Animist Poetics: Ancestral Trauma and Regeneration in African Literature is in print! The paperback will be out in Feb. Please request that your library order a copy. 30% off with the discount code SNWF25. @sunypress.bsky.social @rcolesworthy.bsky.social sunypress.edu/Books/A/Anim...

I wrote this blogpost for @sunypress.bsky.social about the process of writing my book, Animist Poetics: Ancestral Trauma and Regeneration in African Literature, which is out now. sunypress.edu/Blog/2025/An...

Can’t not be excited about a COVER! An “if you know you know” kind of design, and otherwise, elegant suggestion. So grateful yet again to the talented team at @princetonupress.bsky.social.

Love a good mid-summer cover reveal!

@ryantopper.bsky.social hi 👋🏾

@lizzyattree.bsky.social 💖💖💖 youtu.be/WM7-PYtXtJM?...

“I wasn’t in Paris to avenge my postcolonial trauma but that wasn’t NOT on the table, either.” Benedict Nguyen on (re)learning the colonizer’s language.

Sigrid Nunez, a writer I have admired and whose books I've loved for a long time, has included my novel in her New Yorker list of recommendations and now I want to read every one of them.

‘This is Helen Garner! A woman fluent in French, who compares translations of Rilke for fun. Like the protagonists of her novels, the writer of these diaries is a resourceful, socially skilled woman.’ Anne Enright (@thewrengirl.bsky.social) on the Australian novelist: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Note

‘Scribbled, scrawled, gauche, idle, unlovely – the hand is no one’s, or everyone’s, or mythic, or just a stain left behind by something written there before. You cannot get away from yourself in your own hand.’ Anne Carson in the next issue, online early: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In his 1962 essay, “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” James Baldwin dissects the mentality of white Americans: “not only overt racists but the sort likely to be well-meaning readers of The New Yorker,” Kevin Young writes.

Steamy reading recommendations for Valentine's Day... thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” — the Creature in Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

@sarahemilyduff.bsky.social I’m chuffed you showed up on my timeline- mutual friends, perhaps?

@lizzyattree.bsky.social !!!!

#24BooksIn24Days #Dec12 Yesterday I read Deborah Levy's The Cost of Living. I didn't love this as much as many seem to do - but I deeply identified with her e-bike enthusiasm 😅

@halfbook.bsky.social omg! I was thinking about you recently! Catch up soon xxx

"Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" retains romantic-comedy tropes but finds surprising depth in a devastating plot twist, Sophie Gilbert writes.

@dorisl26.bsky.social nice to see you here! Can’t wait to see you in the new building 💞

@sarahviren.bsky.social talks to @laurenmarkham.bsky.social: “It is now clear to me that ‘what is the power of words?’ is not an answerable question, or if it is, its answer isn’t static.”

“But in their enemies’ absence, many of these Left-leaning posters have just reverted to dunking on each other, preferring the catharsis of sectarian conflict over the hard work of organizing.” www.404media.co/you-cant-pos...

@lizzyattree.bsky.social Duuuude!

Thanks so much for sharing @poptartology.bsky.social @africa.theconversation.com Once again literature often leads the way in describing the terrors & dangers of #ZamaZama life in South Africa/Lesotho @zakesmda.bsky.social #Stillfontein #SouthAfrica #Marikana #NeverAgain #ANC #Zuma #Ramaphosa

@lizzyattree.bsky.social 🥰

This includes the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network Visiting Fellowship @eehnetwork.bsky.social. Do take a look at the IASH site if that's your area and you'd like to come to Edinburgh for a visit! Also postdocs with EH as a priority, for more junior scholars.

"Theory wonks will love this rigorous & surprisingly playful survey of the genre of #autotheory." The Millions recommends @alexbrostoff.bsky.social & Vilashini Cooppan's "Autotheories" in their winter 2025 preview!

Gramsci and Hall insist that you must look relentlessly at things and people as they are, face your prospects with brutal honesty, and act in ways that you think can have an effect. In these ways they are an organizer’s theorists. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-34/pol...

I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers | Rebecca Shaw

#FreePalestine #Peace

[W]hat believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime. ▪️George Eliot, 1871-1872

Note.

Oh, she is truly a marvel of a woman ⭐️ Consider me thoroughly obsessed, @debele.bsky.social ! youtu.be/vM3EGoowAJk?...

I mean more than weather. I mean specificity of character, of milieu, of the apparently insignificant detail. [...] I no longer have time for the playing out. Call that a travel advisory. A narrative alert. ▪️Joan Didion, 1984

All populism devolves into something like antisemitism because it blames actors rather than systems. Before he became a parody of himself, Žižek had a good article on this exact point:

I can't believe I have to reference fucking Zizek given where he's gone lately, but: ideology and reality distortions *become part of reality when believed en masse*.

[T]he images were images from another world, or at least another country, images of fire and beatings and throngs, jittery angles in excited or terrified hands, and the sounds were of shouts and roars and laughter and screams . . . ▫️Mohsin Hamid, "The Last White Man" (2022)

"Among adults with tertiary-level education (such as university graduates), literacy proficiency fell in 13 countries […] while nearly all countries and economies experienced declines in literacy proficiency among adults with below upper-secondary education." www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

Born in Soweto, Dada Masilo was described as a sprite-like, energetic dancer and a fearless rule-breaker, who brought African dance motifs to classic European roles in a career that spanned two decades. “She effectively changed the shape and appearance of contemporary dance in South Africa.”

From the archive, 2010: ‘hang it up, we’re all here / the police is here / the former government is here / the new revolutionary government is here’ Poetry by Anne Carson. granta.com/hang-it-up

Mary Shelley's novel suggests not only that magic and alchemy preceded science but also that science can infuse and revive their prescientific ambitions.

Nikki Giovanni understood that Black American cultural history was, in part, the inevitable result of centuries-long oppression—but that it was also the product of constant evolution, writes Hannah Giorgis:

Apply for the Nobantu and Thukela Gobodo Memorial Doctoral Scholarship. It’s open to everyone in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Applications close on 18 January 🤩 The scholarships are tenable at Stellenbosch University. www.sun.ac.za/english/List...

'A talk with Dionne Brand about her recent book, Salvage, which looks at how the classic texts of Anglo-American fiction helped abet the crimes of capitalism, colonialism, and more.' www.thenation.com/article/cult...

Come work with me 😊 Successful candidates will be required to register for full time study in February 2025.