Save the Date ✨ April 25, 2026 ✨Spring Soirée VCCA’s biggest annual fundraising event will take place Saturday, April 25, 2026! Save the date, and make a plan to join us at Mt. San Angelo for a festive evening in the VCCA Hay Barn this spring. vcca.com/gala

broken record on this but a similarly great beat for left wing media would be covering arts and culture and not just focusing primarily on politics and current events because there's a massive void there right now

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to help run this awesome literary prize. Here are the finalists for the 2025 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature: lithub.com/heres-the-sh...

Solidarity!! Last week, Indiana University fired the director of student media & halted print on the Indiana Daily Student newspaper. Yesterday, Purdue’s student paper printed the banned edition & drove two hours to deliver it. Incredible www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/l...

I read this slim potent book twice in one day this week. Next day I read it back to front. Some deep stuff in here. Tremendous thinking and writing. Gonna be one I keep close by on small shelf of inspiring mainstays.

National Book Award finalist. Amazing!! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/b...

Wrote an article on Richmond's James River Writers, an organization trying to foster community around the arts despite increasing obstacles: www.richmonder.org/james-river-...

Returned home from Hambidge last weekend and I've been dreaming about it ever since. Added 30 pages to my novel project, drafted a new short story, wrote some poems, revised a bunch of stuff, read 8 books, and met amazing people (we started a book club!). One of the most peaceful places I've been.

We are creating a Spanish language section on The Rumpus, for original creative work written in Spanish and are looking for a volunteer editor for this section. If this could be you, please send a brief letter of interest to [email protected] by Tuesday, September 2nd!

In 4 weeks!

This seems like a good to remind folks: if you have a literary project you want to start but need a little help and a little support, our incubator might be what you're looking for! bullcitypress.com/projects/inc...

Today is pub day for @jennicjul.bsky.social's Red Rabbit Ghost, a horror novel I've been excited to read for many many months. I teach Julian's short fiction every year, and every year the students and I are surprised and awed. This is going to be good, y'all. bookshop.org/p/books/red-...

Congratulations to the Variant writers on the Wigleaf Top 50 2025 Longlist! @danbillyc.bsky.social "Kilter" (Spring 2024) @courtludwick.bsky.social "Quarter" (Spring 2024) @emilyrinkema.bsky.social "The Interview" (Fall 2024) @sarahroth.bsky.social "Postnatural" (Winter 2024)

If you feel an inchoate itch to preorder a book, you can scratch here: bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

🎉SHE'S HERE!!🎉 Hugely excited to reveal the beauticious cover of my debut collection COLD TOAST feat. the artwork of renowned 70s artist Tim Mara 🔥 Out on 15th May! Preorders now available at www.dahliapublishing.co.uk/product/cold... #flashfiction #shortstories #popart #printmaking

Here's a fun (I hope!) story I made about some teenagers who find a magical teapot! Thanks to J Journal for taking this on. www.jjournal.org/post/teapot-...

I don’t want to “streamline” my writing. I don’t want to “increase my output.” I don’t want to “write a novel with one click.” I want to write stuff only I can write. I want to read and write novels with soul and heart and a unique voice. Fuck AI. Long live real writers.

This is a good one!

Since 1971, VCCA has been a haven for artists across disciplines — a place of creative freedom, support, and community. This May, as we mark 54 years, we ask you to consider making a $54 contribution to support the next chapter of VCCA’s story. 💝 vcca.com/54

Call for submissions! 🗣️ The Offing’s Essay department is seeking new works! Follow the link to submit today! theoffingmag.submittable.com/submit

I promise to stop talking about this today (there are obviously far bigger things happening) but I did want to call out that these books are all from small/university presses. In a lit world where it’s really hard to break a collection out, I’m grateful for the attention to small-press books!

To our local friends and #VCCAFellows: If you're looking for a fun outdoor activity next Saturday, April 12, we'd love to welcome you for Spring Volunteer Day at VCCA in Amherst, Virginia! Please sign up by Tuesday, April 8: vcca.typeform.com/volunteer-day

I could not be at AWP this year because of work. I'm sad to miss all the good talk about reading & writing. Also, as someone with a new-ish book out, I guess I'm missing the opportunity to spread the word - so here goes: I hope you'll consider ordering SAD GROWNUPS: bookshop.org/p/books/sad-...

Yay, I've been awarded a residency at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. How wonderful and lucky, I can't wait. A little light!

We're hiring! The Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro invites applications for a one-year visiting assistant professor position in creative writing (poetry), to begin August 1, 2025. Application deadline is April 11, 2025. spartantalent.uncg.edu/postings/31471

Lots of great stuff in the newest issue of @variantlit.bsky.social. Especially love this wild little flash piece from @amethystwrites.bsky.social; check it out! variantlit.com/we-blazed/

And it's live! Delighted to publish Issue 36 with stories by Mikki Arnoff, Alyssa Aung, Jack Barrie, Jill Bronfman, Rebecca Croser, Peter DeMarco, Travis Flatt, Jaime Gill, Kat Gonso, Robert McBrearty, Kim Murdock, Nora Nadjarian, Chris Scott & Nathan Leslie. newflashfiction.com/issue-36/

🌸 Applications are open for Spring 2026 VCCA residencies at Mt. San Angelo in Virginia! Application deadline: May 15, 2025 🧡 vcca.com/residencies-at-vcca 🧡 vcca.com/fully-funed-fellowships 🧡 vcca.com/apply

One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to help run this amazing prize. Thrilled to announce that Angie Cruz has won the 43rd John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. lithub.com/angie-cruz-h...

There are only three days left to submit for the Bristol Short Story Prize! What are you waiting for? Send your best stories to us TODAY! Full details: bssp.blogs.bristol.ac.uk Pleeeeeeease share!

Propulsive and terrifying. Four roommates try to navigate their roommate drama while fiery disaster lurks ever closer. Btw, Creature Publishing is reliably good: creaturehorror.com "Sometimes life feels really terrible for no apparent reason. So chin up; your pain is not unique."

Happy deadline day! Apply before midnight 🕛 to be considered for a Fall 2025 residency at Mt. San Angelo in Virginia. 🌟 vcca.com/apply 🌟 vcca.com/fully-funded-fellowships 📷: Recent view of the VCCA Gazebo at Mt. San Angelo by Betsy

Tidbeck is one of the greats. What beautifully bewildering, unnerving stuff. "On the other side of the apple orchard was a loud party, where a gathering of nobles played croquet with human heads, and their changeling servants hid under the tables, telling each other stories to keep the fear away."

All star lineup

Jimmy Carter, a visionary on ending fossil fuels, put solar panels on the White House. Big Oil-backed Ronald Reagan ousted Carter in 1980 and ripped them out Tonight, as Carter lies in in state in the Capitol, a climate-fueled wildfire is destroying Reagan's former hometown of Pacific Palisades

Good stuff from the excellent @mbarrettwriter.bsky.social, he doesn't miss

Bring in the New Year with fresh panic! Panic Now?: Tools For Humanizing by @rhetlab.bsky.social has undone and remade my thinking about our world’s crises. You should read this. From @utpress.bsky.social. “Panic is not a replacement for loving the world, but a way into doing so very differently."

2024 brought 400+ #VCCAFellows to Virginia and 40+ to France! 🎨 🎼 ✍️ 💫 Help us keep creating space for artists in 2025. Consider a year-end gift to VCCA's Annual Fund: vcca.com/annual-fund Wishing you a joyous New Year from all of us at Mt. San Angelo and le Moulin à Nef! 🌟

Bittersweet story of love & longing from @tinhouse.bsky.social. “They read. The sounds of paper between them as they turn and crease and carefully avoid touching each other. Then, sounds of their coworkers arriving, doors unlatching and footfalls. Their morning ending. Time to wake up, she thinks.”

Enjoy poems so achingly gorgeous you think about them for days? Brenda Shaughnessy calls Mackenzie Kozak's debut "an elegant, rough-beautiful portrait of the existential, metaphysical, material, and political question of whether to become a mother." Preorder: uipress.uiowa.edu/books/no-swa...

Time again for this essay: therumpus.net/2010/12/24/c...

Huge fan of Dash Shaw's Blurry from @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social. Stories within stories within stories. Slight-seeming interactions nested inside each other in such a way that you start asking questions about the very nature of human connection, about what it means to change who you are.

Potent, brutal stories of women who find ways to breathe in places without air. Moustadraf left us too early. "That's all I know about marriage: hammam, henna, ululations, and a man who slaps you to prove he's stronger than you. And after that he fills your belly with kids and hits the road."

Attic didn't change my life like Geek Love, but these sentences: "He slept in my bed when I was alone and resented it when I wasn't. I put my hands into his drinking water and dipped out his dry food with my hands so that my smell would be a part of everything important to him. He had to love me."

Short Story, Long open submissions for another couple weeks... and then probably not again until... March? Looking through and thinking about the archives, I'm especially drawn to VOICE. ~3k-8k words, pays $100 + gets paired with original art ashortstorylong.substack.com

Hard to explain how much I love @terrylkennedy.bsky.social's What the Light Leaves Hidden, how radically it's changed my thinking on grief and loss. A transformative book. "If our lives truly end, then as the stars': still gifting light to those waiting here, alone, in the darkness."

Finally got to this one. Sometimes I wonder if a religious childhood would've helped me feel more the weight of these stories of faith and redemption and sin. Still fun. "It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church."

Glad to read my first Heti this year. Wild ride, sheesh. Can't wait to read more. Read this at VCCA-France in a studio overlooking the Garonne. What luck. "A person can waste their whole life, without even meaning to, all because another person has a really great face."

A surprising DeLillo, ghosts and regret and pain, lovely little moments shining through: "She almost said, 'Is that smart?' But then she didn't. Because what a needless thing. Because how petty it would be to say such a thing, in the morning or at any time, on a strong bright day after a storm."