Oh 👀
Posts by Zachary Gillan
Help ARB become a paying venue for ruthless criticism of all that doesn’t exist
Out today from @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social, my essay reflecting on Thomas Burnett Swann's life and legacy as a fantasy writer 50 years after his death. This has been a year in the making and I'm happy there's a piece like this giving Swann some overdue attention!
Update: IT'S OUT
Do YOU know him? Have YOU heard of Kelwas?
buttondown.com/crosshatches...
On the one hand the mosquitos are back, but on the other hand so are soft shell crabs and rhubarb, so who’s to say if spring is bad or not
That’s right!
I haven’t gotten to Carnalis yet but I’m willing to bet it’s the exception that proves the rule
On the one hand the mosquitos are back, but on the other hand so are soft shell crabs and rhubarb, so who’s to say if spring is bad or not
It’s almost always completely orthogonal to what I’m reading for
There’s something Eichmann-like in the way these people talk about starving and immiserating millions of people as a kind of technical problem.
It really is banger after banger in this collection.
undertowpublications.com/shop/uncerta...
Authors: what's a press you've worked with that you love?
I'm querying for my new collection and I have my own list but really only want to submit to places where I know someone who's had a good experience!
Bonus points: if you're comfortable, please DM if you've had a terrible press experience
No! Should I?
Would love to run an essay like this on the Argentinian scene (or the new LatAm gothic writ large) if any porteñas out there are interested
You load 16 books, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the weird fiction store
A wonderful morning reading Toni Morrison’s enlightening lessons on Africanism in the US canon (imagine the privilege of taking such a class) and Namwali Serpell’s insightful book on Morrison, brilliant in its discussion of the writer’s difficulty and her genius in form.
I’m working on it, I’m working on it!!
Yeah - very, very intrigued by that one
It’s something from Porgy and Bess
You have to buy Thomas’s book to read the foreword to see why I think those stories are great but you can read my essay on why The Best Weird Fiction of the Year Vol. 1 is great for free, right now, and find out how weird fiction is constituted by weird reading (you should also buy Thomas’s book)
From Morrison's lecture Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature, printed in Michigan Quarterly Review quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive...
She was unbelievable!
Exciting!!
Highly recommend Namwali Serpell’s new book while you do so!!
Time to reread The Great American Novel
You have to buy Thomas’s book to read the foreword to see why I think those stories are great but you can read my essay on why The Best Weird Fiction of the Year Vol. 1 is great for free, right now, and find out how weird fiction is constituted by weird reading (you should also buy Thomas’s book)