2 lines into a book: this is the worst. it’s so slow. i don’t know what any of these names mean. what’s going on?
20 chapters into a book: i don’t know how i’m going to continue living when this book ends
i never said you have to get formal training or a degree of any kind. study can be self-study. practice can be making lots of drafts. experience can involve sending your work out to galleries/publishers and/or sharing it online. i just mean actually doing the work. not just fantasizing/aspiring.
"i could draw/paint/write that." ok but you didn't. and you won't come anywhere close if you think it requires zero study/practice/experience.
Maybe my agent loves the new novel. Maybe she hates it. Maybe we sell it. Maybe we don’t. There’s a thousand other maybes, and I don’t control any of them. What I control is the work, so I worked a bit on the next one yesterday. Always be writing the next one.
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.
Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
I'm telling you, the solution to many problems in education is to hire school librarians (at a liveable wage, with administrative support, and adequate resources). Your students don't need an LLM, they need a librarian.
Please support Anathema's return and the revival of a space for queer writers of colour!
“The last night I was a pediatric resident, a child came in with Hib and promptly died by the next day. I didn’t work for 50 years to have everything destroyed by one man.”
-Dr. Kathryn Edwards, Vanderbilt University
This is what RFK Jr. and the anti-vaxxers have wrought.
Something good of mine is coming soon. I haven't published in so long so this is such a blessing. Other eyes will finally be upon you, glorious one.
A graphic featuring the cover of Forged in FIYAH and text that says: "Featuring Stories By..."
A graphic with a list of authors names against a galaxy background. The authors names are: Maurice Broaddus, MH Ayinde, Tonja K. Johnson, C.L. Clark, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and WC Dunlap.
A graphic with a list of authors names against a galaxy background. The authors names are: Veronica G. Henry, Sheree Renée Thomas, Tonya R. Moore, Brent Lambert, Tobi Ogundiran, and Tade Thompson.
A graphic with a list of authors names against a galaxy background. The authors names are: Nelson Rolon, Eden Royce, Eboni Dunbar-Scott, Yvette Ndlovu, Emmalia Harrington, and LD Lewis.
Forged in FIYAH, edited by @davaun.bsky.social, showcases the extraordinary talent and innovation of contemporary Black SFF!🔥
This collection of 18 stories features tales from mainstays of genre fiction alongside the dynamic, groundbreaking work of several of FIYAH's most promising newcomers.
On Trans Day of Visibility, read something free by me:
www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/cons...
"There’s dysphoria, and then there’s turning into a mid-size city."
Book cover for Delphinium Gospel by Denzel Scott (ELJ Editions): A triptych-structured poetry collection that explores the blessing of creation as a manifesting interplay between horrific grief and desperate longing in the aftermath of murder. https://elj-editions.com/delphinium-gospel/
Book cover for God-Damned Eden by James Daniels (Bull City Press): Selma is a community that, despite its pain, holds a depth of spirit that deserves love and care, a place where redemption is sought through the resilience of its people. God-Damned Eden speaks to the tension within a place that is both deeply flawed and deeply loved. Like the fallen earth in scripture, Selma is marked by human shortcomings and struggles, yet it remains beloved, resilient, and layered with beauty. This Eden-like quality isn’t pristine; it’s a paradise that bears scars—a place both blessed and “damned” by the realities of history and hardship. Yet, within those imperfections lies the work of restoration, an ongoing call to see and honor the beauty that persists. https://bullcitypress.com/product/god-damned-eden-by-james-daniels-inch-65/
Book cover for BOOTless by Trace DePass (Diode Editions): BOOTless: an archaic word also meaning ineffectual, is a black poet’s psychedelic meditation on gentrification, climate change, & post-pandemic grief, pointing its arrow back at its country that has stacked colonization on genocide & monopolized colonization & genocide. The book laughs at an oppressor’s self-elected right to canonize its theft & winning rhetoric under the guise of calling it history. This book may indict Whiteness, if not English itself, as using language built on oppression (a Deleuzian desire-machine sewn together by other languages) in order to create indefinite law on stolen land with indefinite marginalization for the people on it. https://www.diodeeditions.com/product-page/bootless
Book cover for Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri (Akashic Books): Topical and timely, Booker Prize–winning author Ben Okri’s new collection of short stories blurs parallel realities and walks the line between darkness and magic. https://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/prayer-for-the-living/
6/8 - #DSPBposts #SmallPress #books from @bullcitypress.com @tracedepass.bsky.social @diodeeditions.bsky.social @denzelscott.bsky.social @emergejournal.bsky.social @akashicbooks.bsky.social 💙📚 #BookSky #BooksWorthReading #bookish #readingchallenge #readingcommunity #booklovers
"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.
It's crazy that I at least have one book floating around. Now if only I could get this other collection published finally, my two novels completed and sent out, and my third poetry collection composed, I'd feel really accomplished. Back to writing purgatory to toil away.
I'm figuring out how to say this: I acknowledge that I live within a very progressive ecosystem.
But I get the impression that some--or perhaps a lot--of conservative men do not care if their daughters get violated.
It used to be "What if it were me?"
You can't even use that anymore. So now what.
Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She was 95.
Denzel Xavier Scott @denzelscott.bsky.social , "The Black Rainbow" in BCS #342. www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-...
Happy Friday! Let's love on our creators today. Who is a Black SFF author you wish more people were screaming about? Bonus if they have new work coming out this year 🔥🔥🔥
Thank you @bcsmagazine.bsky.social. Thank you for remembering this story of mine.
Finally submitted this google form with all my notes to @neonhemlock.bsky.social for this 2024 Were Here anthology.
Now onto submitting to @apexmag.bsky.social I believe and caregiving, maybe calisthenics (probably not), then blissful sleep.
Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere.
Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself.
Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj
Doubleback Review publishes previously published work from defunct journals—and they’re reading now for their October issue! doublebackreview.com
I remember when newspapers used to run massive, multi-page spreads of American service members lost to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, accompanied by their military headshots.
They're going to have to resurrect it for those hunted and thrown away by their own government. This story is a mini-genre.
This is a fascinating read. Worth noting that @ufw.bsky.social fights for shade, water, and rest breaks for farm workers regardless of where they came from -- everyone deserves a human work environment.
www.npr.org/sections/the...
“Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.”
— A. Whitney Griswold
internalizing american notions of race and ethnic division as timeless truths about the world is a shortcut to smoothing out your brain
I'm in my first anthology y'all.
Zariel, baby, the places we will go!!!!
PodCastle Submissions will open July 1-31
It's almost July, friends, which means: PodCastle will soon be OPEN TO SUBMISSIONS!
General subs call, so: fantasy stories <6k, originals or reprints. You can send one of each at a time, and submit as soon as you're rejected, so get sending!
escapeartists.moksha.io/publication/...
