Absolutely not trying to make the terrible news of the closure of Washington Post's Books coverage about me or anything, but I cannot stress how bad this is for books. The biggest divide between Big 5 and independent/nonprofit press books is not quality--it's the marketing spend.

Thinking about him again…

Seattle friends, Asterism is open 10–5 today for a holiday book sale!

since the British 19C poet Amy Levy is in the news (a trove of letters was recently discovered & made available for research), I will share a link to the volume of her collected poems that we pub’d in the Empyrean Series (no. 30) a couple years ago asterismbooks.com/product/the-...

Can’t wait for you all to get these in your hands!

“And here the earth returned from its year and flew down from the sun above, and the sound sang ever more beautifully and soft: ‘Go to your earth, you who have not yet died.’” —‘The Parson in Jubilee: An Appendix’ (1797), trans. @unpaginated.bsky.social

asterismbooks.com/product/the-burial-of-the-white-wolf-marcia-barbieri Pre-orders are available for the second installation of the Trilogy of the Body, written by Brazil's freakiest living writer and brought to you by @sublunary.bsky.social.

Fully excellent post courtesy of @joshuarothes.bsky.social / NOT IMMUNE FROM POLITICS

It was hot today so I made some chapbooks. Will send you one. Inquire within.

It was hot today so I made some chapbooks. Will send you one. Inquire within.

“Art is utilitarian. Indeed it is doubtful whether anything like work, war, and money-making is useful to the life of a man.” —Carnevali, notebooks

Hello a literary prize paid for by submission fees is a raffle thanks.

Now would be a good time to ask yourself if you’re working for the clampdown.

Found this FDR stamp (c. 1968) in my copy of Osvaldo Lamborghini’s stories, published in Argentina around 2003. Open to interpretations.

Projects I’ll never have time to finish, part whatever. Please enjoy these prototypes for trading cards based on Fernando Pessoa’s many heteronyms and alter egos.

Remember: Sometimes the other guy dies on the hill. Then you still have a hill.

Becky Burke of Book Island (a picture book publisher in the UK founded by my fellow Tokarczuk translator Greet Pauwelijn) was "detained" by ICE at the Canadian border on 2/28. Her father asked that her story be shared in case someone can help her. He writes:

Ending 2024 with an ill-advised text conversation with my brother that ended with “Really little bro? I can deal with the atheism, but socialism?”

“Go to your earth, you who have not died.” Jean Paul, ‘The Parson in Jubilee’ (1797), tr. Matthew Spencer @unpaginated.bsky.social [forthcoming 2025]

You’re darn right I made it snow asterisks.

Update: Merle is now part lynx.

Dear humans, Just wanted to share something I've been quiet about, in the year of my loud self-doubt, with gratitude to @sarabandebooks.bsky.social and to many others whom I look forward to thanking in the coming months, MY HERESIES, forthcoming in April 2025.🖤 www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...

Get a DEEPER LOOK at our LOOK BOOKS series through writer, designer, and chef of @sublunary.bsky.social Joshua Rothes' TOMB OF THE ECSTATIC POETS: a series of compressed, abstracted histories. Find out more and subscribe today: acontainer.co/projects/loo...

Awful to see another independent distribution resource for publishers go down. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Pre-orders for my chapbook, Some Deer @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social, are open! 🦌🦌🦌 Huge thanks to Ian McMillan, Alina Stefanescu & Michael Earl Craig for blurbs; to Aaron Kent for publishing; & to Kristofor Minta for putting deer in my head at Seattle AWP.🦌 www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

Thinking back fondly on the time I reported a bug in WordPress’s core code and got it fixed… the simple things.

A morning visitor.

Interesting article by Swedish critic Rebecca Kärde about contemporary US "workshop style" poetry: "polished and measured... It is important to behave with a certain elegance. It must never be too much..." www.ornenochkrakan.se/smakfullt-ti...

An education, really.

Seattle (and adjacent) folks, come on out this weekend!

Here's the first page of Sleep Decades (@malarkeybooks.bsky.social), my debut short story collection. You can find it here: malarkeybooks.com/sleep-decades.

had a blast in Seattle visiting @joshuarothes.bsky.social in Seattle this weekend & planning future Empyrean Series projects for the year ahead. a great opportunity to see Asterism Books HQ again, much expanded, & to visit Arundel Books & others. (I’ll be back in Ottawa tomorrow, god willing)

Welp, here we are.