Such a good season so far; such a treat to have someone as smart as KVA take it seriously

The take I’ve been waiting for! HR is the first tv show I’ve watched that felt like reading a great romance novel: an emotionally absorbing and almost hallucinatory focus on the trajectory of the love relationship. Romance is good! It doesn’t need to be elevated or rescued or redeemed!

Lit’rally the best news I’ve received since the dawn of Trump 2

"It's less harmful to me to make sure that they can do the things without the AI than to try and push the AI into my classroom knowing that, at least for some of them, it's going to mean that they don't get to acquire the skills that they need." This this this this this this this this this this 🙏

part of this is like, conservatives projecting; part of this is conservatives unable to imagine politics without money; and part of this is dudes who are so out of touch with feminized labor that they think children's birthday parties exist as a spontaneous act of parthogenesis

when I talk about how this is truly the only show to have a romance novel structure, this is what I mean: every other romance adaptation turns the fundamentally, crucially narrow focus of a romance novel into a broader tv world. this show feels different because it does not.

a fellow Jesuit pointed out to me recently that whenever Jesus is angry in the Gospel, it's always because he is also grieving. and while I will never claim to know the mind of God, I'm confident in saying that the state murdering people in the street would be something that drove him to deep grief.

Good morning to all the superintendents who know they are going to cancel school on Monday but won't call it yet so they look tough. Let parents and teachers plan for this emergency, effers.

I would be so fine living in interesting times if this was the kind of wild, unprecedented shit going on

I see this child and my heart breaks open. I don't know how to fix the soul of a land where a large group of people delight in his anguish, in the idea of using him to get at his family. This little boy with a Spider-Man backpack (that detail kills me), whose eyes should be bright and smile broad.

We have already started shipping whistles to Maine, but if anyone sees anyone in Maine who needs them (especially groups who want big batches for distribution) send them our way. Email to request at the top of the linktree. linktr.ee/3Dwhistles

My adhd teacher chaos isn’t always effective, but when my students asked if we could turn a planned discussion of The Tell-Tale Heart into a mock trial with costumes and a bailiff and witness statements and journalists reporting on the proceedings, I did immediately throw all my plans away and agree

Yesterday I learned that my colleague, a fellow English teacher who’s probably in her mid-to-late 20s, had never heard of Angels in America or the AIDS crisis, and I am epistemically reeling so hard I don’t know what to do (other than immediately put AiA on our AP Lit summer reading list)

My favorite piece of Heated Rivalry analysis to date (and I’ve been marinating in Threads for the last month so I have definitely read them all)

I've stared into the futility of writing my entire life. I mean yes, the robots are breaking my heart but so did my creative writing degree

I’ve got a new novella coming out! Friends and I collabed on The Duke’s Somerset Sins: five (mostly) illegitimate siblings, a meddling dad, and one eventful Valentine’s Day Ball. Five love stories for the price of one! Preorder now! books2read.com/u/4jVOel

I may be misreading this but the thing we seem to have arrived at is that if you’re a “rural kid” you should go to whatever totally unregulated school you’d like, for free; if you’re an “urban kid” you should be tested biweekly until 12th grade.

I’ve got a new novella coming out! Friends and I collabed on The Duke’s Somerset Sins: five (mostly) illegitimate siblings, a meddling dad, and one eventful Valentine’s Day Ball. Five love stories for the price of one! Preorder now! books2read.com/u/4jVOel

Look what my mom made me 😭 It took almost a year and something like 200,000 stitches. And she made it 3D, with a spine and "pages." I'm in such awe. One of the most special things I've ever been given. #booksky #romancebooks #crafting

If you're writing a SFF / thriller you can have all the gratuitous sex scenes you want but the murder and violence has to advance plot and character. If you're writing romance, the *sex scenes* need to advance the plot, and the *murder and violence* are where you go to town. simple.

Read what you want, darlings, but it's odd when books that happen to feature sex are treated as radioactive and those about murder are treated as general interest.

Cannot IMAGINE why

The 2026 #RomComBracket movies are now available for your perusal! letterboxd.com/romeverafter...

That’s because it’s going down in the *side chats* And threads, now my #1 scrolling platform until the loons take over bluesky

Oh god I have to go back to work tomorrow and NOT TALK ABOUT MY GAY* HOCKEY BOYS FOR LIKE SEVEN HOURS CONSECUTIVELY 😭 *I am aware that Ilya is bi, thank you

You have to go through Congress for anything resembling this type of war. Round up Massie and Paul types and have him removed. The people in this administration are on actual drugs and have insatiable bloodlust and bespoke mental illnesses. He has to go, and everybody with him.

What teachers get way too often, I think: 1️⃣ lots of resources without much, if any, agency 2️⃣ lots of agency without much, if any, resources Maybe 2026 we can, you know, give teachers...both?

Not a bad way to end the year

Think that when it comes to education stuff it’s worth keeping in mind that buzzword-y stuff sounds like bullshit because it is

Does anyone else sing “what are you doing New Year’s Eve” to yourself the entire week between Christmas and new years?

Woke up this morning, turned over and looked into my husband’s eyes and he said to me, you’re thinking about heated rivalry already, aren’t you? I was

I will not rewatch heated rivalry today…I will not rewatch heated rivalry today…

Truly ecstatic for all the romance newbies heated rivalry brought in who get to spend the long weekend mainlining the pure stuff (I will be rewatching all of heated rivalry)

It’s a little crazy to host a party for 20 friends on Christmas Eve and then family dinner on Christmas Day, but I have a house full of desserts, heard my 12yo and her friends play Christmas carols on trumpet and strings, and am going to bed remembering why I love all these people so much. Worth it

Salute to all Santas on duty!! 🫡🎅

What’s that? Good romance writers are actually masters of structure, characterization, and inventive plotting? You don’t say

wendell berry QUESTIONNAIRE

For the love of all that is good in this world, look up Romance as a genre on Wikipedia before writing your Discourse piece. Please. I'm begging. Ask a single Romance reader a question.

I love finding resonances between the work I teach and my daily life. In class, we’re reading about Odysseus surviving 10 years at sea, and then on my lunch break I get to spend 20-minutes trekking across campus in the rain to get to the only copy machine I’m allowed to use

"But the correlation between school AI adoption and personal AI relationships is clear across multiple behaviors." Ummm...this also seems bad.

Rereading my own work to find quotes to pull out for social media marketing makes me want to never make eye contact with another human being again How do people *do* this?

Happy Hanukkah! Thank you to Chabad of Park Slope for shining light in times of darkness, and showing we will never yield to hate.

Delight from everyone except my 8th grader who was contractually obligated to roll his eyes

Remembering the time an administrator claimed “bad data is better than no data” when teachers complained that the baseline assessment we were being forced to use wasn’t going to provide useful results

You may know @kvanaren.bsky.social as a talented and award-winning critic but did you know she’s also a skilled broker in rare and hard-to-find jellycats? Cannot recommend her services highly enough

Begging my students yesterday to infuse their personalities into their writing because I’ve spent too much time around chat-gpt’s personality and it sucks. They then volunteered to protect me when the robot apocalypse hits