Holy Moly! I got on a plane from Nairobi to London, and when I landed The World Gives Way was named a best sci-fi book of the year! This is crazy!!! Props to @TheLincoln for The Body Scout's inclusion, and to @gelrdrgz for being a queen among editors

Good morning, oh hey that B&N pre-orders sale is on, absolutely so many incredible books coming out in the next 12 months & you can get 25% off the cover price by pre-ordering them if you're a Premium or Reward member, wait what's this

Actor Lee Sun-kyun ( March 2, 1975 - December 27, 2023). May he rest in peace. Among his many wonderful projects, Lee was praiseworthy in "Parasite" and exceptional in "My Mister." May he be remembered for his excellent work and creative gifts.

Hey friends, what are your favorite NEW books that are set in NYC? Looking for anything that's come out super-recently, like in the past month.

(There are plenty of stories that play with morality- fables or fairy tales, for example- and any good story will get you thinking. But a story shouldn't exist only for morality; its purpose should not be to tell you explicitly how to think.)

There is an unfortunate subset of people who expect stories to exist for morality purposes only. But stories do not exist to tell you how to act or what to believe. In that case, what people mean when they say "story" is "propaganda."

Unlikable Character stories work because there is a tension between the fact that you're drawn to a character while also being unsettled by their actions. I think what most people mean when they say "likable" is "moral."

The Likable Characters discourse is well-worn territory, but a student brought it up again and got me thinking... For me, most characters are inherently "likable" in that I am taken in by them, I want to spend time with them.

Guys I'm so excited for soup weather

Nothing makes me feel more like Julia Child than tying random herbs together with twine.

I woke up at 2:30 am last night with a great story idea. I know I'd forget it by morning so this time I would get up and write it down. This is what I found in the morning: "Heaven is next to the peanut butter so take your shirts they're free."

Been thinking a lot about the nature of good literary adaptations, which always makes me think of this absolute heart-smasher of a scene from "Drive My Car"...

This film is key whenever you play the Six-Degrees-of-Separation Kevin Bacon game.

My cat just looked at the small stack of books on my coffee table and, with great purpose, knocked Colson Whitehead onto the floor and then sat on William Faulkner. So she's made her reading tastes clear? And she's mildly problematic?

Looking for some source material for a lecture... does anyone have any examples of deliberate Lacunae in literature? Obv there's "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver, and there's a strong case that Frankenstein has deliberate holes in the text, but there's got to be others...

... in the rain?

The only true currency in this broke-down streaming world

Okay, prepping for fall semester, and sending a query out to all my fellow writing teachers: what's your favorite short story with an experimental plot? Looking for a second story that might pair well with "Especially Heinous" by Machado.

Ugh

This article is an eco-grimdark-cyber-meta-steam-punk-dream.