"If Richard Warren hadn’t made that pact, his band of settlers would have died. Might that have been for the best? Or are all societies cobbled together from covenants, compromises, and banal, institutionalized atrocities?" @bethmachlan.bsky.social on WIDOW'S BAY and our national inheritance(s)

Widow's Bay is About* Birthright Citizenship

So many spoilers. SO many.

bbm11.substack.com

"If Richard Warren hadn’t made that pact, his band of settlers would have died. Might that have been for the best? Or are all societies cobbled together from covenants, compromises, and banal, institutionalized atrocities?" @bethmachlan.bsky.social on WIDOW'S BAY and our national inheritance(s)

Widow's Bay is About* Birthright Citizenship

So many spoilers. SO many.

bbm11.substack.com

the new season of THE BEAR makes Chicago look like an apocalyptic hellscape which honestly is exactly how I remember it

I saw Marjane Satrapi speak about her work at Smith College 19 years ago, and she said something I have thought about and taught ever since when I teach comics. “I draw what I can’t write and I write what I can’t draw.“

"To write about art might encourage some removal from the self, but nothing requires it. And so this accident of history has caused me to associate I-lessness with ekphrasis: a mode that elides the I as if some universal eye were speaking out." Elisa Gabbert

How Poets Went From Describing Art to Personally Admiring It

nytimes.com

"The novel can be sung, chanted, mimed, painted, filmed, animated, printed in braille, carved on the wall of a cave. What matters is the art act, the mirror of human life." Atticus Lish

Art Act

Notes on a Life in Images and Words

metropolitanreview.org

Tonight is the night! Join me and @sabs.bsky.social at @strandbooks.com to chat about MY BAD: the '90s, gender, queerness, aids, the internet, Burning Man, radical faeries, queer nightlife, shame, pleasure, building family, saying you're sorry, and so much more www.eventbrite.com/e/hugh-ryan-...

Hugh Ryan + Sabrina Imbler: My Bad

Join us for a release event with award-winning author Hugh Ryan, discussing his new book MY BAD.

eventbrite.com

Joanna Biggs on Makenna Goodman’s fairy tale lives

Enter Man | Joanna Biggs

Makenna Goodman’s new novel, Helen of Nowhere, offers up an exhilarating myth for men who need to be shuffled offstage.

nybooks.com

back from the Catskills writing retreat with lots of pages about Tom Ripley, gay murder, impostordom as a literary trope, and my weird wonderful horrible first year in NYC

Hey writers your weird pals are opening for submissions on June 1!

Barrelhouse@barrelhouse.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Reminder

“White people aren’t being oppressed, they’re being asked to live in a shared reality.” On today’s VIBE CHECK, we’re talking about all the rage we’re seeing in American culture right now. And we talk about the rage at work in the new movie #IsGodIs.

Time to Set It the F*ck Off

Podcast Episode · Vibe Check · May 27 · 57m

podcasts.apple.com

Oh, I love this novel. And I had so much fun writing this.

Matthew Cheney@melikhovo.bsky.social · 3mo ago

You know this essay by @alexanderchee.bsky.social, right? (I adore it with my whole body, as I do anything by someone who has thoughtful thoughts about The Boy Who Followed RIpley.) www.latimes.com/books/jacket...

back from the Catskills writing retreat with lots of pages about Tom Ripley, gay murder, impostordom as a literary trope, and my weird wonderful horrible first year in NYC

husband is playing the hit man video game series while I reread all the tom ripley novels in case you were invited to our house but want to reconsider your rsvp

NOT NOW, RADIOACTIVE MUTANT SUPER PIGS.

Mutant 'super pig' population spirals out of control in nuclear fallout zone

The "super pig" population exploded after domesticated hogs interbred with feral wild boars in areas close to the nuclear fallout zone in northeast Japan

mirror.co.uk

husband is playing the hit man video game series while I reread all the tom ripley novels in case you were invited to our house but want to reconsider your rsvp

I was talking to my mom on mother's day and she asked about the book on submission, and I was like omg existential dread for maybe seventy minutes and she finally resurfaced from her holiday wine and was like "tell me where I can buy it"

I was talking to my mom on mother's day and she asked about the book on submission, and I was like omg existential dread for maybe seventy minutes and she finally resurfaced from her holiday wine and was like "tell me where I can buy it"

spending this weed gummy working on the opening paragraph of my next book, moving the word "had" all around the page, changing verb tenses and then changing them back, adding a "sometimes" here and there to make myself seem less creepy

Shout out to all the lit mag editors & readers just doing their best in this new AI world, often for little or no money, because they believe in writing & art & supporting the people who create it. There's no easy or clear path through this mess AI's creating, but I appreciate you all trying.

Hi if anyone needs me I will be walking into the sea

Will Oremus@willoremus.com · 3mo ago

Incredible www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/b...

"Women are incredible students of each other, and writing interactions between them is always a dreamy prospect because I get to spend time in the brutal, data-rich territory of people who look."

The Yale Review@yalereview.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"Everything I do starts in the personal, and if it doesn't, it dies." —Raven Leilani

I’ve added to the flood of remembrances for the nothing-if-not-memorable Rex Reed. (no paywall) open.substack.com/pub/selfstyl...

In Memoriam: Rex Reed

Serious, and also glib and readable

open.substack.com

👇🏻

Mark Harris@markharris.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Rex Reed was a fascinating man. In the late 1960s, he became the first entertainment journalist (for the NY Herald Tribune and the NYT) to be allowed to write in a recognizably queer voice for mainstream publications. The best of his on-set reports from back then are among the best ever written. >

Lucy Sante explores her fascination with memory (by recommending some books).

Lucy Sante Recommends Five Books About Her Most Important Tool as a Writer: Memory

Memory is my most important tool as a writer. I’m fascinated by how memory works, how it is organized, all the methods that have been developed to increase it and explore it and to summon images fr…

buff.ly

MY READING LIFE: New Skin author Sarah Wang answered our Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing. debutiful.net/2026/05/13/s...

"We are always a collage under construction—taking this fragment, editing out another, consciously or unconsciously. ... Of course, there is always a battle between these fragments: between the need to remember, the need to forget."

William Kentridge: That Which I Have Drawn

To begin In preparation for these lectures, I made a list of projects, drawings, films, installations and performances I could use as the spine of these talks—each lecture having a project, to be u…

lithub.com

"Anyone who is making anything is typically possessed by the need to translate a personal vision into a sharable vision. I have an almost spiritual respect for that thing, and I’m not even talking about inspiration or a great idea, but something more like a haunting." @catherinelacey.bsky.social

Should You Trash Your Novel Draft?

Or is it redeemable?

catherinelacey.substack.com

A couple years ago @danielkraus.com wrote in his newsletter that my book was among his favorites of the year, and now his absolutely incredible ANGEL DOWN has won the Pulitzer! Obviously related phenomena (and congrats Daniel!)

I spent more time than I should have writing this piece about the new Ben Lerner novel, mostly because this little book is just so dense and recursive and an utter pleasure to read

Slant@slantmagazine.com · 4mo ago

Ben Lerner’s TRANSCRIPTION is ultimately about a pact we must make when we read fiction. Read @richardscottlarson.com's review. tinyurl.com/4vkn623u