"I will always remember this room with so much fondness." ☎️ Check out Renny Gong's PLEASE CAN WE JUST TALK before it hits the archives! buff.ly/KwnCA4T

had a nice chat with @jrostopovich.bsky.social about sex & violence & some other stuff! open.substack.com/pub/litwoman...

Vlad Mag: “Toxic Nostalgia,” edited by Tex Gresham and @wwwwkurtcom.bsky.social, is OUT NOW, featuring work by @emilylauracosta.bsky.social ( @rejectionlit.bsky.social / @autofocusbooks.bsky.social ) ☣️

Connecticut folks, we're doing a thing! To celebrate the release of Scott Laudati's new poetry collection Rainbow Road, Scott, @emilylauracosta.bsky.social , @terrilinndavis.bsky.social , @zoratheepony.bsky.social , and myself will be reading at Best Video in Hamden on July 3rd. Come on out

Our MAY ISSUE is finally here. 🌼 WORDS by: E.P. Tuazon, Renny Gong, Mary Liza Hartong, & Despy Boutris. ART by: Christopher Dunlap. PLUS: @crsantastic.bsky.social interviews Kate Broad. ✨️ Enjoy it all right here: buff.ly/pUBKe7b

I didn’t wake up until 10:30am! I guess living under fascism is exhausting. Anyway, here’s where I’ll be today. With @emilylauracosta.bsky.social @autofocusbooks.bsky.social

merry thursday

April showers bring: our fresh APRIL ISSUE. 🌼 WORDS by: @graythebruce.bsky.social, @kathystevens91.bsky.social, C. Zhang, & Quinn Franzen. ART by: Ainaz Alipour. PLUS: @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social reviews an essay by @megpillow.bsky.social. buff.ly/cyFupU7

My traditional Easter reading, from James Tate.

Nothing like music analysis to end ACCOMPLISHMENT SUNDAY 🎶 Senior Assistant Flash Editor Emily Costa’s @emilylauracosta essay on Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” was published in March Xness. Read all about it here ❤️ buff.ly/IeICI1N

I’m really happy and overwhelmed to have won the @marchxness.bsky.social championship. So much respect to @cicilybennion.bsky.social and her incredible, vulnerable essay. I felt connected to so many you in this tournament, both through your essays and interacting with you here. I will miss this ❤️

Fam: we're excited to share these new staff announcements! 🥳 We're so lucky to have this wonderful team! 🫶

there is no sound i welcome more than the chorus of spring peepers….thank you little frogs…you’re doing more than you know

The first thing I've written since I had a baby! Thank you @havehashad.com and @ezhang77.bsky.social!!! www.havehashad.com/hadposts/30-...

i’m team glycerine! vote now!

I’m assuming this is a non-controversial opinion here, but sometimes, after a long gap since you’ve last listened to it, “Train in Vain” comes on, and you’re just, like, “oh yeah - music - it’s really good.”

Guys, this is gonna be epic. The first time in @marchxness.bsky.social history that two writers who grew up in the single-stoplight town of Mount Horeb, WI go head to head. Whatever happens, the Trollway wins. See you out there tomorrow, sad 90s kids!

proof we @marchxness.bsky.social can't help but be who we are - me & my cousin, back when Hootie was still playing REM covers-- read, listen, vote! marchxness.com/sweet16-bush...

We watered and waited. Now it's ready to share. Our blossoming 🌼 MARCH ISSUE 🌼https://buff.ly/xk6gUgW Love & Thanks to the Contributors! 🥰 WORDS Todd Honeycutt, Carol M. Quinn, @lydia_abedeen, @shannyyy PLUS Jennifer Savran Kelly interviews Jesi Bender ART Scott Radnidge

Two things I keep coming back to in @emilylauracosta.bsky.social's wonderful essay. One: Fear. Makes me think of Victoria Williams' Crazy Mary: "That what you fear the most, could meet you halfway." Two: How many children go missing on any given day? By choice or by force. It's heartbreaking.

Last call for "the kids are really the thing about the song, the reason for its cultural and personal impact, but also the reason it is so, so sad." vs "what happens when someone passes through different places, among different people, long enough to be changed." @marchxness.bsky.social

Another couple of great essays here by @emilylauracosta.bsky.social & @chrislkeller.com, each doing the classic @marchxness.bsky.social blend of memoir & research & close reading. The songs seem evenly matched too? Tough call, but read if you haven't read. Wilco's up slightly but it's anyone's game!

I wrote about how my relationship with "King of Carrot Flowers" has changed dramatically over 23 years, and I posited some kind of otherworldly galvanizing force that operates only through music. And maybe also through Miyazaki films. Give it a read, give it a vote! marchxness.com/2ndround-gnr...

Your choices on the last day of Round 2 today are between @emilylauracosta.bsky.social’s sad essay about a sad song or my sad essay about a song that makes me sad… But we’d both be so happy if you read and voted what you feel cause in this day and age, that is impossibly important.

connecticut is currently experiencing perfect, miserable march sadness weather. must be a sign to VOTE! thank you to everyone who helped “runaway train” make it to round 2. i’d be honored if you helped it along once again 💗😪

We’re back at it! Round Here by @countingcrows.bsky.social needs your help against a real sad banger! Read the essays and vote!

this is who is writing about #Hootie & the Blowfish for @marchxness.bsky.social. give us a read & vote in the matchup today with "linger": marchxness.com#/2ndround-ho...

i am still sobbing (sobbing & posting) on my couch after reading this beautiful essay by @cbiondolillo.bsky.social —vote mazzy!

writing good books is easy when you remember that most people don’t read, and most people who do read want dumb shit, and also you don’t care what people want or how many books you sell

It's @emilylauracosta.bsky.social with a revelatory punch to the gut: "And I started to see how the fear is always worse, how fear has paralyzed me throughout my life, how it kept me from understanding reality." Also, fabulous journalistic approach when it comes to the subjects of Runaway Train.

only a few minutes left and it is a CLOSE game!!!!!

Why oh why, @marchxness.bsky.social committee, must this be a 1st round matchup! One of these beautiful essays by @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social & @emilylauracosta.bsky.social will undeservedly bow out of the tournament this morning. Score is close, SO READ & VOTE NOW! marchxness.com/1stround-sou...

had multiple AWP convos with people about how @emilylauracosta.bsky.social is just one of the best doing it rn, and here's another example. heavy, sad, hard piece that is also its own kind of joy to read because she's so damn good.

My essay on all of the SERIOUS sadness bound up in Mariah Carey’s “Without You,” now live! Vote vote! Special thanks to the #lambs who put together a truly impressive magazine archive (covers included w. essay!)

My game is on! Vote only your true sad conscience.

Today is my buddy Jay's birthday. He's the guitarist in the essay and the dude in the photo. Sometimes the universe just makes the little jokes for us. Hug your loved ones tight, friends.

This @emilylauracosta.bsky.social essay on "Runaway Train" is harrowing in so many ways; the astute meditations on sadness and fear struck me most: "Does sadness, if not given room, if its origins are not explained and accepted, turn into this sort of fear?" marchxness.com#/1stround-so...

@emilylauracosta.bsky.social on Runaway Train + "If these kids who ran away were escaping, shouldn’t we want them free?" vs @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social on Patty Loveless + "how any family can come—not through a great cataclysm, but through a slow disintegration—to feel stunted and numb" ?!?!?!

In her @marchxness.bsky.social essay on "Runaway Train" @emilylauracosta.bsky.social is fantastic on the gaps, conflations & slippages between sadness & fear, runaway & victim, culture & politics, moral panic & compassionate concern. Really great stuff.

WHEW damn. @emilylauracosta.bsky.social that is a (literal) hell of a @marchxness.bsky.social essay on "runaway train." giving me all kinds of questions of the relationships between sorrow and fear & protection & inexplicable evil. marchxness.com#/1stround-so...

Readers of RUNAWAY know I am gonna be predisposed to @emilylauracosta.bsky.social and Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" in this match, but I love the childfree representation @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social is bringing to March Sadness alongside Kentuckian Patty Loveless. marchxness.com/1stround-sou...

i hope it counts for SOMETHING that i cried a lot while writing this 💗 (vote soul asylum!)

here I'm sitting beside one of my favorite writers Emily Costa but I'm so drunk I'm just hugging this guy Noah who I just met @emilylauracosta.bsky.social @noahpowers.bsky.social

AWP was amazing, but then my flight kept getting delayed, then delayed again, then again, etc., etc., until finally being canceled until tomorrow, and now I’m waiting in a hotel lobby waiting for a room… and the only think that’ll make me feel better is if you buy my book or tell me how great it is.

ez has his first pub up @farewelltransmiss.bsky.social today 🥹https://farewelltransmission.net/2026/03/comic-1-ezra-costa/

Tonight at Club Charles, 7 p.m.

My @marchxness.bsky.social match is now live! tbh i wrote this 3 days ago in a tidal wave of shock/grief so not sure how this is gonna go but LET HER VOTE (for Hootie)

It’s March Xness season! This year I am representing No Doubt’s Don’t Speak in March Sadness. Read about Ronan’s favorite song as well as hear about how I used to run a Geocities No Doubt fan page. And please vote for me!

Today’s the day! I’m repping Round Here by @countingcrows.bsky.social in this year’s @marchxness.bsky.social 90s Sadness edition! Read the essays and vote for adolescent loneliness & Midwestern drives & distance & memory & longing!

Hey folks! It's Round 1 of @marchxness.bsky.social & Collective Soul's "The World I Know" & I have tipped off! Check out my essay about this redemptive song & its memorable music video, last chances to change, and why the best sad songs sometimes aren't the saddest songs at all. READ & VOTE!! 👇