I don’t know enough about Natalie Portman to see her in this book but I’m enjoying it and loving that a baker at work is enough so that the ‘border between representation and reality becomes unclear’! Remy is less impressed.

I was very glad to write this short feature on Colson Whitehead’s wonderful Harlem Trilogy, now complete with Cool Machine. Is there a better trilogy out there?!

What an absolute disgrace. A FIFA-certified referee being denied entry to the United States purely because he is Somali. The World Cup is meant to bring people together. This is racism, plain and simple. Shameful. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

World Cup 2026: Somali referee Omar Artan to miss tournament after being barred from entering US

Omar Artan, who was set to be the first Somali to referee at the World Cup finals, is dropped from the list of officials after he was denied entry to the United States.

bbc.co.uk

Today, I signed an Executive Order temporarily repealing bedtimes in the City of New York so that kids of all ages can watch our team in the NBA Finals. As Mayor, you’re forced to make many difficult decisions. This was not one of them. Go Knicks.

Big Thief at the Barrowlands! I’ve seen them six times over the last decade (and Adrianne and Buck solo - once each - too), and they have thrilled, surprised, and moved me each time. Truly extraordinary band.

The complete SI of @c21literature.bsky.social, The Century at 25, ed by @alicebennett.bsky.social @melissaschuh.bsky.social @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and I is now published: c21.openlibhums.org. Working on this with Alice, Denise, and Melissa was such a pleasure!

A capacious & racialized def of terrorism permits this violence. Simply saying the civilians are suspected “narcoterrorist” licenses profound violence—all in the name of “homeland,” which is always racialized as white. That’s just one way the war on terror operates with limitless capacity.

Nick Turse@nickturse.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The U.S. Has Murdered More Than 190 Civilian in Boat Strikes. We’re Tracking Them All. SOUTHCOM is now counting the survivor of the last strike, on May 8, as another death. We have the running tally of strikes and deaths on our tracker @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/11/17/t...

My review of Autobiography of Cotton by Cristina Rivera Garza, newly translated to English by Christina MacSweeney and out with @andotherstories.bsky.social - for @ftweekend.com: www.ft.com/content/8c92...

Autobiography of Cotton by Cristina Rivera Garza — truths told through fact and fiction

The Pulitzer-winning author weaves an account of a real-life cotton workers’ strike in Mexico in the 1930s with her own family history, memoir and invented tales

ft.com

In the richest city in the richest country in the history of the world, nobody should be going hungry. That's why we're opening five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough, starting with The Bronx. Lower Prices. Good food. Publicly owned. Hunts Point next year. Every borough by 2029.

Feeling overwhelmed with all of this. LISTEN. Another Louisiana resident (Marshawn is the only name we have) testifies against the state’s racial gerrymander, speaking truth to power up and down the hearing room and predicts how this story will end. Speak your truth, fight and believe.

Music and cultural studies folks! Jasmine Hazel Shadrack and I are co-editing the first scholarly collection of essays on Faith No More. Please share across your networks. It'd be great to hear from anyone here who might be interested in contributing. www.iaspm.net/call-for-pap...

Hey Bluesky folks. If you’re in education or just follow for my thirst traps, would you please sign this if you can, and share far and wide? c.org/dCKk9vjqxY It’s much appreciated. My university is cancelling all UG humanities degrees. We need support and love right now x

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

c.org

A real treat to spend time with this book by Polly Barton published by @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social. Highly recommended, especially for karaoke people! My review for @ftweekend.com

Also lovely to see the @edinburghup.bsky.social stand at #baas2026 conference. Thanks to @emilysharp.bsky.social for promoting mine/Loïc Bourdeau’s book on millennial novels, as well as @keeblearin.bsky.social’s (and many others’) great research

"criticizing AI use in journalism or other creative industries is classist" NO IT IS NOT there is a class that benefits enormously from cognitive surrender, epistemic warfare, and the enclosure of all hitherto produced culture and it is NOT THE WORKING CLASS

Really happy to say that my article on Pynchon and Star Wars is out now in Studies in American Fiction. I'm grateful to SAF for supporting a long and idiosyncratic piece. Honestly, it's kind of my life's work thus far! (2025 date is presumably because of a backlog.) muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

So, so excited to read 'Lines of Flight, Lines of Force: Thomas Pynchon and Star Wars' by the immensely talented Sam Thomas: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

My new book has a cover!!

So happy to see ‘Stuck on Stuckness: On the Intractability of the Present’, co-authored by @alicebennett.bsky.social @keeblearin.bsky.social @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and me for @c21literature.bsky.social special issue The Century @ 25, out in the world after over two years! doi.org/10.16995/c21...

Excited to announce that our new issue has opened! c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1422/i... 'The Century at 25' was guested edited by Alice Bennett, Arin Keeble, Melissa Schuh, and Denise Wong

Part one of 'The Century @25' SI of @c21literature.bsky.social ed by @alicebennett.bsky.social @melissaschuh.bsky.social @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and I, is out now (part two coming soon): please check it out! c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1422/i...

On my way to strike and picket this morning at (checks notes) Edinburgh Napier University, over (checks notes) redundancies in the institution barely a year after Prof Nolan's departure...

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 6mo ago

'Andrea Nolan, who stepped down as principal and vice-chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University in December 2024, will co-convene the group, alongside Neil Rennick, director-general education and justice in the Scottish government.'

We are looking for review essays! You can see some of our selected titles at the post below. Get in contact with our review editors @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and @olihaslam.bsky.social to request some or for further info

Call for book review essays - book list

C21 is inviting scholars and researchers to contribute book review essays for upcoming issues. We currently have a selection of titles published in 2025 available for review, spanning film and …

c21.openlibhums.org

I wrote two fiction reviews that published this weekend - on Elisa Shua Dusapin's The Old Fire @dauntbookspub.bsky.social for the TLS and Makenna Goodman's Helen of Nowhere @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social for the FT weekend. Very different books but both immensely rewarding reads!

The people who spent years defending and even lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse and Ashli Babbitt now want us to believe that an unarmed mother in her car and a disarmed nurse were domestic terrorists who deserved to be murdered by law enforcement.

For LARB, I wrote about the principled dissenters of Pluribus, The Lowdown, Andor, and The Pitt, and 2025 as the year TV celebrated resistance @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/lowd...

Opposition Party | Los Angeles Review of Books

In 2025, television offered a primer in principled dissent.

lareviewofbooks.org

'The ideas at work in this exhilarating and surprising novel are far from limited....' Arin Keeble reviews HELEN OF NOWHERE by Makenna Goodman for @financialtimes.com: www.ft.com/content/0b4f...

This is Ernie, though we now mostly call him ‘Biggles’. It happened like this: Ernie > ‘Little E’ > ‘Big E’ > ‘Biggie’ > ‘Biggles’.

Webpage now with cover art! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/beyond-mo...

Beyond Modernism

Underlining (and undermining) the notion of literary merit, this book focuses on noncanonical works and asks: what happens when we look away from modernism? See…

bloomsbury.com

Andrew Frayn@afrayn.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This volume, a long time in the works, now lives on the Bloomsbury website. Thanks to my co-editor Katie, associate editors Lauren Faro and Petar Penda, and to @bendoyle.bsky.social and the Bloomsbury team. Look out for the excellent cover, coming very soon... www.bloomsbury.com/uk/beyond-mo...