ICE is still kidnapping people in Minneapolis, and neighbors are still volunteering as rapid responders.

I go to Open Hair Space in Richfield (their website says "minneapolis" but uh, it is richfield); several of their stylists are trans or nb. They were in uptown originally, but I was not letting go of a stylist who already knew me and I knew could do a clipper cut, it's fine, I'll drive.

Stand With Minnesota Stand With Minnesota is a hub for supporting, learning, and taking action to support Minnesotans impacted by ICE and federal enforcement.

Today is day 138 of the ICE occupation of MN.

Halfway through the month, we are already hearing that the rent needs for May 1 will be high, as families emerging from hiding are struggling to find wok.

You can help us get a head start on fundraising:

StandWithMinnesota.com

Or, and hear me out, write how you want. Don't be cowed by LLMs. We do not have to cede territory to the Theft and Murder Machine. We don't write like LLMs; LLMs generate content that is a simulacrum of our work.

truly nothing as humbling & simultaneously self-aggrandizing as returning to a short story that was your Best Work three years ago. "why did you do that," you think. "you absolute dunce. have i really improved THAT MUCH at structure?!" and it's like yeah dude you wrote like thirty more short stories

A mannequin is dismantled ‘neath a sign reading “looks we love” near the entrance of a Macy’s

Looks we love

revising shit like eighteen months after i first write it does work on occasion, but truly, it is painful.

dilemma always between 1. trusting the Process and sending stuff out again and again after rejections 2. taking a hammer to old stuff and beating it into shape 3. writing something new. i do not like having stories sitting around! that's not their job!! they have to go somewhere!!!

This is all just a set up. Most productive council in history, most diverse, and people who just work really hard for our neighbors. We get made to be punching bag to tee up for the charter amendment on the ballot to strip council power and in turn constituent power. Don’t fall for it.

More people should be talking about how fucking destructive Jacob Frey is.

He’s not only a do-nothing smug-ass mayor, he’s also willfully destroying any mechanisms where people other than his funders and patrons get a say in how the city works, makes decisions, or prioritizes values and budgets.

And now I’m like, digging thru baffling for a good pull. There’s a lot of smaller sff mags that end up on rec & awards lists less which I think is a shame, and flash fiction is even more ephemeral, it feels like, tho sff writers have really drilled down on doing a lot in 1000 words.

Hers Beatriz Nogueira is fifteen years old when her life ends.

To give a potential real answer, “Hers” by Fernanda Coutino Teixeira is a 2023 short story that—I was not Online at the time—but I don’t think it did numbers at award season despite being extremely timely and quite chilling. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fi...

Infuriatingly my answer is a question, which is: are there any holes (thematically, genre wise, representation wise) you’re trying to fill? I think it’d be easy to list Really Good Stories but like, what’s missing, you know? Sorry I’m v passionate about both of these topics

Donate to Support Families at a South Minneapolis Public School, organized by Anne Kosseff We are a Title 1 neighborhood community school in south Minneapolis… Anne Kosseff needs your support for Support Families at a South Minneapolis Public School

We have about six April rents that we still need to pay for our school community. I am so proud and grateful that we've been able to support all the school families who needed rent support through January, February, and March—if you can, please help us do the same for April.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. 2026, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.

I mean it’s not really prescient to assume that if something might have intelligence Catholics will wonder if they should try and convert it but still.

can’t believe even my jokes about Vatican IV and the church’s ruling on sentient synthetic intelligences will seem to be reactionary or referential instead of prescient by the time anyone sees them. this is the curse of the sf writer who works slowly 😔

to that effect: I know ppl have had good experiences with Adi (whose guidelines sound more sff-friendly), Alex Brown has reviewed work in matchbook for the short spec fic column before, Wigleaf & HAD are non-paying but worth looking at, and there's Claudine (not fantasy but fabulism) & Vast Chasm

IMO 1. stuff that's horror-adjacent in a particular mode can flexibly fit more markets (ex. KC Mead-Brewer) 2. many mags want A Little Genre but don't know it & don't ID work as Genre that an sff writer would. Like Machado published "The Husband Stitch" in Granta.

YMMV, but for me the best way to find interesting lit mags that might like something sort of like mine is to mine the bibliographies of writers whose stories I liked/vibed with who were published in places like Strange Horizons where you get some crossover.

i'm doing an especially great job at not writing today, some of my best work in the field.

Probably none of those would take like, space opera. THEN AGAIN: has anyone tried???

smoke and mold (nature writing by trans authors) just did a whole issue of trans eco horror; manywor(l)ds is, I would say, vigorously genre agnostic (& have published stuff by various genre authors); fractured lit publishes genre stuff sometimes too. i'm pretty sure foglifter (queer lit mag) has.

Electric Lit (Recommended Reading/The Commuter) definitely does (Angela Liu just had something out in The Commuter) and I think they have pretty good taste.

Split Lip specifically says "no genre fiction please" but have published stuff that I would say either straddles the line or crosses entirely over into sff ("patient x" by vanessa blakeslee, for ex). (I would not SUBMIT anything that did not have the right vibe, but the archive speaks as it will)

Here’s the story of one of them. Awful www.thestranger.com/forced-out/f...

Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast. This page: Remember Me in the Meat by Sarah Pauling

Remember Me in the Meat, @sarahpauling.bsky.social in @clarkesworldmagazine.com - This one had me from the title and did not let go. Lobemeat! Cults! Girlbosses! Memory! I found the twist here particularly effective, in that stomach-dropping kind of way. clarkesworldmagazine.com/pauling_02_26/

Saddled, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece in @nightshadesmag.bsky.social -- my notebook reads: "weird! like really quite weird! im into it!" I agree with myself. A stylish, bizarre little bite of?? Horror???
www.nightshadesmag.com/saddled/

I also quite like “Transgender in a Global Frame” by Jack Halberstam in transgender and intersex: theoretical, practical, and artistic perspectives.

Not exactly Lit Crit, but straddling the line between WGS, queer theory, & disability studies, there’s Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer and Queer Embodiment by Hil Malatino. F/Q/C has a chapter I call “Lockheed Martin Made My Prosthetic Leg” which if anything feels more relevant as time passes.