Man, the smoke used at the NIN show last night really fucked me up and my whole body is wrecked from dancing/screaming/standing but…still worth it. If you’re a fan, you gotta catch the Peel It Back Tour. I’ve seen them play since the early 90s. They put on incredible shows w incredible visuals too.

Like a post I shared last week: What radicalized me? Reading. Literally reading. Six chapters in and I am full of rage. If you care about understanding the U.S., this book is required reading.

Five questions with your truly

My beloved micro & flash & hybrid community: my first micro CNF/hybrid collection is out on 2/23 from River River Books. Would love to find some flashies willing to review my book, have a conversation with/interview me, and/or collaborate on events.

COVER REVEAL & PREORDERS ARE OPEN! I’m thrilled to share to the cover for my forthcoming hybrid/micro CNF collection from @riverriverbooks! Thank you to @han.vanderhart & @amorakhuey for believing in my odd, sad bird & my eternal gratitude to brilliant designer, @albyfischer for this gorgeousness!

Free shipping on preorders of my latest, a micro/hybrid CNF collection about my time living less than a mile away from The Ohio River in Louisville, KY, forthcoming from @riverriverbooks.bsky.social in a few weeks! Preorders are super important for indie & small presses & authors!

We just sent out our poetry digital ARCs—we will send our nonfiction digital ARCs out later this week. 💌 Do give us a holler if you’d like to be added to our reviewers email list. We do not send an abundance of emails, and you can request print copies this way as well 📫

Men resigning after the horrors revealed in the Epstein files is NOT justice.

This. Also, the “be a wild girl with an eating disorder, addiction, & keep your mouth shut” culture I came of age in (I’m about the same age as the victims) makes so much more sense now. I mean…I knew capitalism & patriarchy were already culprits, but the specifics, JFC.

I’ve written so much copy (and learned so much in the process, my fave part, v Gemini of me) in the travel sector in the last year that I think I could legit be a travel agent now.

Thank you so much again to everyone who has donated or shared the GoFundMe! It has been so heart-filling seeing the care and kindness for our family. (1/?)

Have you preordered your copy yet? For those outside the literary community who may not know, preorders matter a lot! Support indie artists & presses whenever you can bc I tell you what, we're not getting much help these days.

See also: I have digital ARCs avail for serious folx who might want to review it, interview me, or book me for events.

Have you preordered your copy yet? For those outside the literary community who may not know, preorders matter a lot! Support indie artists & presses whenever you can bc I tell you what, we're not getting much help these days.

I’d like to tell you that I don’t come very close to the brink every time I have a book about to come out—that each experience is progressively easier for my nervous system—but alas, I cannot.

On January 24th, my parents home burned down. They and my disabled brother escaped with only minor burns but they lost everything they've ever had. I'm running a GoFundMe to help them recover and rebuild. I would be deeply grateful for any donations but also for any shares!

Dear literary community, maybe we’re all doing the best we can with what little we’ve got while living through all this **gestures at world** Maybe we shouldn’t be so judgmental of the capacity of people, presses, journals, etc. Some of us are actually earnest. So cringe, right? Sheesh.

It's a micro type of ACCOMPLISHMENT SUNDAY 💕 Print contributor @bettysueblue.bsky.social has three micros published in Cleaver Magazine from THERE IS NEWS ALONG THE OHIO RIVER: buff.ly/Y7tVxuY

straight up gorgeous

COVER REVEAL & PREORDERS ARE OPEN! I’m thrilled to share to the cover for my forthcoming hybrid/micro CNF collection from @riverriverbooks! Thank you to @han.vanderhart & @amorakhuey for believing in my odd, sad bird & my eternal gratitude to brilliant designer, @albyfischer for this gorgeousness!

Advance praise from @violetagm.bsky.social:

Advance praise from @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social:

Advance praise from @heatherbelladams.bsky.social:

Read an excerpt from There Is News Along the Ohio River by Beth Gilstrap here, and then preorder: riverriverbooks.org/store/-Preor... Out February 24, 2024!

Good morning to There Is News Along the Ohio River by Beth Gilstrap, cover design by @alban-fischer.bsky.social, and cover photograph by author @bettysueblue.bsky.social! 📚❤️🎉 Preorders now open here: riverriverbooks.org/store/-Preor...

If you’re going to AWP Baltimore, I hope to see you there. Not sure what the rest of my dance card looks like yet, but this offsite is gonna be amazeballs.

I’m neurodivergent. I walk around singing a lot when I’m at home. I’m not saying I’ve been singing since Jan 1st, “He’s gonna die this year…we’re gonna celebrate” but I’m not not saying it either.

I keep thinking about the ending of One Battle After Another.

I took this photo outside The White House in January 2017 just before a rally for free speech. Abolish ICE. Remove the regime. I am so grief stricken and filled with rage at this point I might spontaneously combust.

ICE is a state-sponsored domestic terrorist organization that executed Renee Nicole Good in broad daylight. We can't let this stand. Demand your representatives vote to abolish ICE & to impeach & indict Bovino & the rest of the Regime that's complicit in ICE's crimes against the American people.

Biscuit the spicy void helping me on the homestretch of this novel revision. 80 pages to go then I can send it to my beta readers (literally no one has read more than an early chapter from this thing). I have been very protective of it and it’s almost time for other eyes holy shirtballs!!

Some loveliness for the start of a new year - @bettysueblue.bsky.social in Cleaver Mag www.cleavermagazine.com/three-micros...

Three new micros from Beth Gilstrap’s forthcoming There Is News Along the Ohio River (February, 2026!), in Cleaver Magazine! 📚💙🎉 @bettysueblue.bsky.social

“There is news along the Ohio River: it is the end of what people on the news will eventually call the George Floyd Summer and someone has spray painted Where is the love? on the Indiana side of the Big Four in black and red.” Beth Gilstrap @bettysueblue.bsky.social

There is news along the Ohio River: a boy, toddler drunk, walks ahead of his parents whose body language suggests distance, a slow dying of affection, skin hunger.” Beth Gilstrap @bettysueblue.bsky.social

ICYMI I have work from my forthcoming hybrid/CNF collection in the latest issue of Cleaver.

I have three micros from my @riverriverbooks forthcoming hybrid/CNF collection over @cleavermagazine if you’re interested. www.cleavermagazine.com/three-micros...

I have three micros from my @riverriverbooks forthcoming hybrid/CNF collection over @cleavermagazine if you’re interested. www.cleavermagazine.com/three-micros...

Reviewed proofs for some pieces from There Is News Along the Ohio River coming out in a few days & got invited to apply to a book festival. It’s nice to feel like a writer. It’s strange…I’ve written more this year than in ages but bc it’s copywriting & a novel no one’s seen, it doesn’t feel real.

Takes off writer hat, puts on baker hat. Takes off baker hat, puts on writer hat. Wears both simultaneously. I’m tired, my brain’s fried, and I’m either ink or butter-stained or both most of the time now.

PSA to anyone baking for the holidays who isn’t a big baker the rest of the year: yes, if your recipe calls for room temp eggs & butter, it makes a difference. And if it calls for cold butter, water, cream, etc., for the love of the gods of flaky pastry, please listen

I should be getting a first look at potential covers for There Is News Along the Ohio River soon. In the meantime, here’s my favorite selfie from January, 2021, taken on the Jeffersonville, Indiana side of The Big Four Bridge.

One of my favorite things to do when revising & editing my work is to reduce the wordiness in & tighten up dialogue. I think I’ve gotten pretty dang good at writing dialogue that actually sounds like how people talk.

Dear Universe, I’ve been writing a lot about travel & road trips out west for work and welp, I’d really like to go on one of these itineraries I’ve made in 2026.

The novel I’m revising is a long, slow burn but I’m pretty proud of the fact that each chapter has its own kind of heat and to me at least, it never drags. Just the kind of novel I love to read tbh.

Tonight might be the first time I watch Muppet Christmas Carol this holiday season.

That’s a wrap on my second quarter of pastry school. I laughed a lot. I cried some. I felt foolish. I felt like an imposter. I burned myself a lot. I worked through a lot of pain, physical and emotional. I wondered why I was putting myself through this.

In addition to revising my novel over break, I’m going to try to write an essay on being a failed academic/going to culinary school in my 40s. As usual, I’m probably overestimating my energy and underestimating my depression. That’s definitely part of the fucking essay.