In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.

—Frank O’Hara

soooo important to be yourself. except when it’s like, bad.

this is amazing! please pass my joy and gratitude along to your student!

i really was like, fewer people, more PDFs, please

just remembered that the other school i seriously considered was an even smaller experimental college—marlboro college in vermont—which closed in 2020 😭

Hampshire is also the only school that’s ever invited me back as a speaker—and twice! once, to do a poetry reading. and later, to speak at commencement. my MFA program will likely never invite me back (until some faculty retire lol) because i’ve talked about their racism too much.

Hampshire also had plenty of problems, the high cost of tuition chief among them—like many students, i was on multiple scholarships and did work study. but Hampshire remains the only school i’ve ever donated to (mainly to scholarship funds)—because it was pedagogically different.

i got to work with way more faculty of color at Hampshire than i did in grad school (both MFA + PhD). and crucially, they taught an approach to the arts that was inseparable from politics. i had profs, including a few white profs, advocate for me in ways i never again experienced.

i did not do well in all my coursework! but i was glad to have all these options, including so many engaging ones to fulfill Hampshire’s natural sciences requirement (my weak area!), like a course on historical and contemporary scientists in Muslim societies.

at Hampshire my courses ranged from the Russian novel to ethnomusicology to the intersections of philosophy & cognitive science to modern Chinese history to poetry workshop to geology, etc etc. and i did a 5 colleges certificate (basically a minor) in Asian American studies.

we need the experimental schools, the wacky places, the schools that don't care about grades or majors, the places that allow/empower students to create their own weird paths, to be weirdos. & yes, we need such education to occur outside/beyond the existing university structures.

Aracelis, one of my early poetry mentors, whom I first met at Hampshire...

from :: poets.org/poem/you-are...

You are who I love

You who the borders crossed
You whose fires
You decent with rage, so in love with the earth
You writing poems alongside children

You cactus, water, sparrow, crow You, my elder
You are who I love,
summoning the courage

—Aracelis Girmay

Hampshire College to close after years of financial struggles Hampshire College will close after fall 2026 due to ongoing financial and enrollment struggles.

hampshire is where i did my undergrad and where i realized that yes, i need to be a poet. very sad about this and about the state of education in general.

www.masslive.com/education/20...

anyway, Hacks continues to be brilliant.

YUP. When my book came out, so many people in my family were like "wouldn't it be amazing if your book was made into a TV show, and my answer was always: literature is better, and I got my book, which is what I wanted. I don't need to see a worse version of it."

i’m not sure why some tv critics seem incapable of critiquing bad tv writing. it is all over the pitt, both seasons. for a show so praised for its realism, why do the characters talk like social media posts? why are the jokes so flat? the actors are phenomenal, but the writing is mediocre at best.

i love tv and watch too much. and i’m a writer, not of tv, but i can tell the difference between good & bad writing, and tv (like every medium) has a lot of bad writing. flat dialogue, cliched storylines, underdeveloped characters, and above all, sentimentality. including in so-called “prestige” tv.

often when a character has a politically important point to make they sound like an instagram infographic. and i’m not sure anyone on that show knows how to write a character of color.

season 2 of the pitt is not well written. i liked season 1 much more, though it’s always been heavy-handed and clunky in its messaging. the acting saves the writing much of the time.

Love That For Us — & Change Love That For Us by Chen Chen & Sam Herschel Wein Published March 6, 2026 44 Pages Paperback, 6×9 ISBN 978-1-961070-04-2 Cover art by Genevieve Hudson 🚨 NOTE: International Shipping ...

Day 10: Love That For Us by @chenchenwrites.bsky.social and @samforbreakfast.bsky.social 🖤

when i was in grad school i got to see Ruth Ozeki read from a novel and during the Q&A she talked about cutting 100 pages from it at one point of the process. i remember people in the audience gasping, but she just shrugged.

you cannot be precious about your own work. i cut ~30 poems from my new poetry manuscript. i cut ~50 pages of material while working on my book of craft essays. i know for fiction writer friends it’s normal to cut many, many pages to find the right structure for a novel.

Chen Chen is so good

thank you!

Artemis II's return has me thinking about this poem (again): "let's go by the speed of / queer zest & stay up / there..."

thank you!!

💚 We at Boa could not be more thrilled to celebrate Aracelis Girmay and her collection, GREEN OF ALL HEADS, awarded the 2026 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry this past Tuesday. Thank you to @penamerica for recognizing Aracelis and her work, and congratulations to all the awardees honored this year!

words cannot EXPRESS how excited I am for this FRIENDSHIP CHAPBOOK