Dragons, Sex and the Bible: What Drove the Book Business This Year

Some good news:
“This year, 422 newly opened stores joined the American Booksellers Association — nearly a hundred more than joined last year.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/b...

“she swaddles them in tissue paper / and passes them to you across the counter // so tenderly you are clearly being handed / either a newborn or a grenade”

— Amy Grimm 
.
.
.

This poem appeared in The Swannanoa Review, Issue 1, Spring 2024. Shared here with deep gratitude.

My book of the month! Sangamithra Iyer’s gorgeous memoir*watershed*confluence, Governing Bodies, is out on November 4 from Milkweed.

These Dis-United States The country and the nation: Fifty writers and artists report on the states of our dis-union.

www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Water Birth | Poetry Database | Split This Rock

Sharing this poem, with thanks to the writers & poets & curators at Split This Rock for their good work getting poetry to the world❤️❤️❤️

Poem of the Week graphic, which includes the poem title, author, and excerpt with a photo of JoAnn Balingit in a circular frame. JoAnn Balingit, a Kapampángan German American woman, smiles. She has olive skin, black hair, and large round glasses. Behind her are blue ocean, sky, and palm fronds.

the invisible birth waters
rain from our past
already bewater our future

Poem of the Week is “Water Birth" by JoAnn Balingit @balingit.bsky.social

The poem is available as audio and text at The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database: bit.ly/4eH1E4y

#PoemoftheWeek #Poetry #Poems #Poets

Image Description: Poem of the Week graphic, which includes the poem title, author & excerpt with a photo of JoAnn Balingit in a circular frame. JoAnn, a Kapampángan German American woman with olive skin, black hair, & glasses, smiles. Behind her are an ocean, sky, & palm trees.

Sourdough everything bagels on a cooling rack

Sourdough walnut waffles

A sourdough country loaf

This morning my piece for The Nation, “New World Sourdough” (reporting from Delaware) came out for the July / August issue, These dis-United States. Meanwhile, let’s eat.
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Getting feisty.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, giant of African literature, dies aged 87 Kenyan writer’s death announced by his daughter, who wrote: ‘He lived a full life, fought a good fight’

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

One of the dynamics which has become visible to me since I started serving on a school board: Everybody involved in standardized testing - from the state administrators to the testing services to the tutors/preppers - are invested in perpetuating the narrative that US schools are failing…

Round sourdough loaf on a cooling rack with a green rooster potholder

tray of everything sourdough bagels with green gingham tea towel

Dozens of bald cypress knees emerge from mud and reflective shallow water greened with ferns & cypress needles

Today, baking and catching up on writing. Tomorrow and next three days, camping! 🔥
Images: tray of everything sourdough bagels; sourdough loaf I’m bringing; & bald cypress swamp at #TrapPond a glorious (surviving fragment of) Southern Delaware wetland

Seconding this as a former librarian - many libraries across the U.S. offer either Mango or a similar language learning program. You'd be amazed what kind of things you can access for free or very low cost with a library card! It is essential, now more than ever, to support libraries.

A smiling child outside by a pond and small tree, holding a bunny-faced white basket

Report from language-learning world! my daughter and partner just figured out why my granddaughter, almost two, calls her baby doll’s pacifier a *fireplace* 😂🔥 🥵 —the syllables 🔂 🤯 —haha so good

📝another bookmark!📝
1st thing I do waking is stretch and read a poem. that’s why I’m Covid-free after life with two Covid peeps these past 12 days. Or turkey.

So much hurt is forgotten with the horizon
as backdrop. It comes down to simple math.
www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/heres-a...

Audre Lorde was a “theorist of survival” whose primary technology was poetry

When fascism arrives in America it won’t know how to spell it.

Follow my kid @spiritloops.bsky.social dance away those blues

Groovy

Project 2025

Interesting peak into the major funders of Project 2025 from @amywestervelt.bsky.social. Lots to tease out, but it's a good thread to start pulling to find out how we got here.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Facts 💯💯💯🥰

Sixteen Center, a poem by Donika Kelly, January 17, 2022 in The New Yorker

Donika Kelly doing memory work

I’m receiving

I’ll be interviewing Karen Russell for her new novel THE ANTIDOTE when it’s pub'd in March 2025. I love her books as much as I love talking with her. In anticipation, here’s our KBOO Radio conversation for her last book ORANGE WORLD in June 2019. You can stream/download here: bit.ly/40PW1Mx

recently I made a purple minestrone:
purple cabbage, purple potatoes, purple kale:
carrots and tomatoes provided orange and red:
purple dominated the red and orange:
the potatoes kept posing as sausages:
trompe l'oeil:
this is my contribution to today's turkey discourse