This Saturday…🎧

Achievement unlocked: bartender at my neighborhood bar knows me by name. He was wearing the Malört hat. Some towns have country clubs. We have this.

People who say they’re not hungry and then eat your fries have a level of confidence I’ll never know.

Previous hobbies: fixing things that were never actually broken. Current hobbies: watching Mad Men and making the situation worse.

ICYMI: Gallery Cabaret became a sports bar, so Chicago writers are now wandering for a new home.

I went to Tangible Books and wrote about what happens when a scene loses its room…🐐

open.substack.com/pub/zonamote...

Season 5 starts now.

Off the Record with Kirsti MacKenzie: I’ve Got It Bad is live. Catch it wherever you get your podcasts.

Textual Healing is back.

open.spotify.com/episode/24xt...

Off The Record with Kirsti MacKenzie: I've Got It Bad

Off The Record with Kirsti MacKenzie: I've Got It Bad

open.spotify.com/episode/24xt...

My latest Zona dispatch: Who Are We Now?

A Chicago reading, a room in transition, familiar faces, shifting energy, and the question every scene asks when everything starts to change…🐐

open.substack.com/pub/zonamote...

Some books have clearer origins than others…

We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes

www.thirtywestph.com/shop/p/weall...

There’s a tornado watch right now but it’s hard to assess the danger level when Justin Bieber’s Coachella set has completely hijacked the living room…

Tomorrow…🎧

Recent Interest: Rewatching Bates Motel like it’s going to end differently this time

Past-optimistic me keeps booking commitments for future-exhausted me and I’m starting to resent that bitch…

Proof of publication: WE ALL GO A LITTLE MAD SOMETIMES a novella by @mallorysmart.bsky.social

Out on 4/24

Bonus pic of another spring chapbook at the end

Nothing unites Midwesterners like a tornado watch and the immediate urge to go stand outside and check it out…

We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes - Fiction - Mallory Smart - 2026 Chapbook Project - Spring Cohort — Thirty West Publishing House We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes, a novella by Mallory Smart. Part of the 2026 Chapbook Project - Spring Cohort

Some people get a therapist. Some people find a strange cat and let it ruin their life...

WE ALL GO A LITTLE MAD SOMETIMES is now available for preorder from Thirty West.

www.thirtywestph.com/shop/p/weall...

Apparently it was about to rain

My cat just army crawled out of the room for no reason and I feel like I should be more concerned than I currently am…

Textual Healing returns for Season 5 with Kirsti MacKenzie and an Off the Record episode that immediately reminds everyone why this was never meant to be a normal literary podcast...🎧

Started watching The Testaments like it was going to be less bleak than The Handmaid’s Tale. That’s on me…

If you want the building’s other nightmare, the companion chapbook is here:

www.thirtywestph.com/shop/p/weall...

My new Hobart story takes place in the same cursed apartment building as We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes.

Different tenant. Same bad address…

www.hobartpulp.com/web_features...

To clarify for everyone sending concerned messages: I am not divorced. The Hobart story is fiction. Thank you for your concern during this fake ordeal.

My entire day in one screenshot:

My mom is moving out of my childhood home soon.

Figured I owed the bathroom mirror from my MySpace era one last selfie…

There’s a specific kind of loneliness where your phone starts to feel like the only thing that knows you.

And then it proves it…

www.hobartpulp.com/web_features...

How I End Up Writing A Book: binge Ed Gein’s Monster, get into Psycho, write a poem, get rejected, turn it into a short story, watch too much Bates Motel, get weirded out by noises in my house, stare at my cat until I’m convinced she’s demonic…

Just waiting for it to get nice enough to have a bonfire and put on a slasher in the backyard…

There’s a version of me that would’ve played this safe and been easier to understand. I’m glad she didn’t win…

I tried writing like a normal person once and it killed whatever was actually interesting about me.

This year I finally decided to lean into my dark and twisty side...