"A writer who knows what he's doing doesn't know very much." ~ Nelson Algren

“Unreleased, unrecorded, performed once or twice a cappella, no instruments at all in its history—the Platonic ideal of a song, for me, so tenuous that it can barely be said to exist; momentary; self-contained.” www.altaonline.com/books/nonfic...

"One cannot make up time. One can make up a story or a face or a bed. Ugh. I find it all repellent."

Heads up: You should read David Ulin’s 2 cents’ worth on the penny

Belief, however, is an inside job. This, too, is a lesson I have learned. What really happened that July 4? Then and now, I believe a penny saved my life.

"The ordinary can tell a deep story. I don’t write novels that have enormous adventure plots, or mysteries where a secret is unfurled. I’m interested in finding a specific detail that allows me to explore something resonant and deep.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

LOS ANGELES PEOPLE, YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS: Please join us as the 2025 Chowdhury Prize in Literature is presented to @clairedederer.bsky.social. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. 📷 Wednesday, November 12, 7:30 PM 📷 Bovard Auditorium (USC). RSVP Link: visionsandvoices.usc.edu/events/50710...

Glad to live in California, a state where I can still walk into a pharmacy and walked out vaxxed for flu and COVID. It's called science, in case you were wondering.

Delighted to panelize this afternoon at the Biltmore for the Urban History Association conference with this stellar trio of luminaries: Naomi Hirahara, Hector Tobar, and Walter Mosley.

You know you don't want to miss this.

The best way to find your next read might be closer at hand than you thought. Lydia Davis’s new book, "Into the Weeds," charts a more serendipitous path to reading, David L. Ulin writes:

Congratulations @clairedederer.bsky.social!!!

We are delighted to announce that @clairedederer.bsky.social will receive the 2025 Chowdhury Prize in Literature and will accept the prize during an onstage event at USC on November 12, 2025. Please come and celebrate Claire and her incisive, brilliant work. open.substack.com/pub/airlight...

“I found that I was thinking about reading—reading the writing of someone else.” www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

“There used to be more time to make a getaway. Now they’re flashing everybody’s mug shot all around the world in the blink of an eye, pretty soon there’s no place to run anymore.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

“The plot of this book is persistence in making myself available.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

Gratitude and love to Paul Yamazaki, City Lights's longtime book buyer, who will receive the Northern California Book Awards GROUNDBREAKER AWARD at their ceremony this Saturday, 2pm, held at the SF Main Library’s Koret Auditorium. It's free to attend. See you there? poetryflash.org/programs/?p=...

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “We need a new way of thinking about fire: as not only natural disaster, but also environmental threat with a high risk of long-term harms to health,” David L. Ulin, a professor at the University of Southern California, writes.

Wildfire "survivors in Los Angeles, as well as elsewhere, are on their own more than ever." @davidulin.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

@davidulin.bsky.social in @nytimes.com Los Angeles Is Contaminated Now www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

As the wildlife urban interface expands and fires become more toxic, Californians have become, perhaps, the canaries in the coal mine, in a world where environmental devastation provoked by climate change is now a commonplace. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

"A tale has many tails, and many heads, particularly if it’s true. Like life, it is a river with many branches, rivulets, creeks, and distributaries. I’ll get to everything, I swear.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

Zócalo's latest miniseries explores L.A.'s Literary Public Square. Read from @davidulin.bsky.social on his journey from NYC to L.A., Brittany Menjivar & Sammy Loren on the "alt-lit" scene, @lynellgeorge.bsky.social on making literary community, and John Szabo on libraries. zps.la/LitLA

Rereading, of course, can be a complicated process. Or, more accurately, it can cut both ways. www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

I may be an old school parent in this regard, but whatever happened to saying no? wapo.st/45LEVQT

Zócalo is thinking about Los Angeles' literary public square. Where do readers and writers come together to tell stories and imagine together? Long-time L.A. writer @davidulin.bsky.social on the city as its own literary genre: zps.la/4m7WrFK

We need to be able to upset the hierarchies, escape the strictures, to follow our work where it will go. This, too, is what Los Angeles taught me: that I would have to think for myself. www.zocalopublicsquare.org/los-angeles-...

I wish I were old and the whole damned thing were finished; then I shouldn't get this depressed feeling for nothing at all.

It’s a very low bar, I know, but Mike Lee must be the stupidest US Senator.

“There is a constant unmaking of self in writing or in making art.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

Having just spent a few months reading accounts of CBS’ grotesque cowardice during the 1950s McCarthy-era blacklist, it’s nice to see that The Tiffany Network respects its traditions

Why on earth would anyone pay attention to what David Paterson has to say?

Every piece of writing presents its own problems. You don’t know what these are until they emerge.

"I have long loved the oddball books, the ones you cannot find in stores." www.altaonline.com/books/a65060...

This is great news. Fuck the Democratic establishment. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...

“The arc is long, like they say, but also squiggly, and you just never know where it’s going and there are no guarantees.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

“ 'It is difficult,' William Carlos Williams wrote in 1955, 'to get the news from poems / Yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.' ” Our contributing editor David L. Ulin on the NEA's termination of grants. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

I understand why some might consider art dangerous. What is it worth if it hasn’t any teeth? And yet, in all sorts of ways, the arts necessarily represent a nation’s collective soul. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...

always softer in the daylight, always harsher under sway of night

“She was just so convinced of her story. You feel her trying to make the world. So, even with the kidnapping, it’s like if she just tells that story the same way, over and over and over, and yells about the people who doubt her, then it will bend to her will.” www.altaonline.com/books/nonfic...

Super stoked to be a part of this exhibition, running from May 16-July 27 in Berlin, and presented by The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII) in collaboration with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de/en/events/fo...

Congratulations to the Pope of Chicago

“All the things we were going to do. Your father’s big break-out role, my one-woman show, move to LA and get rich and famous.… Those things sparkle at us from a distant mountaintop.” www.altaonline.com/california-b...

Third, Monona Wali's moving story, "The Sundering": airlightmagazine.org/airlight/spr...

Second, "consider if a pome existed," a stunning video poem/essay by olga mikolaivna: airlightmagazine.org/airlight/spr...

@airlightmagazine.bsky.social is back, kicking off issue 11 with new pieces to disturb and provoke you. To start, the first of three installments of Spring Ulmer's translations of the poetry of Yannis Ritsos: airlightmagazine.org/airlight/spr...

i am writing from my sound mind when what interests me is my unsound mind

*please repost or forward* Here’s a sheet where arts orgs can record information about their NEA grant termination. Annie Dorsen is collecting this info as a first step towards coordinating a response docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

“The only true dictionary is the lost one, the dictionary of the language that was lost when the impious tower was built: the original language, God’s language.” 4columns.org/ulin-david-l...