (which includes fully and partially-generated/assisted/whatever). Congrats. You're #1. Happy? You should be embarrassed. Please stop. (In 2023 and 2024, the US wasn't in the top three.)

Copies of The Faery Handbag by @kellylink.bsky.social, with three full-color plates by one of our favorite artists, Rovina Cai, are en route from Conversation Tree Press to our warehouse. Our quantities are very limited. Preorder: subterraneanpress.com/newscopies-o...

Just overheard outside my office: “It takes a very oblique understanding of goblins.”

Upon running into your ex at the grocery store.

Cool history dude, but before I really get into it do you happen to know if it was written by the victors?

It seems to me that we are in the midst of a very hard battle and every day we are at risk of losing everything, even the syntax of truth. ~Elena Ferrante [photo by Yaşar Koç]

can anyone ID this hawk i spotted in Ottawa earlier today?

'Milton is credited with coining more new words even than Shakespeare (630 to Shakespeare's 229), and "freaked" is one of them, denoting the untidy-looking black blotch on a pansy's petals.' John Carey, 'A Little History of Poetry'

Operation PARRIS is one of the most heinous things this administration has done yet. Trump’s people ordered ICE to round up 5,600 legally present refugees, people who have done NOTHING wrong, with no warning, and jailed them in Texas to be interrogated about their status.

Ring the alarum-bell! Murder and treason!

So many people and institutions who have the ability to speak out against what’s going on are either remaining silent or capitulating because they lack any moral character.

Just saw a murder in Minneapolis, or at least an attempted one. Turn off your autoplay if you don't want to see it, or log off and read about it later.

Hail these hardy people.

Columbia SC: Due to the forecast for severe weather, all Richland One schools and administrative offices will be closed Monday (January 26, 2026). Monday will not be an e-learning day due to possible power outages and resulting connectivity issues.

I'm anti-Euro in one way only: I hope the Euro model of the coming storm isn't the one that's on the money.

Some history of this song. It got famous featured in O Brother Where Art Thou, included because Allison Krauss knew it as "Down to the Valley to Pray" having learned it from Doc Watson. But it is much older...