Wishing you the brightest for 2026. Here’s my ‘Year’s End’ with thanks to @necessaryfiction.com 👇

'As great as all of his work was, in terms of big projects Lynch only reached his plateau in the 21st Century. Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire and Twin Peaks: The Return are works of art for the ages.' Remembering Those We Lost In 2025: #DavidLynch buff.ly/0N517OX

My short essay on Bruno Schulz’s Cinnamon Shops @grantamag.bsky.social granta.com/best-book-of...

Some New Year’s thoughts and memories, not all of them somber, with a helping hand from Alexander Voloshin… “We only love, only hold dear the scenes that vanish, disappear . . . Now at our temples we may find frost of a rather different kind . . .” bdralyuk.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/b...

Go on over to read my little New Year’s note and, more importantly, Nicholas Pierce’s interview with Erin O’Luanaigh, who writes smashing poems like this:

Great poem translated by WWB contributor Andre Naffis-Sahely! Check out his other work on our website: wordswithoutborders.org/contributors...

The work of the writer and critic Susan Sontag remains endlessly relevant and urgent. She died on this day, twenty-one years ago, and to mark her life we’re sharing a favourite archive essay in memory of her hunger for knowledge and the remarkable body of work she left behind

A favorite essay on snow, by Charlie Fox, in @cabinetmagazine.bsky.social www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/59/fo...

"'Love Tapes' is not only a historical record but a living reminder that we hold the power to shape technologies into constructive, even tender, spaces of our own making." Janna Jones on the resonances of Wendy Clarke’s 1980s project. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/everybody-loves-a-lover/

I wrote about this notebook before (14 years ago!): www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

"With the publication of 'Only Sing,' we glimpse the full, albeit flawed, extent of Berryman’s achievement." Rowland Bagnall reviews John Berryman’s "Only Sing." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/strange-woofs/

Our gratitude and respect to Maestro Bernard Herrmann June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975 What’s your favorite Bernard Herrmann score? 🎶

I have the softest of spots for poor Ernest Dowson—a spot touched and fortified by this compassionate, finely chiseled little elegy in @teniemi.bsky.social lovely chapbook, “At Night and Other Poems.”

DIY online radio stations allow humanity and personality to surface in a tide of soulless and reductive algorithmic playlists, argues Paul Rekret in The Wire 503/504. Read the full article online here: www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/e...

how would you describe this century so far 𝘢𝘭𝘭-𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 famously you have spoken of the uselessness of interviews 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘐 can you 𝘪𝘧 𝘸𝘦 I wanted to use the word ‘labyrinthine’ ‘Lieu Vague’, a poem by Anne Carson. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

@joycecaroloates.bsky.social and #MarkMirsky sat down at #CCNY in November 2024 to discuss #writing, #publishing, #DonaldBarthelme, and more. 🎥 To watch the full video 👉 www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5am...

“All that Victory was and all that it remains made space for us.” — Ashanté M. Reese traces the legacy of Victory Grill—now Victory East—as a vital Austin haven where Black artists and allies found respite, made music, and claimed freedom. 🔗: https://shorturl.at/7LWxx

I was just wondering on this glorious Saturday if anyone here had some advice about how someone like me could earn money working freelance in anything related to books. If you have a killer idea please DM me or post it here for all to see. And yes, I really do have my eyes open and all that... 🙏

“For me, the heart of everything is narrative and humanity.” —Four-time Grammy winner @lylelovett.bsky.social sits down for lunch and an interview with Bret Anthony Johnston which appears in the Austin LIVE! Music Issue, out now on newsstands. 🔗: https://shorturl.at/EwMfS

My bit on Larkin's The Less Deceived, which is 70 this year -and every bit as good as The Whitsun Weddings. Thanks as ever to @engelsbergideas.bsky.social & thank you again to @plsoc.bsky.social for hosting the live version.

Texas music legend Joe Ely died on Monday at 78 years old. We invite you to read this story of his friendship with Joe Strummer and The Clash, a tale of two kindred spirits who found common ground in poetry, rockabilly, and a shared love of the open road. https://shorturl.at/u8KFI

"One goes to psychoanalysis, as one might go to poetry, for better words,” the essayist and analyst Adam Phillips writes. In our new issue, nine poets explore the shared modes of analysis and the lyric.

" . . . but it still feels odd to turn to a bibliography and find crossword clues." James Brophy on 'Critical Lives: John Ashbery' by Jess Cotton. Reaction Books. Subscribe. https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-19-winter-2025/whence-little-ja-whence-anybody-john-ashberys-critical-life/

2016 by Sarah Hesketh was named in the Guardian as a Poetry Book of the Year. Booksellers ordering in from Gardners are told “Publisher out of Stock”. The book's in stock both at the distributor and here, within arm’s reach – order from the CB editions website and I’ll post within 24 hours.

❛ The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were. Shirley Jackson, born #OTD in 1916.

"Home remains for me a word without a clear referent." In the aftermath of a divorce, Martha Cooley's blooming friendship with a painter forces her to question the meaning of home and life. Read Cooley's essay below!

Lucia

An understanding friend has kindly sent me the recipe for Charlie Mingus's eggnog. Christmas is saved. www.charlesmingus.com/blog/news/mi...

Todd Haynes's sublime CAROL is turning ten. I once wrote about it about, it, and the problem of the happy lesbian, for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social.

❛ If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? Emily Dickinson, born #OTD in 1830

British Library staff asked for a decent pay. Instead they got ‘a few money-saving present ideas’, such as ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’. They are on strike this week. I wrote about it for @lrb.co.uk. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

Please support CB Editions. It's a serious, pioneering Press run by one unconventional guy. Offer a book, or a hint, to a friend, if possible. List of their books here: cbeditions.com/books.html You can read excerpts from each book too...

Heads up London! Carl and I will be in person at the Freud Museum Wednesday, February 25th: www.freud.org.uk/event/surrea... @carlabrahamsson.bsky.social @freudmuseumlondon.bsky.social

Remembering Sammy Davis Jr., born December 8, 1925, 100 years ago today. Listen to "Sammy and Dino," our season on Sammy and fellow Rat Packer Dean Martin wherever you get your podcasts: www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/202...

On negative book reviews: "a whiff of iconoclasm, of smashing a statue in a church": sonofabook.blogspot.com/2025/12/teet...

Critics of crime fiction dismiss the genre as hopelessly reactionary, but its history tells a different story. From hard-boiled American detective novels to the explosion of Scandi-noir, crime fiction has been deeply influenced by socialist writers.

Remembering two directors born on this day and featured in the latest @rememberthispod.bsky.social season, "The Old Man is Still Alive". First up is Fritz Lang, born Dec. 5, 1890, who was the subject of our second episode of the series: www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/fri...

'The sea’s remorse surfaces every time the waves appear. Not the wild, raging, frightening waves but the other kind sweet and soothing, like lullabies.' * – The sea’s remorse Argyris Stavropoulos Translated from Greek by Gigi Papoulias modernpoetryintranslation.com/poem/the-sea...

On the 50th anniversary of #HannahArendt’s death, we revisit this essay on one of her incisive, and quietly radical, challenges to modern life. In a world obsessed with authenticity and the search for a supposedly fixed truth, Arendt offered something far more demanding and liberating: ‘the will’

Michael Hofmann channels you-know-who: ”Gold: anything that glitters, one letter away from golf / Golf: golf, the game of kings, one letter away from gold / Failing: of limited distribution, but sinisterly and uncannily accurate / Winning: losing” www.equator.org/articles/-ho...

“Linearity does not exist on the Internet, just as it does not exist in the coral-like vessels of our brains.” Heather McCalden on Peggy Olsen, postcards, loneliness, and THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE (@penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social). pioneerworks.org/broadcast/13...

A whole chapter of Hitler and My Mother-in-Law at Evergreen Review @evergreenreview.bsky.social. Order the rest of the book or ebook @ORbooks.bsky.social evergreenreview.com/read/witch-h...

Out with Seagull Books in October press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

CB editions December newsletter, as archived on the Sonofabook blog: sonofabook.blogspot.com/2025/12/cbe-...

A poem by Wilfred Watson (1925-1998), to date the only Canadian poet published by Faber? From Friday’s Child (Faber 1955), reprinted in Apocalypse: an anthology (Carcanet 2020), edited by James Kerry. @carcanet.bsky.social @faberbooks.bsky.social

A major essay by Hisham Matar: ”Titian is fascinated by ambiguity and multiplying perspectives. He is keen to involve us in them, too – less to inspire pity and fear, and more to implicate us, to render us accomplices.” www.equator.org/articles/pit...

Radiophrenia 2026 Open Call – now open for submissions. We are pleased to announce that Radiophrenia will be returning to the airwaves in September 2026. You can find details of our new open call for radio works and how to submit in the link below. submissions.radiophrenia.scot

Today, on the 125th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s death, we’re re-featuring this Essay which explores how the author and poet was a much more complex figure than the caricature that theorists have shaped him into