UK friends! If you’ve have trouble preordering my collection locally, that issue has been fixed. Offerings for Ordinary Gods will be available within 24 hours! (Waterstones physical stores etc.) Pass it along!
Lynne Sargent
@lynnesargent.bsky.social
Writer. Philosopher. Sky-dancer. They/She. Codex. LCP. Author of A REFUGE OF TALES. Poetry Editor at Utopia Science Fiction. THOUGHT EXPERIMENT REVOLUTION forthcoming from ECW Press. https://linktr.ee/LynneSargent
It’s the day after, and the sound of erupting cheers for Elis Montgomery winning Best Poem still fills me with joy. May this be the energy next year. May this be the energy after 2029. May speculative poetry remain a beacon star in the constellation of our genre, forever and always.
Me reading A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett re: riddles
young people really are in many ways an oppressed group and that experience of oppression often leads them to identify with other oppressed people.
The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Poem goes to “Hex Supply Customer Support Log” by Elis Montgomery (Strange Horizons, Issue 25 August 2025).
Oh!! Bsky was down when I wanted to post this! I have a new poem out in @nightmare-magazine.com! "Shapeshifting Recovery Staff" www.nightmare-magazine.com/poetry/shape... A new piece in my series "Jobs for Magical People (That Do Not Involve the Military)". I'll thread the previous ones too:
Shapeshifting Recovery Staff - Nightmare Magazine
Your clients are—more often than not— helpless, a stack of unsorted organs kept pulsating by the will locked inside
nightmare-magazine.com
I had a wee spooky tale out this week 👀👀👀 If you like grumpy self-involved inventors getting bullied by a malevolent god on an island just off the coast of Newfoundland post-climate collapse, and they deserve each other, u know
✨ Story time! “Recipe for Escaping the God of the Cove” is live with The Ex-Puritan! ✨ 🌊 Horror scifi canlit slipstream 🌊 Marriage falls apart in nature 🌊 Spooky God with jokes 🌊 Unreliable narrator 🌊 The cat lives THANK YOU to @anuja-v.bsky.social for plucking this strange tale from the slush 🖤
That's where Trump comes in. From the moment his "Liberation Day" tariffs landed, any country that upheld its anti-circumvention laws was sacrificing its national competitiveness, resiliency and integrity in exchange for *nothing*. 79/
Just got my @sfpoetry.bsky.social Dwarf Stars votes in...closes 8/31 so get those votes in!
The best time to have made Canada digitally sovereign would have been *before* an American president announced his intention to annex Canada and began explicitly deploying America's tech companies to attack his geopolitical adversaries. The second-best time is *now*. 52/
A new Kerby Euthyphro: "Do I have a blankie tower because I am cute? Or am I cute because I have a blankie tower?"
AI is alarming for many reasons: it's a dangerous financial bubble, an environmental catastrophe, and a tool for eroding wages and labor power. But in addition to all that, AI is an epistemic disaster. 1/
Betty Buckley singing "Enough" from Sara Bareilles' forthcoming musical, The Interestings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLW8...
Betty Buckley Performs "Enough," From New Sara Bareilles Musical The Interestings
YouTube video by Playbill
youtube.com
Exciting news! @scifinow.bsky.social has an exclusive excerpt for The Quantum Dawn, which will be out in October in the UK and November in North America! www.scifinow.co.uk/books/the-qu...
The Quantum Dawn: Exclusive excerpt for Derek Künsken’s new Quantum Evolution novel
Read our exclusive sneak peek into Derek Künsken’s upcoming sci-fi novel The Quantum Dawn here...
scifinow.co.uk
If you haven't read the poem "A Science Center Education" by @lynnesargent.bsky.social from our 🌟June 2026 issue🌟, now's your chance! It's about life and chance and how lucky we are that we exist and can build all our hopeful fragile lives together. Read it here: havenspec.com/poetry/a-sci...
IT’S MY BOOK BIRTHDAY! 🥳 Thank you to everyone who’s pre-ordered this book. If you haven’t yet, I’m not mad. Here’s the order links just in case: www.starsandsabers.com/books/the-as...
Happy release day to @cornellwriter.bsky.social! The Astronaut Among the Flowers and Other Stories, her debut collection, is now available. With captivating and thrilling science fiction and fantasy stories, this collection is inspiring. Cover art by Loreto Salinas Retamal. #books #SFF #scifi
We just published another poem by @marisca.bsky.social ! Super excited about having this one up on the website. Link and sample below. #scifi #horror #poetry #poem www.justkeepupmagazine.com/sometimes-sl...
Someday I will be able to read the end of my book without crying, but today is not that day!
This poem, "Maybe" in @thedeadlands.com by @phodiso-modirwa.bsky.social is INCREDIBLE. Give it a read: psychopomp.com/deadlands/is...
Maybe / Phodiso Modirwa / Psychopomp
Read Maybe, by Phodiso Modirwa, a poem from Issue 43 of The Deadlands, summer, 2026.
psychopomp.com
Anyone can add to this, including editors of magazines. As long as the poem was published (self pubbed too) in 2025 and is speculative it’s okay to add it!
I have updated the "Crowdsourced Award Eligible Speculative Poetry" spreadsheet for 2026, please add your published works: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Watched the first episode of Witch Hat Atelier and I'm pretty sure it's my new religion
witch hat atelier
ALT: witch hat atelier
static.klipy.com
August is Women in Translation Month, an initiative focused on women who write in languages other than English. Here are the books written by women that I reviewed on my column on @reactorsff.bsky.social, focused on speculative fiction in translation:
"A Bookpothecary" by Lynne Sargent, (excerpt): The proprietor watches as Anna doesn’t even read the sign above the door before she pushes her way inside, eyes translucent with an unshed ocean of tears. Her face reveals months of pain, a boil of a boyfriend recently lanced...
Read the full story at mergansermagazine.com/story/a-bookpothecary/ and follow Lynne Sargent at @lynnesargent.bsky.social 📖🖋️
A Bookpothecary – Merganser Magazine
mergansermagazine.com
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
Not sure if you want to commit to our whole August issue? Try out our free sample story first. Lockdown on the Moon by Denis Mortenson. utopiasciencefiction.substack.com/p/lockdown-o...
Lockdown on the Moon
Short science fiction story by Denis Mortenson
utopiasciencefiction.substack.com
Here is my round-up of the poems nominated for the Hugo Award in 2025 and 2026! magazine.interstellarflightpress.com/award-winnin...
Award-Winning Speculative Poetry Is Easy to Read
Review: The First Two Years of a Speculative Poetry Hugo
magazine.interstellarflightpress.com
I have updated the "Crowdsourced Award Eligible Speculative Poetry" spreadsheet for 2026, please add your published works: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Crowdsourced Award Eligible Speculative Poetry 2026
docs.google.com
TIL how to change footnotes from being continuously numbered to resetting every section. The mental load that has placed on the poor document for THOUGHT EXPERIMENT REVOLUTION means that apparently its time to take a break from edits. (Yes, I love footnotes)