"'All of these terms, 'hot girls read' included, were pieces of a collective language built by thousands of readers interacting in the bookish spaces.'" lithub.com/a-content-cr...

In which Jill Lepore calls Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort's edited collection "OUTPUT: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023" an "engrossing collection":

Wrote a Very Brief Essay about AO3, Wattpad, KDP, Chuck Tingle, and a type of novel I'm calling Gay Fantasia sinykin.substack.com/p/gay-fantasia

Now that I've touched grass I can report it was a wonderful day! Loved learning from @drtlwagner.bsky.social @tegan.online @ryancordell.org @sselisker.bsky.social + a few others not on bsky. And thanks to our amazing respondents @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social and Tess McNulty for weaving it all together

It's going to be a wonderful day reading and thinking together. We look forward to all of the presentations. This event is free and open to the public. You can register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

We'll conclude with responses featuring our great advisory board member Tess McNulty in dialogue with the also great Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social as respondents.

After a short break, we'll turn to our NOSTALGIA panel. Presenters include Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org, Sabina Fazli, Tegan Pyke @tegan.online, Justine Provino, and Travis L. Wager @drtlwagner.bsky.social

We'll begin at 10:30 am EST with our SLOP panel featuring papers by Tina Kendall, Scott Selisker @sselisker.bsky.social, Gustavo Daudt Fischer, and a joint presentation by Kyla Yein and Thomas Noya.

Looking forward to this incredible lineup on Thursday! SLOP and NOSTALGIA have received a lot of viral attention lately but less scholarly discussion in the context of digital literary culture. I'm excited to spend the day thinking deeply about them

Ah, the Writer's Gatorade

Halp! I had a well-rounded liberal arts education and now I have too many fields

So excited for all of the papers!

Our MasterClass series is back! Come hang out and talk about Ryan Heuser’s “Generative Aesthetics“ with us. Apr. 30th at 10am est

"Tsundoku" The habit of collecting books and letting them pile up, unread, while still cherishing the possibility of reading them one day. #booksky

This book is going to be incredible + open up an entire new field of research/inquiry for the literary & cultural studies discipline (grad students take note!). It models an entire new form of cultural criticism that combines close reading + historicism + theory + platform studies. Read her thread!

I haven't read it yet but some people I know have and they say CONTENT MACHINES rules, and I have read this great article on Wattpad, platform capitalism + bibliotherapy, which is truly insightful so I'm pretty sure the book will indeed rule. @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social post45.org/2022/07/watt...

In addition to @aarthivadde.bsky.social's WE THE PLATFORM, I'm excited about this forthcoming book f/ @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social CONTENT MACHINES (dropping around the same time Fall 2026), which with Vadde's is going to open up lit studies to a lot of cool new questions about culture & platforms.

About time

Can't wait for this!!

You can get the DL from last week's Duke symposium on books today, featuring: "Dan Sinykin. A skinny man with a floral print shirt tucked into tweed pants. He seemed to be a man shrouded in mystery. One unknown was how long his hair actually was." substack.com/home/post/p-...

The photographs in this series are too good. “The shoot was inspired by the increasing number of people who have been bidding goodbye to the pallor-inducing glow of the blue screen in favor of tangible ink and paper.” www.vogue.com/article/book...

So many good new books are coming out!

part of that's trad authors getting on substack, even publishing fiction there (junot diaz, sherman alexie), part of that's trad publishing getting more serious about self-published fiction and fanfic

Why does this feel like heated rivalry?

I enjoyed this review by @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social (thanks @aarthivadde.bsky.social for the rec!). It got me thinking about how fickle social media is. It's less "cool" to post now and many who established themselves online in the 2010s have the luxury to adopt a traditional celebrity privacy

Very impressed that someone else's inane annotations in a used book have historically led me to think "ugh I can't believe I paid $3 for this," but on BookTok/Etsy people are paying $100+ for the experience.

New essay about some creeps, contemporary and canonical, in the history of the novel. I'm thinking about the nexus of the romance plot, commercial surveillance, and "the desire of the other." DM me for a PDF!

Submissions to this year's virtual Electronic Literature Organization conference close at the end of the day (AOE) on the 28th! This includes submissions for performances and exhibitions of experimental work engaging the future of narrative as well as our academic track with papers and workshops.

AI slop and nostalgia go so well together because nostalgia itself is the desire to misconstrue the past by smoothing its messy lived reality away into conceptual ideals. nostalgia and AI work in similar ways

@paulbarrett1.bsky.social and I are thrilled to announce the 2026 DH@Guelph Summer Workshops! We've got an excellent line up this year (UX, Feminist Making, & Soundwalks, oh my!) & will be announcing our keynote next week. Please help us spread the word!! Register here: tinyurl.com/DHGuelphSW26

If you're in the Triangle area, the @post45.bsky.social grad symposium is happening tomorrow and Saturday, organized by the excellent Julia Gordon and @cassandraluca.bsky.social. Plus, a talk by me and a roundtable on sociality and the university!

🤖 We are excited to announce that our upcoming mini-conference on May 14th on "slop" and "nostalgia" will feature responses by Tess McNulty and Matthew Kirschenbaum @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social. Abstracts due March 1st. call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/01/... 📀

Sad news but honestly a good innings for an APC-free, community-led open access journal.

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!

wrote for @typebarmagazine.bsky.social about Pulse & Demonlover as the best films about the internet as a network of depersonalization www.typebarmagazine.com/pulse-demonl...

the "nostalgia" thread here may have particular salience to the #dhmakes & book lab crowds?

Check out the CFP for this pair of VIRTUAL mini-conferences on SLOP and NOSTALGIA, held by DLC+. I attended some of the previous mini-conference they put on it and it was great. Highly recommend. Keynote by the great Tess McNulty @dlcplus.org docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🤖 "SLOP" and "NOSTALGIA" 📀 – DLC+ mini-conference: Current Keywords in Digital Literary Culture. May 14th CFP out now. See link for details and submission. Deadline: Mar. 13th. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Please share widely! #nostalgia #slop #digitalhumanities #digitalculture

Are you a scholar of poetry performance? Perhaps you might want to contribute to the collective reading list of the @poetryoffthepage.bsky.social project: poetryoffthepage.net/project-bibl...

Is our nostalgia for a pre-slop internet ... slop itself? These questions and more at our mini-conference on "Slop" and "Nostalgia"! Organized by myself and Hannah Jorgensen for @dlcplus.org "Current Keywords in Digital Literary Culture" series. Abstracts due Mar. 13 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Thanks so much to everyone who attended our first @dlcplus.org mini-conference on smut and lore! We had such a great time chatting deeply with all of you. Can't wait for the next one!

The first of the DLC+ mini-conference series is happening next week! Join us on Thursday Nov. 20th for 3 hours of smut, lore and all things digital culture! See the schedule and abstracts, and sign up to get the zoom link below #digitalculture #digitalhumanities dlcplus.org/current-keyw...

Need a little extra time preparing your submission for the @dlcplus.org #CFP on #smut and #lore? We've extended our deadline by a week! Submit by October 15th for our mini conference. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🪅 DLC+ mini-conference: Current Keywords on Digital Literary Culture. Nov 20th. CFP out now. Se link for details and submission form. Deadline: Oct 8th. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Please share widely! 🦭 We want all the smut and lore out there! #digitalhumanities #digitalculture

Excited to share this cfp for the first mini-conference of an ongoing series my colleagues and I are organizing titled Currently Keywords in Digital Literary Culture. This time, we're inviting papers on "smut" and "lore"! Deadline to apply Oct. 8th forms.gle/Ccuaav7rGmMs...

Poilievre struggling to win a seat in rural Alberta while JT dates Katie Perry is my kinda timeline

New book! 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘈𝘳𝘵: 𝘊𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘋𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 by NACDI co-founder @smithsarah.bsky.social is now out with @ubcpress.bsky.social. The book examines how visual art shaped North American relationships during the rise of free trade. www.ubcpress.ca/trading-on-art

It's a big day at the Post45 Data Collective. It's a data journal I co-founded with @lbmcgrath.bsky.social in 2021, though we began planning in 2019. So I've worked on it for six years. Today I step off as co-editor and @manshel.bsky.social & @jdporter.bsky.social step on. data.post45.org