Does one have a "Dad bod" or a "Father figure"?

This is great, especially if you are a former academic and miss some of the things that were part of your job

Listen to the Emory launch…and then join us for the NYC one! @johannawinant.bsky.social will be at the CUNY Graduate Center Friday, Feb. 20 at 5pm for a talk and workshop, followed by a reception. RSVP here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I made copies of the intro for my students and have been handing out extras like an evangelist with bibles to anyone who shows up at my office. A colleague (who then bought the book!) wrote to thank me for "the most useful teaching book I’ve bumped into in a long time."

How hard is it, really, to be at the top of the literary field? To attend residencies, win grants, win awards, hit bestseller lists? substack.com/home/post/p-...

Reading Marx and drinking Guinness

I get the feeling that I am being incessantly urged -- almost bullied -- to read George Saunders' VIGIL because, you know, he's a really good person. That's as may be, but I do not find it a persuasive literary argument. It's a category error. I liked his early stories before he became a saint.

This is my first attempt to capture a live event of this size. I’m thankful to @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social & @johannawinant.bsky.social for letting me adapt the launch of their tremendous book. I think these episodes will be an additive supplement to it.

My latest review for @bookforum.bsky.social is also out now. In it, I think alongside Namwali Serpell’s resplendently rigorous new book on Toni Morrison about the last greatest living writer’s legacy and how we’re meant to read her.

Gathering a small group of lads and the lad-adjacent to undertake a CLOSE READING of carefully selected classic tweets. I am thinking of calling it "Traditional Fineposts II: From Dril to Stancil"

With Ron Charles and Becca Rothfeld laid off from WaPo, there are now only 5 full-time book critics working in the United States. That's down from 7 when this pubbed last year, though you may find my definition of a "full-time book critic" arbitrary. worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/septemb...

I crunched the numbers. You want traditional literary success? You’re boned. But Jayne Anne Phillips is THE UNICORN. The unicorn of unicorns of unicorns open.substack.com/pub/sinykin/...

Pretty sure this is the first (and probably only) time I’m on a podcast. ☺️

It's here! I hosted a symposium on close reading at Emory in November. Matt Seybold recorded it for his podcast, American Vandal, and the first of three episodes is out today. Catch me, @johannawinant.bsky.social, @becimay.bsky.social, @bakaari.bsky.social + more podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Protect your heart from breaking by padding it with soft cheese.

what a goddamn amazing project

Love this. I taught the introduction to this book to my intro to lit students using both the authors’ WCW example and my own example of a single preposition in Leonard Cohen’s song “Suzanne,” as articulated on @foxydigitalis.bsky.social’s “Songs of Our Lives” podcast.

Read this fantastic roundtable that @andyhines.bsky.social put together featuring faves Vineeta Singh, Annie McClanahan, Dan Nemser, and Rana Jaleel. The possibility of the university lives!

CALL FOR PITCHES @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and I are at work on a new version of Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century aimed at a more general audience. We’re looking for new contributions: your model close readings of texts, canonical and not, from literary studies and not. Details below!

Well, I went ahead and wrote it. An attempt to work through the discomfort people feel with AI agents on social media by reframing it as an aesthetic problem.

I should get in on this easy money

“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?” God this is bleak

I don't see how self-publishing world survives GenAI. It's going to be an absurd increase in slop books with no reason to expect any increase in paying readers. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...

Updated this post so it now includes not only a Power Ranking for US writers via the NEA, major prizes, and NYT bestsellers, but also a Power Ranking that drops the NEA, which brings major writers to the top of the list—a list that looks for those who marry sales + prestige: Updike, Roth, Morrison

My big takeaway from Tooze on Klein: a toss-off comment in the final minutes dismissing (implicitly) Arrighi. Doesn't buy the model of hegemonic transfer that goes back through the Dutch and Genoese. That, and his recommendation of Ryan Ruby's Context Collapse.

Used Claude Code to analyze three datasets from @post45data.bsky.social together: NEA literature winners; NYT bestsellers; major prize winners. Made a power list of the 51 writers (out of ~7000) who hit all three open.substack.com/pub/sinykin/...

The best part of Mansfield Park is when Fanny leaves well-to-do Mansfield Park, goes home, looks at her poor, working-class family, and declares them "dirty and gross" and "under-bred"

i downloaded claude code. it is insane.

By the way, for those of you not in MN: Homan’s strategy was to withdraw some agents, so it felt like we were in the denouement of the crisis, and then escalate hard against observers. They’re being incredibly aggressive with observers now. National media may not want to check out just yet

My book is now available for pre-order!

I hope Dems begin to see that moderate or progressive, AIPAC is not our friend. They endorse January 6th insurrectionists. Yet if you so much as suggest the US uphold its own Leahy laws, no matter your record, they will work against you.

For MTC, a reading group reflects on Tsai's WALKER, the literature & legacy of the flâneur, and why thinking needs straying. "After metaphysics, the monk becomes the aesthete; the empty space left behind by the death of God is filled up by art, literature, and, of course, Tsai Ming-Liang’s cinema."

this was a privilege and joy -- thank you to Vincent and Central State! I've developed a set of workshops and talks on close reading, and I'm always happy to have more informal conversations too. If you'd like me to zoom into a class, reading group, etc., I'd love to (no honorarium necessary)

So grateful to @johannawinant.bsky.social for joining our faculty for a brilliant conversation about CLOSE READING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, coedited with @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social The book is a true achievement and invaluable resource for the teaching of literature. @princetonupress.bsky.social

And how many missed opportunities because women are (rightly) warned away from certain prestigious people and places. I can say from my own career and observations of friends’ careers that this happens frequently but is rarely discussed.

Started mucking around with data this morning. Made a couple interesting charts from data about all the writers who ever got an NEA grant, with data from Xander Manshel + team. Decided I’d write it up for my first post. substack.com/home/post/p-...

This is the real story. People’s careers were interrupted or destroyed but institutions of Arts & Humanities persist 1/3

Trump proposed slashing the NEA and NEH to $0. The House proposed ~40% cut. The Senate proposed keeping the budget the same as last year. In the final budget, the Senate won. Of course, the NEA and NEH have been largely retooled as propaganda outfits.

In our new Comparative Literature issue: Yael Segalovitz examines 4 recent books on close reading, asking how they converge on a bold though often implicit premise: that close reading operates through the bodily and cognitive training of the reader. muse.jhu.edu/journal/128

So it looks as though you can access my new book already if you’re subscribed to OUP. Here’s the link :) 🎉✨ academic.oup.com/book/62228?s...

A fucking cartoon villain

Publishing expert @alicektg.bsky.social takes the pulse of Australia's literary festivals & their challenges – cancellations, culture wars, climate change and new hate speech laws – as Adelaide announces Constellations: Not Writers Week. @aunz.theconversation.com theconversation.com/what-is-the-...

"In struggle we rediscover the good life, a life where thought and deed and will are united in one" thepointmag.com/politics/liv...

for those following AI & labour news, I was just reading about the Washington Post and: "The layoffs come as Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and CEO, continues to push a new strategy centered on subscriptions, events, and heavier use of AI."

If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff. Democracy dies in oligarchy.

A reminder that DLC+ is hosting a very serious mini-conference on slop and nostalgia 👀 call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/01/...

It's going to be such a fun day reading and thinking together!

Comrade @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social has already boosted this excellent podcast episode on slop and fascist aesthetics but let me do so as well: open.spotify.com/episode/5Xxf...

I’m also really happy to be zooming into Central State University and Northern Michigan University to talk close reading with faculty and students there! (if you would like a zoom visit—especially if you are at an institution without a lot of resources—please don’t hesitate to be in touch!)

Know it sounds a little silly to say but this is actually one step to ending (cooling off?) the crisis of the humanities! 16 million HS English classes daily. Yes—structural changes, too, but changing public ed is a structural change.