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Joseph Osmundson

@reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social

scientist, writer, activist. VIROLOGY (Norton, 2022) "dazzling... love essays" -NYTimes Book Review, NBCC & Lambda Literary Finalist in Nonfiction

184 Posts4808 Follower1962 Folgt
Maris Kreizman@maris.bsky.social · last mo.

In response to that putrid Bret Stephens column, brilliant @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social made a whole Google Doc with buy links for all of the @nationalbook.bsky.social Prize nominees. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Bret Stephens is mad at these books, you should buy them and read them

Bret Stephens is mad at these books, you should buy them and read them, not just the SCARY PR COPY that triggered him like a snowflake. No, I won’t link this fuckshit here, because I won’t drive tra...

docs.google.com

Jeffrey Zuckerman@jmz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

« Tu prévoyais des dangers partout. » Language was the one way Christophe Bourdin could hold together a life threatening to come apart with his HIV diagnosis, and finding an English to convey this dread and this need was a breathtaking challenge. How moving that THE THREAD will now exist in English.

A yellowed copy of Christophe Bourdin's LE FIL, published by Éditions de la Différence in 1994, alongside a shiny Advanced Reading Copy of THE THREAD, in my English translation, to be published by Pushkin Press in Nov. 2026 (UK) and Feb. 2027 (US).Dear reader, I am not a hypochondriac, but when Christophe Bourdin's sole novel, Le Fil, showed up in my mailbox one afternoon, a used copy yellowed by three decades out of print, its first sentence thrummed across the years with frightening immediacy: "You foresaw dangers everywhere." The Thread is a novel of AIDS, but it offers no sweeping panorama of the epidemic; it is the deeply intimate story of one person in a circumscribed world of omnipresent risk, a life spent perpetually on guard, and as Bourdin's inordinately labyrinthine yet exacting sentences articulate that world closing in on him, they themselves all but close in on us. I couldn't shake how much The Thread felt like a dystopian novel-although so unlike any other that, in reading it, I felt compelled to translate it. Rendering Bourdin's sinuous sentences has meant pushing the English language almost to the breaking point. Astonishingly, as I immersed myself in this world of disarray and disease, Bourdin's precision became my bulwark: no matter how heartbreaking or worrying the reality being described was, his words and his syntax offered a clarity that his world—our world-could not. Bourdin died in 1997, just shy of 33 years old. The Thread, however, offers an ending remarkably different from any other AIDS novel I have read or translated—a glimmer of hope that has shined bright enough for the book to come back into print in France, and to find new readers in English. Some books live only one life; others live many lives. The Thread, by some miracle, does both. Here it is, in your hands. Open it and see where it leads you. JEFFREY ZUCKERMAN
Chicago Review of Books@chicagorevbooks.bsky.social · 5mo ago

"I often tell people that craft is how you survive the writing of the thing." @emilyfmaloney.bsky.social's interview with @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social on "Spawning Season" (Bloomsbury Publishing) is out now. chireviewofbooks.com/2026/06/18/s...

"Craft is How You Survive the Writing of the Thing": A Conversation with Joseph Osmundson about "Spawning Season" - Chicago Review of Books

An interview with Joseph Osmundson about his new memoir, "Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood."

chireviewofbooks.com

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I’ve had this debate in class with STEM students before. They NEED to believe that eugenics and scientific racism etc are things of the past and are ‘pseudosciences’ because ‘science is objective’ and the ‘scientific method defends from bias.’ It’s a dangerous way to think.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · last yr.

#Introduction: Theoretical physicist. Black Feminist theorist. Writer. I do: dark matter, neutron stars, & science studies. Web: chanda.science Newsletter: news.chanda.science Insta: chanda.prescod.weinstein Author of award-winning #DisorderedCosmos and now #EdgeOfSpaceTime, coming 4/7/26.

The Edge of Space-Time by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: 9780593701683 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A fresh, charming, socially conscious tour of the mysteries of space-time, from the award-winning author of The Disordered Cosmos In her highly acclaimed debut, distinguished cosmologist and particle...

penguinrandomhouse.com

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 10mo ago

Writing this academic book as a person with tenure and the complete support of my editor and press to be creative in all the ways I need to be has been utterly terrifying because I have total freedom and I have never let myself just do whatever the fuck I wanted with my craft

Joseph Osmundson@reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social · 11mo ago

This is very good, and reminded me that I wrote, in 2014, about the weirdness that is the Western US "libertarian" far right. People in my hometown tried to secede from the US (!!) in the 1990s (!!!!!) and then appealed to the UN when it didn't work (!!!!) therumpus.net/2014/02/20/n...

Notes from Freedom County - The Rumpus

I am trying to make sense of myself as much as the place. It is so easy to conflate ‘where I was from’ with ‘who I was there.’

therumpus.net

Leah Sottile@leahsottile.bsky.social · 11mo ago

If you can believe it, January 1, 2026 marks ten years since the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. For Portland Monthly, I wrote about how the ensuing decade was dominated by anxious men and a culture of lawlessness. www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-cit...

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 11mo ago

Readers of my newsletter know that I hinted there was another queer science book coming next year and I can now say which one I was talking about! @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social has this beauty coming next May and now available for preorder! #BookSky 🌈🧪

Spawning Season

NBCC and Lambda Literary Award finalist Joseph Osmundson chronicles his journey toward and away from parenthood to ask how we create and nurture queer families.…

bloomsbury.com

John Glover@jtglover.bsky.social · last yr.

I’ll omit the depressing-for-a-writer comments that others have made on this excellent article. Instead, I’ll say that it’s disastrous for readers.

Tajja Isen@tajjaisen.bsky.social · last yr.

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

Jeanna Kadlec@jeannakadlec.bsky.social · last yr.

I also think it’s very relevant that myself and @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social — the two writers who went on the record here — are very openly queer, writing very openly queer work. So… there is that.

Tajja Isen@tajjaisen.bsky.social · last yr.

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

Miguel Paredes@paredesmig.bsky.social · last yr.

Tune in next week to hear about amazing HIV work that has saved countless lives but continues to be threatened. Help us #SaveAIDSResearch . I’ll be presenting with @reluctantlyjoe.bsky.social on mpox which affects many of the same communities as HIV and whose global funding is also under attack

Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · last yr.

Come join us next week. Come celebrate the miracles HIV research has given the world. And help us #SaveAIDSResearch. saveaidsresearch.org @saveaidsresearch.bsky.social