FAVORITE STORIES OF 2025 Cryptid Summer by @emilylauracosta.bsky.social in @poolpartymag.com poolpartymag.com/cryptid-summ...

Thank you to @poolpartymag.com and @brianstephenellis.bsky.social for including my book on their Top 15 Books of 2025 list. 💙

THANK YOU @poolpartymag.com for picking Y2K as a top book of 2025!!!

Find out what my top five reads of the year were, along with Managing Editor @femmeintheory.bsky.social and Poetry Editor @brianstephenellis.bsky.social!!! 📚✨

It's that time of year!!! Our editors each picked our five top reads of the year! Titles from @gigilittle.bsky.social, @sophiegilbert.bsky.social, @coletteshade.bsky.social, @lailalalami.com, @clairedederer.bsky.social, and more! 📚✨ poolpartymag.com/top-15-books...

love this @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social short on @poolpartymag.com! poolpartymag.com/the-hideaway/

Hey Portland!!! This is tonight!!! Pool Party EOY BASH. Cash bar! Flash open mic! Goofy raffle! Refugee gift drive!!! Hope to see you! 7pm @ Coffee Beer 4142 SE 42nd Ave. Portland, OR 97214

"IF FOUND PLEASE RETURN TO THE DEAD" I love this. @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social in @poolpartymag.com

Blood oaths, divorce, and not-so-secret drug deals. These childhood milestones and so much more to feel nostalgic over in Sozdinler’s new story 🩸

“After that, things escalated. We stole more. Little things at first, stupid things: a rubber bouncy ball, a packet of sugar from Denny’s, a chipped plastic ring from the church lost-and-found.” Check out @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social's AMAZING new story "The Hideaway" 🔥 (link in comments)

"For over a hundred years after the first people tried to settle the swamp, the swamp fought back." @femmeintheory.bsky.social and I (Kevin) interviewed Patrick Wensink about his new book THE GREAT BLACK SWAMP, where we discuss toxic green algae, Ohio pride, Kurt Cobain, and floating coffins ⚰️🤮✨

I love Patrick and I love this book and you should all buy it right now, and if nothing else, read our discussion for my incredible interview technique, i.e.: "As a Gen Xer, I feel like I need to ask the grunge question…"

"For over a hundred years after the first people tried to settle the swamp, the swamp fought back." @femmeintheory.bsky.social and I (Kevin) interviewed Patrick Wensink about his new book THE GREAT BLACK SWAMP, where we discuss toxic green algae, Ohio pride, Kurt Cobain, and floating coffins ⚰️🤮✨

We're thrilled to announce that @brianstephenellis.bsky.social has joined Pool Party as our poetry editor! We know Brian is going to bring their sharp eye & community spirit to Pool Party 🔥🔥🔥 Submit to them at [email protected] (after reading our subs page!)

"At twenty-four, I fucked wherever I could while my boyfriend did the same, an impossible competition." Love this new essay by Alicia Gee, "I MAY LEAVE," up today at Pool Party. 🔥

"Fucking is good cardio, I tell her. I have a soft spot for infidelity." Check out Alicia Gee's amazing essay "I May Leave," a meditation on family, fidelity, and desire, up now at POOL PARTY 🦋🔥

Metal albums? Childhood nostalgia? Christian/Satanic cult vibes? Guy Cramer's "The Pool Pit" checks ALL the boxes 🔥

"Inside were his Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and KISS albums. All the dudes on the album jackets looked like party guys" Get your Halloween vibe on (& pour one out for Ace Frehley) w/ this AMAZING story "The Pool Pit" by Guy Cramer 💀🔥💋

"Some creatures themselves are like large apartment buildings for the smaller ones to live in." Check out @jaimefountaine.bsky.social's amazing interview with artist Soso Capaldi where they discuss religious experience, their shared family, and David Lynch. 🎨✨

This one pretty much sums up the relationship I have with poetry and - who am I kidding? - with myself 😬😬. Thanks so much to @poolpartymag.com for publishing it recently; they’re doing really cool stuff 📱

"...mysterious like someone on an app inviting you to meet to drown in their self-regard." Check out this amazing poem "He’s as deep as The Mariana Trench (when it writes poetry)" from @ewenglass.bsky.social & come back tomorrow for another banger 🔥🔥🔥

Sometimes you read a first line and you're like... oh fuck this is going to be good. Casey Jo Graham Welmers' essay "Conjuring a Life" delivers and then some. Sooooooooo good. Up today at @poolpartymag.com 🔥

"Maybe when kids like Jessie & John grew up they wanted to be firefighters or teachers or someone that excavates dinosaurs, but you never really knew what you wanted to be because you always had this inexplicable notion you’d be dead." Check out Casey Jo Graham Welmers's 🔥 essay "Conjuring a Life"

📚📚 WHY POOL PARTY BOOKS??? 📚📚 • Ryan-Ashley’s 15 yrs as a creative director w/ publicity experience = thoughtful & marketable promo materials, a strong promo plan & gorgeous art • Kevin’s experience as an author w/ 3 book pubs means you’re working w/ someone who understands the process soup-to-nuts

📚📚 ANNOUNCING: POOL PARTY BOOKS!!! 📚📚 Pool Party is open for book submissions!!! We will have two reading periods and publish two books/year. The first reading period runs from now until December 15th, 2025. Visit our website for details 🔥

👀

this story by @aubrirose.bsky.social is every bit as good as people are saying h/t to @dmartincampbell.bsky.social for sharing it and to @poolpartymag.com for publishing poolpartymag.com/megalohydrot...

Hey all! Pool Party #3 is TOMORROW! We still have a few tickets left!! Weather looks good! If you already have tickets, invite a friend. If you haven't bought your ticket yet, get on it now! www.eventbrite.com/e/pool-party...

Honestly, I kind of get it.

Um. Everybody... stop what you're doing and check out @mmkaufman.bsky.social's new banger "PLATEAUED"... up today at @poolpartymag.com 🔥🔥🔥

New @mmkaufman.bsky.social!!

"Her breath caught in her chest and wouldn’t release. She hadn’t taken an edible, but this felt like a terrible trip." We're soooooo excited to publish the story "Plateaued" by one of our favorite writers in the world, the carwash queen @mm_kaufman 🔥 poolpartymag.com/plateaued/

One of my fav things about Pool Party is how it pairs the 🔥 writing happening in indie lit w/ interviews & reviews about incredible work happening in other disciplines. Today, we're publishing @femmeintheory.bsky.social's interview w/ performance artist Autumn Knight, where Autumn turns...

"My favorite thing about performance is its liveness. Its ephemerality." Check out this 🔥 interview between @femmeintheory.bsky.social and multidisciplinary artist Autumn Knight where they discuss group dynamics, being present, & the intimacy of being fed. 🍒👄 poolpartymag.com/group-dynami...

Um... so this is happening 👀

HEY PORTLAND. If you've been thinkin... Pool Party's cool, but like, when are u going to host a reading at an actual swimming pool? Well... the answer is Sep 7 4pm! ⛱🏊‍♀️🥂 Secret location in the West Hills. $12 or $20 w hot dog & bev. Tix gonna go fast. (link in comments)

You’re gonna want to read this one!

This is one of my favorite things we've published yet on Pool Party. Stop whatever you're doing and read it. @aubrirose.bsky.social is 🔥. Soooooooo good!!!

Very much love this @aubrirose.bsky.social essay

My new practice of subbing 1 piece to 1 magazine that I think it’s really, really right for is paying off. Got a 102 minute acceptance from @poolpartymag.com! Been wanting to sub there for ages, but waited until I knew I had something up their alley. Let’s go swimming!

"When I told people about this fear, they’d laugh and I’d laugh and I’d say, “I know, I know” and I’d do this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and we’d move on." We're FUCKING THRILLED to publish "Megalohydrothalassophobia, or Something" by the wildly talented @aubrirose.bsky.social 🗿🌊😱 poolpartymag.com/megalohydrot...

"We love without demand and bitch with a tender eye like the pull of Hockney’s pool paintings" Check out @hubbsd.bsky.social's Hockney/pool themed poem THE BLUE TERRACE. We're all HUBBS all week. Come back tomorrow for more 🔥 poolpartymag.com/the-price-of...

ANNOUNCING: a weeklong Pool Party takeover featuring the amazing poetry of @hubbsd.bsky.social!!! First up, "The Price of Okra." 🔥 "Lit crit with the speedo architect aw god what a narky bitch When lambo, buy the dip two suicides off the Williamsburg Bridge" poolpartymag.com/the-price-of...

Yooooooo this was such a good conversation with Naya Clark for @poolpartymag.com — like for real she came to get INTO the thing. 🤙🏾✊🏾🫶🏾

“I come from a world that’s very clear that it’s not in any way about me, so to say that something is about me is kind of a revolutionary act.” Check out this incredible interview w @scryptkeeper.bsky.social by Naya Clark discussing Bashir’s I HOPE THIS HELPS 🔥 poolpartymag.com/its-outside-...

"We weren’t close. Just basement cousins. Shared trauma, seasonal allergies, and a group text nobody knows how to leave." Groupchats, family nostalgia, and horror movies? Hell yes!!! Check out this total banger of a story: "Deadass" by Mallory Smart 🔥 poolpartymag.com/deadass/

New poem about Minecraft and heartbreak. Huge thanks to @poolpartymag.com for featuring it. ☠️🏹

“I remember the first time we played Minecraft.” That’s how you open a Pool Party poem!!! Read the rest of Brandon Diehl’s banger “LET’S START FROM AN EARLIER BLOCK OF SAVE DATA” up today 🔥🔥🔥 poolpartymag.com/lets-start-f...

Sometimes you read a piece and you're like... immediate acceptance. Check out this total banger from @seanennis.bsky.social. So fucking good!!!

Big thanks to @poolpartymag.com for running my piece, “The Last, Great Letter-Writer”! I’m real pleased.