There's a lot of talk about leaving Substack & whether it will be the death-knell of your newsletter. I have been on Beehiiv for 7 months now & @tlpavlich.gay helped me run some numbers. So, was leaving Substack worth it? The answer, for me, has been a resounding "yes."
Here are the hard numbers:
We often disparage dissidents as self-righteous, but if you look at Thoreau, and what it took to oppose slavery in his time, maybe acting out of conviction does take a certain presumptuousness.
An excerpt in @theatlantic.com from "How to Be a Dissident."
www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...
“Everybody’s using AI for everything nowadays, and if you don’t, you’re a misfit outsider who should be stoned to death in the town square, and then resurrected virtually from your data so you can be stoned to death in the virtual town square, for infinity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/o...
Coachella is run by a subsidiary of The Anschutz Corporation, Money from Anschutz which includes the profits from Coachella, is funneled directly to right-wing organizations that support key politicians funding ICE, undermining LGBTQ rights, & restricting abortion.
open.substack.com/pub/populari...
As an editor one of the few newspapers left publishing a decent amount of book reviews and other coverage, I hope you might consider a digital subscription to the Boston Globe. It's not that expensive and look at what we do! www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/
This kind of thing at Substack (including their Nazi problem and trans hate problem) are why my newsletter is at Ghost.org and always has been. Andrew Tate is a spectacularly vile human being accused of numerous violent crimes against women and hugely corrosive for young male minds.
Whil we’re waiting to see what happens in the Hungarian election, here’s something I wrote in 2013 about Orbán attacking cultural dissenters and handing control of arts institutions to loyalists. Remarkable how much of this has now been replicated in the US www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...
This reality check by Rebecca Solnit grabs you right from the killer first sentence. Do yourself a favor & give it a read.
Free advice to the opposition: It's very important that the GOP send the warm, likable, super-relatable JD Vance out on a national tour to campaign for MAGA in the midterms. He's got the touch!
Did you know that Min Jin Lee, Marlon James, Deesha Philyaw, and Hernan Diaz ALL HAVE NOVELS COMING OUT THE SAME DAY? September 29, by the way. Fall books on my mind on an April weekend, sigh.
Thanks to @roncharles.bsky.social for including in his newsletter this excerpt from ATRIA
You can find and subscribe to his newsletter here roncharles.substack.com/p/how-to-avo...
the realest part of The Metamorphosis is how on top of everything he is still expected to show up at the office somehow
It was not that long ago when conservatives had a chokehold on every branch of Wisconsin government, piles of Koch and Uline money, and seemed unstoppable. People worked FUCKING HARD to change that shit and now look at em. Change is always possible and never ever easy.
I hate having to do the "look, they're normal just like us" post, but sometimes you have to do that when American propaganda tries to convince everyone Iranians are "animals".
Excellent opportunity! The Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop, feat. instructors Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Erica Berry, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Isle McElroy, Maria Pinto, Roger Reeves & Nicholas Triolo. For more info or to apply, visit orionmagazine.org/omega or write to workshops@orionmagazine.org.
"Republicans too radical, Democrats too woke" is the ideology of the owners of most major news outlets and many of the senior editors and reporters they have hired/promoted. This is Rahm's platform. So of course they amplifying his message. It is their message too.
Fiction almost never treats disabled adults with such complexity and humor — or with so little sentimentality.
My review of Woody Brown’s debut novel, "Upward Bound": roncharles.substack.com/p/the-lives-...
Thanks to @jeremylybarger.bsky.social and @poetry.foundation for making space for this essay about the Elegy, its inherent shortcomings, and a poem it took me many years to write
www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/178...
“No one needs to bleed for the news to die.”
My new essay on how “free speech” is being weaponized to undermine the press—and democracy.
roncharles.substack.com/p/the-new-ce...
A new story of mine is published in the April issue of @harpers.bsky.social. About death and philosophy and saying goodbye.
I will respond more individually soon, but thank you everyone for this amazing list. It's very helpful.
No surprise, the writer with the most votes is Toni Morrison (for several books, with Sula in front).
Many people cited Charlotte Brontë's Villette, which I am ashamed to say I've never read.
41 years old, evacuated here legally, asylum case pending, kidnapped while driving his six children (one a US citizen) to school. Dead within 24 hours.
Betrayed and murdered by the United States government.
42nd confirmed and reported death in ICE custody under Trump.
And I ask again: Where are my Harper’s letter writers at?
This is Nathan Cavanaugh, another DOGE staffer explaining how he flagged grants at NEH for "DEI" which would be reviewed for termination. 404 Media has reviewed hours of this footage and we'll have more soon.
Part of a lawsuit by @acls1919.bsky.social, @modernlanguage.bsky.social + @historians.org
Everyone should be screaming about Jordy Rosenberg's new novel. I wrote about it here. www.themarisreview.com/the-maris-re...
Pete Hegseth's "Department of War" spent $7.4 million on lobster tails, more than $15 million on ribeye steaks, and hundreds of thousands on doughnuts...in September.
openthebooks.substack.com/p/pentagon-s...
A DOGE staffer assigned to the National Endowment for the Humanities to flag grants for "DEI" tries to explain what "DEI" is. This deposition is part of a lawsuit by the @acls1919.bsky.social, @historians.org and @modernlanguage.bsky.social.
I wrote something--4000 words' worth of something!--for the Yale Review about Hamnet the book, Hamnet the movie, & the riddle of representing Shakespeare's life on the page & on the screen.
Long-time buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were out for a pleasant van drive in Oklahoma when, all of a sudden, their lives would change.
March 8, 2026 - Tehran at sunrise today. But the sun is hidden behind a sky filled with smoke. After a night of intensive strikes on oil facilities, thick black clouds now hang over the city, turning morning into something that feels like night.
