On this shortest day and longest night, I'm so happy to be part of @necessaryfiction.com's wonderful solstice project, which will be featuring new short pieces of wintry writing from now until new year's:

It's great to see Michael Lowenthal's PLACE ENVY (February 2026 from Ohio State University Press) on this list! I have ARCs available for reviewers. @jewishbookcouncil.bsky.social @jwi.bsky.social @kristener.bsky.social @joy-castro.bsky.social www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/jbc...

What is the quintessential Onion headline? The strong contender that just randomly popped in my mind is "Hank Williams Jr. Honored by Institute For Football Preparedness"

Awesome piece by the Berlin-based writer Jane Yager in the fabulous new issue of @gooseberrypielit.bsky.social: "I sit in the car while everyone else goes into the museum, because as we pulled into the parking lot, Dad let slip that the pits are still active." gooseberry-pie.com/la-brea-tar-...

La Brea tar pits are the best

"Empathy, tenderness, and specificity": So nice to see @tyler-m.bsky.social 's MY PRISONER AND OTHER STORIES (Ohio State UP) on this list! @electricliterature.com electricliterature.com/electric-lit...

The most helpful phrase of 2025 👇

Me: "Blah blah, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan" @dangearino.bsky.social: "I need to go listen to Bob Seger now"

The kids aren't alright. Marina Fedosik considers Damien (THE OMEN), Esther (ORPHAN), Dren (SPLICE), and that grown-ass test tube baby from EMBRYO in her new book about adopted and created children of cinema. "Kinflix" is new from @ohiostatepress.bsky.social. ohiostatepress.org/books/titles...

Enjoying the frat boy conversation one table over about the pros and cons of dating lesbians: "I don't know, dude, I feel like she might cheat on me"

sounds like someone justifying spanking their kids

October is #BatAppreciationMonth! Here they are being fully appreciated in plate 67 from Ernst Haeckel’s dazzling Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature), published in 1904. More about the image, including details of the line-up, here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...

"Why would you want to own a cool Victorian house but make it look like a McMansion inside? What's even the point?" —My aesthetically particular 14-year-old, who just discovered Zillow. I have not yet introduced her to @katewagner.wehwalt.net yet but it's in the pipeline.

The two I mess up routinely are people ("poeple") and cigarettes ("cigarrette")

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

Once you start noticing "unflinching" in reviews and blurbs, it's everywhere. (I started seeing it about three years ago, when an author pointed out that it appeared in two blurbs (if you count "doesn't flinch") and the description for her book.)

These remind me of my sister's work: www.kyla-zoe.com/collections/...

I just now realized the Sundance film festival was named after the Sundance Kid

Very cool piece from Jed Kudrick and @sdileonardi.bsky.social on the history of translation in the US literary scene!

Details on the CXC fest. It's a great show. Held at the Billy at Ohio State Thurs & Fri, then at the main library in downtown Columbus on Sat & Sun. It's free! Guests this year: Charles Burns, Ann Telnaes, Carol Tyler, Mimi Pond, Dan Nadel, many more. cartooncrossroadscolumbus.org?fbclid=IwY2x...

Amused at all the tributes that are basically like here lies Robert Redford, who was hot

enormous thanks to @debutiful.bsky.social for having me as a part of their "self-interview" series today! i got to ask myself (& answer) a handful of questions about MY PRISONER AND OTHER STORIES, & hopefully got a little bit further away from the beaten path in terms of talking about the book.

Having recently used up all my "LA tourist time" on the tar pits when I was there for AWP, I love the haunting last lines in this flash piece by my friend Jane gooseberry-pie.com/la-brea-tar-...

Whether it’s Republican politicians joking about the murder of Melissa Hortman or Democratic politicians expressing their condolences after the murder of Charlie Kirk, both parties have a extreme rhetoric problem.

“Uh-oh, overflow, population ‘common food, but it’ll do’, save yourself, serve yourself, world serves its own needs—listen to your heart bleed, dummy with the raptured and the revered and the right, right” And let it be said I’m of the lets eat grandma school of punctuation, so

I've loved working with Lesley Bannatyne on her utterly absorbing and fun and sensitive novel-in-stories, excerpted here—nothing beats the pleasure of seeing the way these different narrative ping back and forth to each other. Available wherever books etc.

Any other lyrics— don’t even try chronic town murmur or reckoning btw— just form vowels and syllables, and mean it

The true purpose of Bluesky has been revealed and it's Michael Stipe telling us the lyrics to It's The End Of The World As We Know It

I just got bitten by a North American short-tailed shrew, which are the continent's only venemous mammal

Four decades after dozens of culturally significant objects were stolen from the Santa Ana Pueblo in New Mexico, a team of Tribal investigators has pledged to bring the missing items back home.

LAKE SONG (Sept. 1), selected by @deeshaphilyaw.bsky.social for the AWP Grace Paley prize, is so so good. Get a taste at @electricliterature.com! electricliterature.com/the-final-gi... @kristener.bsky.social @ohiostatepress.bsky.social

EXCITING NEWS: The Translator’s Daughter is nominated for the 2024 Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction! I’m so honored and humbled to be a finalist for this award. Winners will be announced at the ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 6 at the San Francisco Public Library. 🥹🙏🏽

northeast vacation locale class war drama is one of my favorite kinds of drama

Realizing last night that Curtis Sittenfeld has a new story collection pretty much made my year. Her deft balance of unerring social observation, empathetic skewering, and emotional heft is exactly what I need right now.

Full article: Y a-t-il une bande dessinée africaine ? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Un grand merci à Pedro Monaville pour ce compte-rendu nuancé de mon livre "On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power" @ohiostatepress.bsky.social

C. Palmer-Patel reviews Gendered Defenders: Marvel’s Heroines in Transmedia Spaces (eds. Bryan J. Carr & Meta G. Carstarphen) @ohiostatepress.bsky.social, a volume exploring the publication histories, character arcs & media battles of Marvel’s famous female heroes. fafnir.journal.fi/article/view...

This song just makes me happy. The kids and I listen to it whenever we drive to the pool. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOnq...

Today's Dispelling Fantasies post is about Chapter Three, Patriarchy. This one is pretty self-explanitory, but read this chapter for my explaination of "genre/gender bending" fantasy literature. I also threw in some queer joy and meniacal laughter in there for you all as well.

This, dear ones, is why I follow a sewer district’s account despite them being hundreds of miles from here 🤷‍♀️

“The suitcase was empty and its owner clear in our minds: a dainty-footed man striving via Spartan Races to compensate for his hemorrhoids and persistent dorsal pelt.” www.thecut.com/article/wher...

The evil that men do lives after them

When I met Ryan Coogler several years ago, we were standing in a group of people chatting, when a woman with visible hearing aids walked up, and he casually began to sign the whole conversation so she could participate. She mouthed “thank you”. He nodded and just kept doing his thing.

James Daunt of B&N says: "it is more likely that the Big Five and other publishers of comparative size will have “better books” than their smaller competitors." This is such a terrible and untrue thing to say! It's laughable, if it weren't such a terrible thing for every indie publisher to read.

This blows. Support indie presses. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/... #publishingsky

University presses have many many excellent books for understanding immigration: digitaldigest.up.hcommons.org/2025/06/23/o...

Shark Week bills itself as pro science and conservation and says they don’t promote fear. One of these 2025 episode titles is real and I made up the rest. Guess which is real. 1 Great white assassins 2 Great white sex battle 3 Great white invasion 4 Florida’s death beach Lolz all real

“The biggest short term effect higher education institutions are seeing from S.B. 1 having a hard time attracting quality candidates — ranging from full-time faculty to graduate student positions.”

Okay that’s well done

amtrak’s marketing team gets it