Rhonda Stewart
@rswriter.bsky.social
DC-based writer. Ex-Boston Globe and Washington Post (before the wreckage).
I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel at ThrillerFest this year. She's really great and this is a fantastic piece about her journey as a writer. Love her books.
CrimeReads@crimereads.bsky.social · last mo.John Valeri on how Rachel Howell Hall (@rachelhowzell.bsky.social) is breaking out with a new series just as an old one gets new life in reissue. crimereads.com/rachel-howze...
"Prompting your way to art or to #writing is not the same as having a new tool that allows you to make art or tell a story. AI, here, is not a tool —it’s not allowing you to do the work. You’re allowing it to do the work. Which is to say, you’re the tool." terribleminds.com/ramble/2026/...
Regarding The Pro-AI Tantrum In The HWA Newsletter
[Editing here to note that the HWA has removed this board member as of this afternoon. I’ll post the full text of that in the comments below.] Today I, and every other HWA member, received th…
terribleminds.com
"In an age that worships speed, there remains a vast, hungry and curiously underserved readership longing to slow down and truly inhabit a story."
CrimeReads@crimereads.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe author of "The Taverna at the Edge of Night" pushes against our cult of speed. crimereads.com/h-y-hanna-on...
Crime books for art lovers! crimereads.com/6-suspense-n...
6 Suspense Novels About Art, Museums, and Forgers
It’s been twenty years since I celebrated the publication of my first novel. Been There, Done That tells the story of a thirty-something journalist who goes undercover at a small liberal arts colle…
crimereads.com
We can't anticipate these titles enough! crimereads.com/most-anticip...
The Most Anticipated Mysteries, Thrillers, and Crime Novels of Summer 2026
It’s summer! Which means its time to read some books. Some mysteries, to be exact. And thrillers. So, so many mysteries and thrillers. Here are a whole bunch of books coming out this summer, …
crimereads.com
Great to see @crimereads.bsky.social feature Elaine's Literary Salon, a DC-area hub for crime fiction writers and readers.
CrimeReads@crimereads.bsky.social · 4mo agoA new literary hotspot has arisen! crimereads.com/elaines-lite...
"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time." Mary Oliver on creativity: www.themarginalian.org/2016/10/12/m...
Lovely story and a great reminder for anyone finding their way back to creative work. #writing #art "Creativity doesn’t necessarily diminish with time. In some cases, it actually deepens because people have more emotional depth to draw from and are less concerned about what others think."
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 5mo agoCreativity doesn’t diminish with age and can be rekindled with fresh subjects and surroundings.
"'This is years of my hard work and me putting everything I have into all of these characters that I portray and earning the trust of my audience.'" Great piece on the joy of connecting with people for whom you make your #art instead of focusing on accolades. www.theguardian.com/culture/ng-i...
Taraji P Henson: ‘It’s exhausting to have to fight for my worth’
The Oscar-nominee on Hollywood burnout, Black resilience and her Broadway debut in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
theguardian.com
"Go ahead and use A.I. however you like," the author Colson Whitehead writes. "Except art. If you use it for your art, you’re a freakin’ hack."
Opinion | Don’t Use A.I. to Do This
People are usually surprised when I admit that I love A.I.
nyti.ms
The nonprofit that runs the successful, Pulitzer-winning Baltimore Banner is going to take over the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Of all the possible outcomes here, this is likely the best we could have hoped for. apnews.com/article/pitt...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announces it has found a buyer to keep the newspaper open
Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said they have found a buyer who had agreed to keep the newspaper open, less than a month before it was due to shut down.
apnews.com
Interesting model, nice to see this being done by journalists on platforms other than Substack. Great detail: "I had some money on the side because I got fired from a fancy tech job by a lunatic who hates journalism [Jarjour left Twitter in February 2023, five months after Elon Musk took over]."
Nieman Lab@niemanlab.org · 6mo agoThree newsletters for the price of 1.5: Independent journalists experiment with a bundle www.niemanlab.org/2026/04/thre...
"If you remove the flesh-and-blood author from the equation — or plant seeds of doubt in readers’ minds about whether what they are consuming is authentically human — the writer-reader relationship falls apart." #writing #fiction #thriller www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/o...
Opinion | A Horror Novel Got Canceled. What’s Coming Next Is a Bigger Nightmare.
nytimes.com
The release of a horror novel, “Shy Girl,” was canceled after allegations that the author had used A.I. to write the book.
Horror Novel ‘Shy Girl’ Canceled Over Suspected A.I. Use
Its publisher, Hachette, will not release the novel in the United States and will discontinue its U.K. edition, citing its commitment to “original creative expression and storytelling.”
nyti.ms
SINNERS stats: • 4 Oscars • 3 BAFTAs • 2 Grammys • 2 Actor Awards • 2 Golden Globes • A on CinemaScore • $370M+ worldwide • 4 Critics Choice Awards • 97% on Rotten Tomatoes • One of the best reviewed wide-release films of the decade
Powerful mix of #storytelling and subject. This is a heartbreaking read with some truly harrowing details, but a stark reminder of why #longform journalism is so important. Really impressed to see a magazine by undergrads at Cornell devoted to this genre. www.collegetownmagazine.com/articles/the...
The Shooting of Two Cornell Freshmen, 42 Years Later.
In 1983 six students were taken hostage in a Cornell dormitory. Two of them were killed. How have the survivors reckoned with what happened to them, and what made us forget about this act of violence?
collegetownmagazine.com
“I wish that we weren’t having to build something better out of so much wreckage.” www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/with...
With Washington Post Local diminished, other news sites step up their D.C. coverage
The 51st, City Cast, and The Baltimore Banner are among the outlets to announce expansions of Washington, D.C. metro area coverage since the Post layoffs.
niemanlab.org
"Creation is its own unique, messy, mystical process. And that, in my humble opinion, is art in its purest form." I love this and it's a timely reminder why art by and for humans will always win out. #booksky #writing #creativity #art crimereads.com/drafting-cre...
The Process Is the Art: Ellie Alexander on Drafting and Creativity in the AI Era
If you’re like me, I’m sure there’s no way you’re avoiding seeing the AI slop that seems to have seeped into every nook and cranny of the internet these days. Whether it’s scrolling through social …
crimereads.com
Devastated by the loss of Book World, the Washington Post's standalone #book section as well as senseless cuts across the paper. Good time to read or re-read a memoir by the paper's former publisher. Decades of extraordinary work building up the Post was torn down in an instant.
A story of gains and losses. "When such critics and editors disappear, every part of the literary ecosystem suffers. Readers don’t discover new writers and new kinds of writing they might love. Publishers find it harder to connect with audiences." #booksy www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Literary Ecosystem Is Dying
In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation.
theatlantic.com
Missed this when it came out last year, but sometimes the right message comes at the right time. #makesomething #inspiration #creativity #art #booksky www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XZ9...
The case for making art when the world is on fire | Amie McNee | TEDxManchester
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
youtube.com
Love seeing this trend near my hometown. We've seen the same with #bookstores in DC. #booksky “People are looking for that experience in their community and to know their booksellers by first name...it’s a rootedness that, I think, people are looking for.” www.westernmassnews.com/2026/01/22/r...
Readers turning the page back to physical books after digital decline
After nearly two decades of decline, bookstores are experiencing a comeback as readers return to physical books in record numbers.
westernmassnews.com
What's on your #TBR for the year? As usual with NYT books stories, some heated discussion in the comments. Everything from "sadly, there are no novels everyone will be talking about" to "oh, I can’t wait. #booksky #fiction www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/b...
The Novels Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2026
nytimes.com
The fight for #creative and original art continues "That Sinners sprang solely from Coogler’s impassioned, movie-addled imagination also makes it an outlier at a time when nearly every other hit of comparable magnitude is a sequel, remake, reimagining, or other such return to the proverbial well."
A.A. Dowd@aadowd.bsky.social · 10mo agoFor @prospect.org, I wrote about SINNERS as the movie of 2025 (not necessarily the best, but certainly the one that best fused popularity and acclaim) and why Hollywood treated its success like a threat. prospect.org/2025/12/11/s...
The death of browsing is part of the reason art is the way it is now. Our opinions are largely fed to us by algorithms. Spending a spare 15 minutes wandering around a bookstore or comic shop or video rental place was how you found stuff you wouldn't ordinarily pick up and thereby expanded your taste
violet allen@blipstress.bsky.social · 10mo agoBookselling is like the most "people go to the store and buy what looks cool to them without a particular agenda" type business left, and your purchases have a huge influence on what is ordered, what is displayed, and what is recommended.
Great piece that touches on readers' expectations, challenges writers face as readers. Also wonderful comments on what helped people find their way back from being broken readers. Reading different genres can help for sure. #booksky #writersky #writingcommunity www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/o...
Opinion | I Was Once a Broken Reader. I Found My Way Back to Books.
nytimes.com
"So what makes a reader get to the end of the book and continue to imagine those characters? How can we create reader investment that continues after the last page? The next time you finish a really good book...Let the characters live on in your head." #booksky crimereads.com/cliffhanger-...
Cheryl Isaacs on Cliffhanger Endings and Keeping Readers Invested Until the Last Page
It’s the only bad part of reading: getting down to the last few pages and dreading the final lines of an exquisite book, of rationing a favorite read knowing that once you get to the end, there’s n…
crimereads.com
When Frustration Threatens Desire, by Kerry James Marshall, 1990, 📸 by @drewhallowell
Boston's Mayor Wu playing with Yo-Yo Ma at Symphony Hall
Beautiful story. "The phone rings steadily; customers call from as far as Florida, New York and beyond. The #novelist who needs an escape from the internet’s magnetic pull; the #screenwriter convinced that only keys that fight back can force out good work." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life (Gift Article)
This is the story of how a man traded steady, grinding corporate security for a dying craft and, in the process, found his soul.
nytimes.com