Eric Lichtblau, Alice Jolly, Laura Dave, and more: 17 new books out today! lithub.com/eric-lichtbl...

Next week...👇

New year, new issue of the Keats-Shelley Review! Articles on Mary Shelley and The Liberal, Percy Shelley and Elizabeth Hitchener, Frankenstein and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, update from Rome and poems and essays from Keats-Shelley and Young Romantics prizes www.tandfonline.com/toc/yksr20/c...

"The increasing ability of regimes to narrowly target shutdowns on specific areas is of great concern as it allows the state to punish opposition areas while privileging others." theconversation.com/internet-shu...

correct on my novel THE FIST OF MEMORY. Its out Oct 2026 ❤️

Correct re Khumalo trilogy! Dec 2026.

Oh, and the translations of the Sibiya and Chirata-Mukondiwa books will be available... *very* soon.

I believe the finales of the all truly *exceptional* Abeni's Song, The Khumalo Trilogy, and Waters of Lethe are coming out? (@pdjeliclark.bsky.social, @zzclaybourne.bsky.social, @rsagarcia.bsky.social) And Year of the Mer by @ldlewiswrites.blacksky.app ? Not sure if @wtalabi.bsky.social's is 2026?

A few months ago I got the story of a duck who aspires to curling greatness stuck in my brain and simply couldn't get it out until I did this

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." ― Edward Said

In 1887, British forces kidnapped & exiled the King of Opobo in today’s Nigeria. British Palm oil traders had persuaded the government that the tariffs he imposed restricted their profits. It was a milestone in the Scramble for Africa and indirect rule by Britain. alanlester.co.uk/blog/antisla...

‘Silence’ by Shūsaku Endō (1966) A Jesuit smuggles himself into Tokugawa Japan to rally the faith of persecuted Christians, but what he sees there leads him to question his own. The reader’s expectations are cleverly subverted, making the narrative all the more lifelike

The Kempis is not what I expected, to be honest. I thought it would be more difficult to read and I did not expect it to be so moving. Obviously the chapters on being a good monk are not so useful for me, but I get why this is a classic. 💙📚

Apparently boiled salt beef!

Next Sunday at 7 pm GMT! Come and join us, you are very welcome. #WeKeepTelling

“My doctors + nurses struck me [as] ppl who were expert in the telling of stories… Everything is treatable, 👩🏾‍⚕️ said. The treatment just has diff goals. It was a qualified answer, but it also gave me comfort. I knew that she would always be truthful with me [+] would always offer smthg to hope for.”

Though Siren is now the default term for mermaid in many Romance languages, originally the term meant something else: original Sirens were birds with the heads of human women (thus why their songs were so powerful!). By the time of Plato, mermaids overtake them. #FolkloreSunday

‘Mansour has published more than 70 new books, using old machines from the corner of the warehouse that has become his shelter, feeding them with ink and paper left over from before the blockade.’ 🎁 giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... The Gaza bookshop that refuses to shut

"'Near Flesh' often treats motherhood and violence as two sides of the same coin, or sword." @chelsead.bsky.social considers Katherine Dunn’s posthumous story collection "Near Flesh." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/flesh-under-pressure/

We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false. Borges

A sad announcement.

Reading the Paris Review interview with Alice Oswald. 'You come at poetry with the momentum of having failed. It’s only when other communication is absolutely impossible that a poem has to exist.'

Have needle. Have thread. Have scraps of paper. Have free will. Have made a notebook.

Ok! My auto-off switch just turned my light off and that reminds me it's bedtime(-ish) 😅

Powdered beef 🤔

We're in Washington, D.C., at the Joint Mathematics Meeting through January 7th. Swing by booth 435 to find out what's new and forthcoming from the press! #JMM2026. @jointmath.bsky.social

So, a couple of people have messaged me in the past month to say they're putting this thread on their Hugo ballots for short story. (Someone even added it to @renay.bsky.social's Hugo spreadsheet.) Do not nominate it. I have put a note on the spreadsheet to that effect. 1/2

the idealism of the superhero is that someone, given incredible power and not held accountable by anything except their own moral code, will choose to do good things and help people. because that is, honestly, what most people do when given power and held accountable only by their own moral code

There's more to it than that. At independence, the outlook for Botswana, then one of the poorest countries on earth, was poverty and merciless exploitation by apartheid South Africa. Careful management of diamond wealth transformed their situation.

Studying the contemporary histories of Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia will make you incapable of looking at diamonds with anything but hatred and contempt.

finally, we're living through precedented times

Some of the fiction books bluesky prompted me to buy in 2025: some old, some new, some still TBR. Apart from this lot, I read four novels by Stephen Graham Jones and two by Isabel Waidner, both brilliant authors in very different ways; some re-reads; and too many clunkers by well-known authors 🤷🏻‍♂️

A second one bc why not: 1 like = 1 book I loved in 2025

Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore by Char Adams #books #literature #dedication

all cats used to be the size of lions, but each time you pick them up they become smaller. this might sound crazy but it is absolutely true. if not for some brave souls who picked up lions, we wouldn't have housecats today.

5 pages left in The Life & Times Of Michael K by JM Coetzee. Nearly as bleak as The Road. Found the middle bit with the POV change a bit jarring, but the writing is great, and the tension is electric. Next up is probably An Englishman In Madrid by Eduardo Mendoza.

1 like = 1 book I'm (definitely) reading in 2026 (mostly the DRCs I have lined up I guess)

Long term followers will know I sometimes run Q&A sessions for aspiring authors. I've been a traditionally published author for 20 years and I've written 23 books. I'm also an editor for an independent press. If you have a question, make sure you're following me and ask in the comments below.

My first book of the year is "One Week in January" by artist Carson Ellis. It's a diary she kept in 2001 and found again recently, accompanied by new paitings showing her life then. It reminded me of my own life in my early 20s, especially how lost we both felt then. 💙📚 #bookreview

Happy New Year! My Friday newsletter for @niemanstoryboard.org features all of you: I asked you to share the stories you wrote, reported, and produced over the past year, and what you learned from them. Thanks to everyone who contributed. niemanstoryboard.org/2026/01/02/s... #journalism #longreads

Incidentally recently read a good interview with its translator Ann Goldstein - on not having ever met Ferrante, the “inbetween-ness” of translated literature, and more recently becoming a specialist in ‘precursor authors’ to Ferrante (Morante, de Céspedes etc) #booksky @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social

"Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable." Excellent idea and I'm noodling which of my favorite topics to start.

Direct link. www.joanwestenberg.com/the-case-for...

Finally, for our year-end wrap-up, @danhartland.bsky.social was on for a really cool conversation about the state of the field (as glimpsed through our little windows on it), with lots of thoughts on reviewing, polyvocality vs. fragmentation, and of course buckets of book-recs:

i love all 4 of my books (Deifying A Total Darkness remains my personal favorite) but The Second Stop Is Jupiter is likely the best written & is easiest to summarize thematically, but the latest one (The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife) is up there as well.

Welcome to 2026! The Trollbreath submission queues are now wide open, and will remain open until October 31st. Short stories, poetry, and all types of non-fiction pitches are welcome. This is our first year testing an "always open" policy, so please help support our work with a subscription:

"civilization" is overrated

Dark Prophecy

The new issue of "Interculturel Francophonies", edited by Abdelouahed Hajji, is dedicated to Moroccan novelist, essayist, and literary critic Abdelfattah Kilito sites.google.com/view/allianc... #AbdelfattahKilito #Kilito