HELP!--PEDAGOGY! I'm teaching a new lit & film course called "Fictions of Writing and Publishing" about representations of cultural production. Think watching "You've Got Mail" paired with reading Percival Everett & Mona Awad novels. What critical-theoretical lit & film readings would you teach?

ARB's fundraiser is down to two days (and there's still one signed copy of RAKESFALL up for grabs in the rewards)

Constant Discovery: Jeremy Brett reviews Nicola Griffith's SHE IS HERE (@pmpress.bsky.social)

3 days left in our fundraiser! We've hit our first stretch goal and are excited to share our plans once it's wrapped up, but: still rewards left! Still cool possibilities to make real, with your help! Shares appreciated!

Now that I've read it and written a review of it myself, I can and did read this excellent review of SOUR CHERRY (by Natalia Theodoridou Review written by Hugo Finalist @chloroformtea.bsky.social for @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/04/18/t...

New featured essay! "Haunted By Genre: A Paranoid Reading of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach" by @megapolisomancy.bsky.social

Extremely kind words about A Meal of Thorns, the @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org, and our fundraiser to kick this off. And then the rest of the episode has me rolling out my old-timey map of the Atlantic, scanning with my antique chart magnifier, and sighing once more at the distance to Eastercon.

Someone review this for @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org pronto

another in case you missed it: installment three of my column at @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org, Misplaced in Translation, on Sergey and Marina Dyachenko's gorgeous and fucked-up fantasy of mannes, The Scar.

One more week to support!

"Imagination is a field of struggle, not an ephemeral afterthought that we have the luxury to dismiss or romanticize." ~ Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto 🌸🌸🌸

The Little Pieces of Being Alive: @bardythoughts.bsky.social reviews TJ Fuller's SOME STUPID GLOW (@featherproof.bsky.social)

Fantastic news! With a week left to go, we've hit our first stretch goal for ARB's fundraiser! Thank you to everyone who's chipped in and/or helped spread the word; let's see how far we can get in our final week! Rewards and more still available:

Are you passionate about SF, fantasy, and pop culture? Our Managing Editor is looking for original essay pitches: author appreciations, scholarly analysis of all aspects of pop culture, critical and personal essays, think pieces, literary analysis and deep dives into film, television, and fiction

🗣️ NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS PODCAST! This month, @hanacarolina.bsky.social and @alexyquest.bsky.social talk to me about reviewing debuts: are there extra responsibilities a critic has to new writers, and if so what are they? Hana and Alex also recently wrote debuts of their own, so it's a rich chat.

Interesting "What's the point of hardbacks?" piece linked herein. I always assumed part of their continued existence was because libraries prefer them because they are - in theory? - more robust than paperbacks, but this piece doesn't mention libraries at all, so I dunno?

For the latest episode of A Meal of Thorns, critic and reviewer @mollytempleton.com joined ARB editor @casella.bsky.social to discuss MOONGATHER by Jo Clayton: a great example of 80s mass-market fantasy from @dawbooks.bsky.social with interesting depths and angles.

Really excellent thread on the state of pulp scholarship and, in some ways, the failure of academic work to engage pulps in a deep way that speaks to the upper hand, in this case, of fan scholarship on pulps.

I just upped my pledge, which means ARB is only $400 away from a stretch goal to pay their contributors a very modest but much better rate. Please support or up your pledge (if you have the means to).

both @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org and Sword & Kettle's Kickstarters have funded! they also have stretch goals & about a week left in the campaigns--check 'em out if you love original SFF fiction and sharp SFF criticism: www.kickstarter.com/projects/swo... www.kickstarter.com/projects/anc...

Pre-orders are open for Collective: The Collaborative Art of the Anthology! Edited by Dan Coxon and Pete W. Sutton, Collective takes you behind the scenes of anthology making. Out October 6, 2026, launch at #Fantasycon2026! Cover art by Shauna McDonnell 💐 www.lunapresspublishing.com/product-page...

Seeking participants! Speculative Insight will host a roundtable discussion of Cameron Reed’s What We Are Seeking. Have you read it, or intend to? Do you have Thoughts, or expect that you will? Apply (forms.gle/YYgJAU1vByws...) by Mon, 11 May. Remuneration of AUD150 to be paid when discussion wraps.

What a fantastic set of finalists alongside us. Read fanzines. Read them! Congrats @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org @hugobookclub.bsky.social @galacticjourney.bsky.social @renay.bsky.social @journeyplanet.bsky.social

There's still time to preorder Reckoning X, the most beautiful book we've ever produced, so that Michael will take time from antifascist shenanigans to mail you one, in reused packaging, in all its recycled paper veg ink glory, with compostable shroom sticker reckoning.press/product/reck...

Some "reviews", some "takes", a reminder to check out @gifcon.bsky.social, and yet another plug-slash-plea to share ARB's super-cool fundraiser: it's the Wow! Signal for May!

Calls for Reviews & Essays: August 2026

who's writing at the intersection of horror and fantasy these days?

The SFF Librarian Reviews! A few top picks from Jeremy Brett's recent reading list:

We're 75% of the way to our first stretch goal! Big thanks to everyone who's already contributed, and we'd love your help spreading the word to push ARB to the next level!

Alien polycules! Human polycules! Space sex! Read my new article!

Happy birthday Roberto Bolaño, who would be 73 today, and who also would have seen many of his darkest, weirdest visions of fascism running amok for real

The SFF is proud to be a sponsor of the Women in SFF conference in Newcastle on 11-12 June. Registration is free but there's a form to complete. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I read a piece in the Times that asks where all the book reviews have gone. I must confess—in my capacity as a freelance book critic—it has made me feel very frustrated.

The SFF's biannual conference is in collaboration this year with the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the University of Liverpool. We'll be celebrating 40 years of the Clarke Award and looking ahead to the next 40 years. Links to the cfp are in the news item. www.sf-foundation.org/fresh-about

This is the last weekend you have to work on your #Mythcon54 proposals! The CFP deadline (April 30th) is rapidly approaching, but there is still time to participate. Full CFP info can be found here: www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mc54...

What is the novel of ideas? What are novels? *What are ideas*?!! Some of these questions are addressed in my latest Snap! Criticism column for @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org.

In our upcoming Modern Cosmic Horror class, author Premee Mohamed will take you beyond tentacled gods to explore the transformation of cosmic horror, esp in the hands of marginalised writers. Join us on May 16 & 17 - you just need to apply for a scholarship! events.humanitix.com/modern-cosmi...

Snap! Criticism! @danhartland.bsky.social looks at Potter & Taunton's THE BRITISH NOVEL OF IDEAS (@universitypress.cambridge.org) and McEwan's WHAT WE CAN KNOW (@aaknopf.bsky.social) to ask, even as the waters are rising, what bridges & causeways connect speculative fiction and...the other kind:

Reckoning has a new art director! Meet @priyachand.bsky.social (who is also our co-editor for creative nonfiction), see her awesome penguin photo from actual Antarctica, and find out what she's looking for in art about environmental justice: reckoning.press/reckoning-no...

Ancillary is thrilled to be a finalist for Best Fanzine! A big congrats to all our contributors & co-finalists, and a big thanks to all our readers!

This rant is GLORIOUS

Thrilled to celebrate the release of my dark fiction collection, The Remedy is the Disease, out May 15th from @undertakerbooks.bsky.social with a virtual reading with two folks whose work I admire and whose support has been incredible, @riosdelaluz.bsky.social and @ryanb4890.bsky.social

Ancillary is thrilled to be a finalist for Best Fanzine! A big congrats to all our contributors & co-finalists, and a big thanks to all our readers!

I was very late to the party on Silvia Park’s Luminous, with a lot of other reviewers having sung its praises before me, but I’m super glad to have got there because it was entirely worth every single bit of the hype.

I'm making one last push to let people know about this online talk -- sponsored by the British Library in conjunction with their current exhibition on fairy tales. The live stream starts at 7:30 tonight, but if you buy a ticket *before* the event you can watch it any time over the next 7 days.

I recently started reading poetry again and it's genuinely rejuvinated my soul. It's a medium that compels you to pay attention to every word, and in a world where our attention is a commodity, just sitting down and quietly giving your whole being to a piece of art feels so spiritually uplifting.

The pleasures & perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play vs gamified labor, & whether the internet used to be fun: @matthewleggatt.bsky.social of @utopiaanddystopia.bsky.social joins to discuss Ernest Cline’s READY PLAYER ONE!

would love to read criticism abt the minor strain of fantasy where magic returns to the world--Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist, Crowley's Little, Big, Clarke's JSaMN--esp bc they're *not* inversions of the nostalgic "magic-leaves" story, nor utopian/millennial; they end w a very ambiguous transcendence

Hey SFF hive-mind: What are the best classic SFF that deal with concerns about mind reading? Bonus if they mention the field of psychiatry. I'm especially interested in works from before about 1965.