Just a reminder that my chapbook OUR PLACE IS IN BETWEEN is available both in print and as a PDF. You can read about it here: bottlecap.press/products/our... #flashfiction #chapbook

We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.

“No, it’s not easy to write. It’s as hard as breaking rocks. But sparks and splinters fly like flashing steel.” — Clarice Lispector #writing #quote

"'The Illuminated Man' seeks to trace out the roots of Ballard’s visionary fiction in his life, without reducing the former to the latter." Steven Shaviro on "The Illuminated Man": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/jg-ballard-illuminated-man-christopher-priest-nina-allan/

The Estranged Worlds of J. G. Ballard | Los Angeles Review of Books

An incisive and moving new critical biography of one of the nuclear age’s greatest visionaries.

lareviewofbooks.org

Here are two pieces from my new chapbook--a ghost story and a cat story. I write these whenever I can. #chapbook #booksky

Refreshing, generous post on POV, with lots of good examples to read or reread

Lincoln Michel@thelincoln.bsky.social · last mo.

A low-stakes and probably pedantic craft post on POV countercraft.substack.com/p/there-are-...

“Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It’s endless. I’m sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.” — Nathalie Sarraute #reading #writing

Spent some time with words by @stephendelaney.bsky.social. His new chapbook includes a collab between us! A curious collection of defamiliarizing, semi-fabulist flashes and prose poems. You can get a copy here: bottlecap.press/products/our...

How Primo Levi saw himself in Kafka after Auschwitz.

A New Language: On Primo Levi’s Translation of Kafka

Not only did Kafka create a new language to describe the world, he also invented a new punctuation: he put question marks where there had never been any before. “Why” is the word that k…

buff.ly

This might be my favorite Lydia Davis story. #reading #fiction

@rabihalameddine.bsky.social and John Freeman consider their new anthology and the appeal of the international short story.

The International Short Story is Booming

In 2002, a friend asked if I would join him for a San Francisco Symphony concert with David Robinson as guest conductor. They were to play Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphonie. I was a bit ambi…

buff.ly

Apologies to the authors, who put a lot of thought into their order.

When I read story collections, I always read the shortest ones first, leaving the longer ones for later. Does anyone else do this? #booksky

My chapbook OUR PLACE IS IN BETWEEN is now available from Bottlecap Press. The pieces explore marginal life and have magical or fantastical elements. They're sad but I hope you enjoy them. #booksky #fiction #bottlecappress bottlecap.press/products/ourpsd

The right book can “make a subject that’s never crossed my mind, or that strikes me as aggressively boring, into something incantatory,” Deb Olin Unferth writes:

Nine Books to Reset Your View of the World

Each of these titles will widen your perspective, offering you original insight and vision.

bit.ly

“You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.” ~ Margaret Atwood

“We have been taught to be ashamed of not being 'outgoing.' But a writer's job is ingoing.” — Ursula K. Le Guin #writing #quote

Thrilled to announce that in July 2026, we are publishing the magical EARTH 7 by Deb Olin Unferth. A love story set against both a love letter to planet Earth, and a portrait of its slow demise, EARTH 7 is a novel for our times, and for all times dauntbookspublishing.co.uk/book/earth-7/

“Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.” — Anne Enright #writing #fiction

Love this New Year's poem by Naomi Shihab Nye (recommended on the @matchbooklitmag.bsky.social Substack): www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48597/...

“Whether we are happy or unhappy leads us to write one way or another. When we are happy our imagination is stronger; when we are unhappy our memory works with greater vitality.” —Natalia Ginzburg

My favorite books this year: INTO THE WEEDS - Lydia Davis THE PELICAN CHILD - Joy Williams MAN IN THE HOLOCENE - Max Frisch SHORT: AN INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY MOON SONGS - Carol Emshwiller CATASTROPHE - Dino Buzzati #booksky

Hwang Bo-Reum recommends little ways to cultivate your reading (and writing) life.

3 Ways to Become a Better Reader

Always Have a Book With You I read somewhere that authors are voracious readers. I would imagine so. When I read, I also feel the urge to create something of my own. Likewise, I don’t think I’ve ev…

buff.ly

“A story happens when two equally appealing forces, or characters, or ideas try to occupy the same place at the same time, and they’re both right.” — Amy Hempel #amwriting #fiction

Happy pub day to The Pelican Child by Joy Williams! To celebrate, we’ve unlocked her Book Post Diary: Hemingway and His Houses. Read here → books.substack.com/p/diary-joy-... @aaknopf.bsky.social #EduSky #Books

“The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.” — James Baldwin #writing #fiction

In @literaryhub.bsky.social, @devintoshea.bsky.social describes how movies are popularizing the classic #Pynchon theme: "The war between the powerful and the powerless." lithub.com/thomas-pynch...

Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time

Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptations of Thomas Pynchon’s novels—first Inherent Vice in 2014, and now One Battle After Another in 2025—may be tipping the scales, with more first-time Pynchon readers f…

lithub.com

Read Charles Baxter on the literature and politics of charisma. www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/f...

The Flag of Ahab | Charles Baxter

On the literature and politics of charisma.

laphamsquarterly.org

“Always, where there is darkness, there must be a hint of light, and where there is brightness, some shadow play. Without this tonal range of mood orchestration, tension and artistic effect are lost.” — Aimee Parkison #writing #fiction

In a new review, Caterina Domeneghini studies a surge in translation to English of the work of Dino Buzzati. “This new translation project doesn’t just revive Buzzati,” she argues, “it reframes him.”

Betwixt or Bewitched? Rethinking the “Middlebrow” with Dino Buzzati

Reframed as a “bewitched middlebrow,” Buzzati’s fiction re-enters literary history not as a comforting escape, but as a sharp tool for existential inquiry.

publicbooks.org