I can't help but think of Heather Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville during the first term. What was then an act of white supremacist vigilante violence by a radicalized right winger has now escalated to official acts carried out by the state

ICE murdered a beautiful young mother in Minneapolis. They shot her three times in the face. She was a poet. She played guitar. She had a six-year-old kid and his toys were in the car when some subhuman thug with a badge shot her in the face There is no forgiveness for these people.

New Flash Fiction Review Deadline for Issue #40 January 15th! newflashfiction.com/submit/

“Poetry works best through its affirmation of humanity. And translation as an endeavour builds bridges. It builds community. It dissolves national borders.” US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze discusses translating poetry in turbulent times. At the South China Morning Post:

Issue 21, the music issue, can now be pre-ordered directly from Stanchion. It will be ready for you and ship out in late February, and then become available from wherever you order books online. www.stanchionzine.com/product-page...

The fact that nothing is being done about this — and that people keep blithely hanging out on that site as though its owner and a key part of its official architecture aren’t actively enabling disgusting criminal abuse at scale — is making me lose my mind

Registration is now open for my new round of 3-in-90 workshops! NOTE: The Early Bird Special is a GREAT deal! All three workshops PLUS a FREE bonus REVISION workshop from @litmatchcollective.com for $125! That's a $70 discount! Go here for more info: www.artofflashfiction.com/threein90?ut... 💙

“Translation, like scholarship, is an interpretive process. You have to decide what aspect of a word or a sentence to convey.” University of Chicago PhD student Naomi Harris shares her experience translating 3000-year-old Hittite poetry into English. At UChicago News:

David Rose Nagle, apex predator, likes having the blinds opened at this precise angle so he can spy on the birds in the bushes without them noticing him.

Need a writing adrenaline rush? SmokeLong's March Micro Marathon is coming in, um, March! Write with us. We're not a cult. Nope. www.smokelong.com/the-march-mi...

The good folks over at @smokelong.bsky.social started a new community for us: The Village! I'm so excited about it that I contributed the very first Lit Mag interview where I talk about Split Lip's submissions & editing process & gush about @rpmirabella.bsky.social & K-Ming Chang! Join to read!

Happy New Year, humans. It’s raining here. ☔️ Claudine is getting antsy. Send her something to reeeeeeead! Subs are officially open.

The clock struck midnight, and I was magically transformed into a published poet! It’s especially meaningful to me to have this poem in @ironhorselitrev.bsky.social, because they also published my first flash fiction exactly three years ago. ❤️ tinyurl.com/4f6tz29e

Includes a special call for writers new to Trash Cat Lit. I can attest that the bin is a fun place to be! 🦝

It’s like I tell my high school students: I doubt you have fourteen “anos,” but if you do, please share that information with a medical professional, not your Spanish teacher.

📢📢📢 This is your one week warning. In fact, there's now less than a week. The dealine is 2nd Jan 15:00 GMT. So, you've got 6 elephants, 22 impalas, 47 hummingbirds and 9 mosquitos until entries close.

Readers and bookshops: please boycott any publisher that replaces literary translators with the non-reading, uncultured, lying, manipulative plagiarism regurgitator.

While Alexis dreams of a white Christmas, David sends his warmest holiday wishes to all you nice humans out there.

This is one happy little guy. His pet human has turned in her grades, logged out of her work email, and sat down with a book, a mug of hot chocolate, and a blanket. That means she’s going to be an indoor human for a little while. Let two weeks of uninterrupted feline hygge commence! 🎄☕️📚😻

Looking for literary fiction novels and collections publishing between January and June of 2026. Got something? Send me some info! Many thanks.

As if these two weren’t cute enough napping together, they also appear to be dreaming in sync.

My end-of-semester teacher exhaustion level: I managed to go to bed early last night and fell asleep easily, only to wake up from multiple dreams in which someone or something was preventing me from sleeping.

I've been seeing people say about their work lately, "I used AI in the edits & refining of this piece, but it's all my own words & ideas." I think people don't quite understand what "my own words" means. If you're using AI, the words are not your own. They are an amalgam of other people's words.

《 NEWS 》 Stanchion Magazine will open for submissions on January 5, 2026, for one day only, one month from today. And for the first time, there's a theme: MUSIC. All the pertinent info can be read here: www.stanchionzine.com/submissions Thank you for your interest in Stanchion. 🖤🤍

Thrilled that The Sunlight Press ranked #7 on the 2026 FISH (Finest Indie Story House) rankings! Special thanks to contributor and judge Sabrina Hicks for letting us know. www.fictionontheweb.co.uk/p/fish-list....

when someone tells me not to use em dashes because AI uses em dashes

It’s my first Pushcart nomination, and I’m over the moon! Congrats to all and thanks, Beth and Rudri @thesunlightpress.bsky.social, for your support of this story ❤️

Et in Arcadia ego ❤️ www.bbc.com/news/article...

Resting up in anticipation of a snowy weekend. (All the neighbors going outside to clear off their cars? That’s must-see Kitty TV.)

Not doing Black Friday because I'm against the creeping Americanisation of Irish life and can't afford to as a small artist, but WILL be doing Vengeful Hag Friday where for every piece of art you purchase from www.ciaraioch.com/artprints I will fervently wish bad cess to your enemies

⏱️ Emerging translators! Time's running out: Don't miss your chance to work 1-on-1 with a translation mentor next year. Apply to the 2026 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program! 13 mentorships are available (at no cost to the emerging translator). Apply by this Sunday, 11/30: buff.ly/EQW9BRV

I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.

The felines are ever closer... 🐈🐈‍⬛ FIVE days until submissions open for our themed pop-up call. Give us your cat flash - 100 to 1000 words - any genre. Give us great STORY and VOICE Issue published early January before the trash cats reclaim the bin 🦝 trashcatlit.com/call-for-cat...

If you’re looking for a picture of a cat plotting a sneak attack on his sister, you are in the wrong place. This is a picture of a cat tree. There are no visible cats in this photo. If any cat was present at the moment this picture was taken, he was fully hidden.

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that one of the main impacts of LLMs is to disrupt thinking: to make it so that far too many people never properly learn how to do it, and then to control the output so there are thoughts that people never learn how to think.

Impossible how good reading is. You mean I just point my face at the paper for a bit and it does a whole update on my brain?

GenAI has polluted image search results, especially for animal pics. It’s now basically impossible to find accurate art references. Enter this: a repository of open-access, AI-free images of wild & exotic taxa. Artists creating *without AI* have blanket permission for derivative/transformative use.

❤️

On 22 Dec at 5pm CET, I will run a small online event on how to use my lit mag rankings for submitting to journals. This event is for those: (i) new to submitting; and/or (ii) not comfortable with spreadsheets. The event will be FREE but there are only 10 spots - sign up below!

Last one of these for the year! Something for everyone: writing news, a cover reveal, good TV, adorable cats... open.substack.com/pub/lauranag...

Thrilled to share my new story in @thesunlightpress.bsky.social! I started it in @mauricenow.bsky.social’s workshop this summer @kenyonreview.bsky.social and expanded it in @smokelong.bsky.social Fitness. Thanks to workshop friends for encouragement and to @kelliborges2.bsky.social for choosing it!

The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted. If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.

Over the moon about this! Thank you, @kelliborges2.bsky.social, for your kind words. Can’t wait to share this piece with you all later in the week!

It's coming... The feline takeover is almost upon us. We want your cat flash - between 100 and 1000 words - for our call. Any genre. Deadline is 14th December. All the info and image prompts here: trashcatlit.com/call-for-cat...

We are accepting applications for our four-month long Developmental Editing Fellowship for Emerging Writers. The Fellowship involves one-on-one mentorship by an experienced editor on the KR team. Find application guidelines and previous fellows at the link: kenyonreview.org/fellowship/d...

Throwback to when a Japanese publisher sent me endorsements of Yamamoto and Dilemmas to use in pitching the collection, and included DeepL AI translations of them for my convenience. I, uh, decided to translate them myself instead

Happy HAD Friday! 2 submission windows today for those who make some kind of donation to a cause! Link will work from 10-11am and 7-8pm Eastern. Where are you donating? havehashad.submittable.com/submit/34166...

Delighted to be on this list and in such great company! 🤩

The day after my cats came home, I found out I got an ALTA travel fellowship. I told David some humans thought I was a good translator, and he looked at me adoringly, like he’d always believed in me. I came home today and said I got a story accepted. Apparently, this type of thing is now old news.