All I knew was that I was participating in the thing I’d wanted my entire life—and yet I was somehow failing at it, or at least failing to express how badly I wanted it, when it was the Want itself that had me caught like a rabbit in headlights.-https://adimagazine.com/articles/tilting-at-windmills/

"It’s in the fissures, and the resistance, the all around mess where the real learning takes place." @melissachadburn.bsky.social's essay "Tilting at Windmills," about day laborers in LA County, activism, and academia, is out today from Adi. Read here: adimagazine.com/articles/til...

In reading my students' work I'm noticing a trend. Though the majority of my students are brunette, blonde blue eyed characters are the platonic ideal in their fiction. I wonder if it's because this is true of the majority of the stories they've read or if it's a reflection of popular culture...

got to hear Claudia Rankine read from her forthcoming book Triage last week. What a joy: tsl.news/a-night-with...

today is the day of Whiting sadness for me...

Hello from Whidbey Island...

i discovered this incredible story by @samjmiller.bsky.social when perusing Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy in prepping for my courses next semester. www.thedarkmagazine.com/if-someone-y...

Read this perfect story today. Thrilled to teach it to my students next semester. Thanks @stephcha.bsky.social and @blacktopkid.bsky.social for your excellent selections in BAMS southwestreview.com/volume-108-n...

'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor'-Virgil

Reposting this and a few other things for no particular reason today. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow and the next day, too.

Love this prose by Miriam Toews in @parisreview.bsky.social

What they aren’t showing on Fox News

BREAKING: A few minutes ago, a vehicle of three people was rammed by a truck belonging to federal immigration authorities in Boyle Heights, CA. According to security footage shown to me, they deployed chemical munitions & detained the driver at gunpoint. All are US citizens according to the wife.

Got a book length or longer project you'd like feedback on? I'm offering manuscript consultations over summer break: www.melissachadburn.com/consultations/

I concluded this because these days, U.S. federal agents cover their faces, don’t produce identification, and won’t respond even when you ask them who they are. Living in a city of actors, I recognize their Method-style commitment to the neo-Gestapo role. www.zocalopublicsquare.org/i-went-to-fi...

Looking forward to doing this @dykestorytelling event @dynastytr.bsky.social on June 21st!

What a delightful night, and leave it to Ocean Vuong to sit before a packed house, extending the admiration and recognition to @tonyamosley.bsky.social, who was also such an insightful interlocutor. I woke up today motivated with a full spirit. People are alright.

"I slept with a human Ed Hardy shirt."—@jeanho66.bsky.social in her delightfully funny and moving story Kiki and Tombu in The Sewanee Review.

This essay by Hanif Abdurraqib on despair is such a stunner. www.newyorker.com/culture/essa... Also reminds me of a quote from Laurel Fantauzzo's The First Impulse, "Grief tinged amusement is a most Filipino condition." Malaise is my preferred affect. I love to swim around the slow thick of malaise.

📚 ¿y tù? 📖