So, when is Netflix going to produce the reality tv show where you forge a connection through a wall and then the production team reveals you’ve been talking to an AI? I suggest they call it, LOVE IS BL(AI)ND
#ai #loveisblind

Announcing the Thunderdome Conference 2026! Come teach and learn with me in Boulder this summer

Are you a writer eager to learn from other writers? Do you want to deliver your own craft talk at a small-scale residential writing conference in Boulder, Colorado? Now taking applications for the Thunderdome Conference 2026!
mwatsonfore.substack.com/p/announcing...

Trump: "Maybe we do one more term. Should we? Do one more term! We're entitled to it."

I wrote a reading list of my favorite cathartic bathing scenes for @electricliterature.com ! Check it out ~ electricliterature.com/8-books-feat...

So thrilled to have my review of Anna Rollins’s fabulous book live at @christiancentury.bsky.social !

Thanks, @carsonrisser.bsky.social 💛

OMG what an honor to have my church camp essay among the top 25 of last year at @christiancentury.bsky.social!!
Revisit it here:
www.christiancentury.org/features/dea...

minneapolis calling by Matt Mauch

@mauchmauch.bsky.social wrote this incredible essay about what’s happening in Minneapolis right now (published by @www.sneakerwavemag.org). Check it out — open.substack.com/pub/sneakerw...

#fuckice #minneapolis #reneegood #alexpretti #georgefloyd

La Carte Postale, by Ann Berest — Cincinnati Romance Review One Monday morning in January 2003, Lélia receives an anonymous postcard bearing nothing but four names—Ephraïm, Emma, Noémie, Jacques: the names of Lélia’s maternal grandparents, aunt, and uncle,...

Cincinnati Romance Review’s new issue features my review of Anne Berest’s gripping “nonfiction novel,” LA CARTE POSTALE (The Postcard)—incredible storytelling and a chilling reminder about the costs of looking away from rising authoritarianism
www.cincinnatiromancereview.org/current-issu...

If you have read even a single history of fascism, you are already aware that one thing that its rise has in common in every case is an opposition party that refuses to intervene for fear of looking weak or putting the left into power

On Reading Far Outside My Wheelhouse Sports, sobriety, and unending quests

I wrote about golf and reading as a portal to empathy and quests that never end. Thanks to Tom Coyne’s A Course Called Scotland for the inspiration, and to my dad for letting me borrow his book for three years.
mwatsonfore.substack.com/p/on-reading...

Road tripping from Texas to Colorado (over multiple days, thank goodness), and my partner just put on a Phish song with a duration longer than a standard sitcom episode.

Whose inauguration? What?

Hymn to Moray Eels – Mireille Best Why love a boy just on the basis of his boy-ness?

I reviewed Stephanie Schechner’s new translation of Mireille Best’s Hymn to Moray Eels (out now via the Pride List from Seagull Books) for @fullstopmag.bsky.social! A sharp interrogation of gender and heteronormativity, set in a French sanatorium.
www.full-stop.net/2025/12/15/r...

Flu season is here, folks. Get yourself vaccinated, and then get yourself a cat-panion who will keep watch from the crook of your knee-pits.

Singing the Newsboys with Flamy Grant The musician and drag queen is an exvangelical who came to see that holding on to a theology of self-loathing was just too...

"In Tait’s case, no part of his public persona allows him to name harmful elements of the theology he was raised with. Theology wielded to inculcate hatred or disgust rather than grace is one of the most destructive forces I know." @mwatsonfore.bsky.social www.christiancentury.org/features/sin...

Has anyone written a cultural history of the paint-and-sip?? I would love to read that.

#culturalcriticism #arthistory #historyinthemaking

I wrote about the #michaeltait scandal and about the iconic Christian music drag queen, @flamygrant.bandcamp.com — read it now!

Nonfiction Review: McKenzie Watson-Fore Reads Gabriella D’Italia’s Debut Memoir Getting Dressed in the Dark The crisis that catalyzes Gabriella D’Italia’s debut memoir, Getting Dressed in the Dark: An Artist’s Way Home, is a gruesome separation and divorce, when D’Italia learns that her partner of twenty…

Gabriella D'Italia’s memoir, GETTING DRESSED IN THE DARK, is out now from @unsolicitedpress.bsky.app, and I wrote about it for Heavy Feather Review! A dazzling contemplative journey for anyone with a material art practice alongside your writing practice.
heavyfeatherreview.org/2025/11/17/d...

Worldly Girls – Tamara Jong This narrative unmooring, while unconventional, strikes me as a byproduct of Jong’s departure from high-control religion

@bokchoygurltjong.bsky.social’s memoir WORLDLY GIRLS offers readers a tender journey through intergenerational trauma, female relationships, and the narrative unmooring that comes after leaving high-control religion. Read my review here! @bookhugpress.bsky.social
www.full-stop.net/2025/11/12/r...

What up, skidmarks? It's Bad Janet. My annual Halloween costume essay? Featuring hell

Guess I’ve made an annual habit of writing an essay about my Halloween costume? Check out my new substack, Critic at Play, and read about my choice to dress up as The Good Place’s Bad Janet!
#thegoodplace #badjanet #halloween #onhell

mwatsonfore.substack.com/p/what-up-sk...

Had this thought in the shower this morning that I should stop saying I’m a freelancer and instead I should refer to myself an editorial mercenary.

There's a bigger threat to books than bans. Access to e-books relies entirely on private distributors that have the power to shut them off at any moment.

Distribution is a facet of the book market that doesn't get discussed nearly enough, and @mariabustillos.com does a great job breaking down how that puts the whole industry at risk.
cjr.org/analysis/the...

Love getting to write about one of my favorite new spots in #Boulder! If you haven’t yet, go get some pastries from #Maisonette

Ugh I will never stop loving this essay. It gets me every time.

My interview with the brilliant Natasha Lehrer — translator of SAD TIGER by Neige Sinno from @sevenstories.bsky.social and THE PROPAGANDIST by Cécile Desprairies from @newvesselpress.bsky.social — is up now at the Master’s Review! #interview #translation
mastersreview.com/a-conversati...

Reporter Tells of Michael Tait/Newsboys Scandal: Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n Roll YouTube video by Julie Roys

“I saw the rot and I had the training to do something about it.” So grateful for the unflinching reporting coming from #theroysreport, especially about the allegations toward #michaeltait // #ccm #michaeltaitallegations #churchaccountability #christianscandal

www.youtube.com/watch?v=37dY...

So honored to receive a heartfelt response to my essay in the July issue of @christiancentury.bsky.social ! #churchcamp #religioustrauma #readerresponse

On the Future of Small Presses in the Aftermath of the NEA Grant Chaos On Friday, May 2nd, 2025, DOGE and the National Endowment for the Arts terminated $300,000 worth of grants for 51 publishers. The email, a copy and paste job, trickled into inboxes at odd hours. 5:…

Grateful for this piece from Elizabeth Kaye Cook in @literaryhub.bsky.social today, and grateful to @clmporg.bsky.social for surfacing it. It’s a bleak time for small presses and lit mags—remember to support the ones you love. We really are all each others’ got. #litmags
lithub.com/on-the-futur...

Thrilled to see Jenny Phillips’ essay for @www.sneakerwavemag.org featured in this week’s #memoirmonday roundup from @memoirland.bsky.social !!!