Honestly if the sound room in Calgary ever closed I’d burn this city to the ground

Nothing reminds me that actually maybe Canadian literature as a culture sucks more than checking in on CBC Canada Reads lmao

Daredevil Born Again seemingly walking backwards in premise from the Waid run to the Zdarsky run to the Bendis run into the Bruebaker run is so insane to me.

It’s profoundly ignorant to suggest that the Pope should be fighting crime on behalf of the Catholic Church. Anyone who was remotely familiar with Roman Catholicism would know that that’s what Daredevil is for

Ancillary Review of Books: Year 7! Questioning power, imagining possibility: ARB provides thoughtful criticism of speculative fiction. Help us pay our writers and staff!

Amazing: we're already halfway to our first stretch goal! Thanks to everyone who's donated or shared already; spreading the word about ARB's fundraiser helps a ton!

also grateful he took The Strange Bird!!! I just finished teaching it for the first time, and it just reminded me how beautiful it is

That would have wrecked the novel.

But I'm also very greateful to him for reprinting your back catalogue, because it meant I found Veniss Underground at an important moment for me.

All I can do is rot, like everybody else

I'm really shattered by the news of the closing of MCD today. Both because as a lover of weird and experimental genre, as a reader and scholar, it was invaluable, a flowing river of constant treasure.

also as a writer, it means another beautiful pipe dream held since I started writing is dead.

I'm sure many people have seen the Publisher's Weekly article about my editor, Sean McDonald, leaving Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and his imprint, MCD Books, being shuttered. I have a lot of feelings about this, including gratitude for ten years of stability with one editor. Before Sean, I had a trilogy where each novel was taken by a different publishing company. It sold well enough that I was still in the game, but I never had anything approaching a settled situation. I never had any assurance from book to book that I could relax or get comfortable or feel settled. Sean's offer for Annihilation and the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy was extraordinary. It fused a deep love of the literary with a savvy understanding of the world beyond the words in the novel. He had the vision to put the three Southern Reach novels out in the same year, creating a PR sensation to go along with a startlement of mostly rave reviews--a positive feedback loop that landed Authority and Acceptance on the bestseller lists in trade paperback. {Ultimately, the series has gone on to sell well over a million copies in the US alone, and been translated into over 37 languages.) He further had the vision to slap an X on an omnibus hardcover just before the holidays, as a perfect gift book. It was as immaculate a synergy of the storytelling and the marketing and PR expression of that storytelling as I have ever seen or had ever experienced as the author in question. He also slipped the manuscript of Annihilation to a producer at a lunch, which led to the Annihilation movie and eventually led to Annihilation making the NYT bestseller list for the first time.

When he got his own imprint at FSG, MCD Books, my novel Borne was the first published as an MCD book. It didn't make the bestseller list in hardcover, but got rare trifecta of rave reviews in the NY Times, LA Times, and Washington Post in the same weekend. The trade paperback edition is in a fourteenth printing. After the Annihilation movie came out, I strove to write the least commercial idea I had, first, to kind of wash away the Hollywood experience. That novel was Dead Astronauts, accompanied by The Strange Bird. I sent Dead Astronauts to Sean with an email note that I knew the novel was unexpected and very strange and I appreciated him reading it, but I did not expect him to publish it. I absolved him any obligation. But within a couple of months, He replied that he liked it very much and he did want to publish it, and he saw a clear path to publishing it. The trade paperback is still in print and Dead Astronauts earned out the advance, despite being formally experimental. When Hummingbird Salamander tanked at the beginning of the pandemic (only to rise again in trade paperback), Sean didn't bat an eye about it, just moved on and endeavored to reprint my entire backlist at FSG. As of this writing, City of Saints & Madmen is in an eighth printing, and the others, Shriek, Finch, and Veniss Underground, are all in print and selling steadily.

FSG itself--from the art department to the PR and marketing teams, the other editorial staff, and the foreign language rights division--has always felt like a place where everyone passionately loved books and while no company is perfect, I certainly have felt it was and is an oasis in an increasingly inconsistent publishing world. I'm very sad that Sean is leaving FSG. I know he will land on his feet, as they say, and do more great things elsewhere. I really owe him a lot and FSG a lot. I'm very fortunate, very blessed, and I also know from 45 years of a book life that everything has its place and has it season. It's good to celebrate what you had and how wonderful it was to have it, rather than to dwell on the fact that it has ended. Eleven books in eleven years, with a twelfth on the way is a thing to treasure. Sean changed the trajectory of my career, and we fought many a long, arduous campaign during book launches often quixotic and against the grain of the popular in the moment. I have a lot of joy and love in my heart for all of those times and all of those opportunities. It's been a great run. I've learned a lot and had such adventures. My career isn't over and my association with FSG isn't over, either--among other things, I have a novel under contract with them--but it does feel like the end of an era, for me. Honor the past but don't live there, the saying goes. But, you'll forgive me, I hope, if I live there for just a bit longer. Thanks for reading.

Many of you have heard that my editor Sean McDonald will no longer be working at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I wrote a little bit about my feelings at the end of an era.

Killed Melania today with the blasphemous blade taking no hits. Felt no sense of satisfaction.

In case your wondering about my mental state

This spring is an odd and interesting moment to be releasing a book both queer and jewish as an anti-zionist queer Jew in Canada :/

Ancillary Review of Books: Year 7! Questioning power, imagining possibility: ARB provides thoughtful criticism of speculative fiction. Help us pay our writers and staff!

Big news! ARB's first fundraiser is officially live! We're shooting for the very modest goal of $1k, with lots of stretch goals in mind. Your support is of course appreciated, and any help in spreading the word would be wonderful!

hi, sad and tired all the time. i'm dad.

The Library Cosmic by Ben Berman Ghan The child lies in the snowy north, where the halls of essays are heavy with the thoughts of poets and politicians and philosophers. There are no flowers for her. There is only a gathering of found fam...

I do I do I do!
bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/the...

reviewing the copy edit for THE LIBRARY COSMIC was delightful

ONE HOUR OF DANCING MON MOTHMA | Andor Season 2 | Disney+ YouTube video by Star Wars

Sometimes I can only make it then the day one way youtu.be/y6wLcx7AkRM?...

“I just bounce my ideas off the idiot machine”

Lmao, wild way for someone to say “I don’t have friends!”

Coming soon: Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction: Volume 4 Award winners. Award nominees. Hidden gems. All Canadian. All in one anthology.

The @kickstarter.com for Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction: Volume 4 goes live NEXT WEEK, Tuesday, April 7. Early bird giveaways! Stretch goals! Add-ons! And the very best Canadian SFF all in one place! Click below for an alert when we launch. And please SHARE WIDELY--thx! #Kickstarter

@mattfraction.bsky.social has Batman sipping coffee in the cowl in Gotham Diners in DC Comics

At Marvel, Stephanie Philips has Daredevil working as an adjunct professor ... just like me.

the pull list is good. Comics are good. for just a moment, all is well

consistency is important at the Walrus, the takes never fail to be bad

I never wiped my ass with it, but only because it seemed to expensive

The Walrus! Canadas most prestigious magazine that had contributed such bangers to the culture as: the appropriation prize scandal, and: lots of kindling for when I made a fire for a s’mores party in Christie Pitts as an undergraduate

Omg a bad take from the Walrus??? I can’t believe it. Wow

Oh my god that's fucked!! I'm really glad you are okay

Comics are a medium, not a genre. And they have as much literary merit as any book, as well as the artistic merit of any painting.

are you kidding me, I saved backups on backups on backups on backups

thanks Heather!

oh man, I should be writing

❤️

Handed in my PhD thesis just now. I’m sure there will be revisions and rewriting and everything else but still. STILL. so relieved to have a full draft of the work I could cry