This week, we're celebrating one month of Scratch (!) and surviving last Tuesday's global cortisol spike. In this roundup: books, blogs, literary discourse, video games, poetry, and the moon.
Scratch is an entirely reader-supported, worker-owned cooperative. Subscribe and share! www.talkscratch.com
Every time I find myself on the cusp of despair I find that community helps pull me back, because we can pick out the glimmers of truth together. Yesterday I offered poems to the group chat because that felt right. Today I am sharing this because honesty about our circumstances feels right.
Bouquet of thirty tulips of different colors, like coral fringe tulips, white star-shaped tulips with coral stripes, and lavender parrot tulips, wrapped in brown Kraft paper secured by twine.
Bouquet of twenty tulips of different colors, like coral fringe tulips, white star-shaped tulips with coral stripes, lavender parrot tulips, and deep burgundy wide-open spiky tulips, wrapped in brown Kraft paper secured by twine.
Bouquet of thirty tulips of different colors, like coral, white striped with coral, and lavender fringe varieties wrapped in brown Kraft paper secured by twine.
A short yellow tulip with an eggplant purple center, surrounded by light green leaves.
In case you need a little sweetness today, let me share some flowers with you. I got my mama and brother out of the house for a little tulip-picking adventure. 🙂
Thank you for sharing the essay! Btw I teach your piece from Disability Visibility to my Creative Nonfiction undergrads because I make them think about the creative space they're building in the classroom, and who it's for. :-)
🔦Source request 🔦
Does anybody have experience using a Bilt credit card or any other fintech-type scheme to supposedly help manage rent payments? I'd love to talk to you!
wwimbish.07 on Signal and wwimbish@prospect.org.
Aww yay I am so happy to hear this! 💜
Coincidentally, this week’s Scratch newsletter is a candid discussion about how the four of us are getting by financially as freelance writers. We talk numbers, money, time, motherhood, chronic pain, and relentless exhaustion. www.talkscratch.com/the-group-ch...
Image of four women writers with thought bubbles and emojis and the title THE SCRATCH GROUP CHAT - How We Get By
Image of text - dialogue between Maggie and Manjula and Latria about care work, and the choices freelancers have to make re providing care vs working
Image of text - chat transcript of Manjula Martin discussing ways in which she could have made more money from her writing work but didn’t because “the thought of doing that honestly just kind of made me want to die”
In today’s Scratch newsletter, we’re talking $$$ as self-employed writers — income, expenses, debt, care work, insurance, day jobs, exhaustion, and the unquantifiable ways in which we feed our hearts: www.talkscratch.com/the-group-ch...
People said they wanted more culture pieces on Bsky, right? For COYOTE, I interviewed the @oaklandreviewofbooks.org and @meganwachspress.bsky.social for a behind-the-scenes account of how Megan's 7,000-word feature (!) on coal in Oakland came to be—a phenomenal work of longform journalism.
WE MADE IT OUT OF THE GROUP CHAT! Happy that get to talk with my whip-smart friends about how we're all surviving as working writers. 💜
Thank you Tommy! I appreciate your support over the years...from my days as a baby longform writer at SBNation. 💜
Thank you Amanda! 💜
😅 I didn't plan to start my early days on this platform this way, but yesterday I was named a recipient of @heisingsimonsfdn.bsky.social's 2025 American Mosaic Journalism Prize. I'm thrilled to share this recognition with photojournalist Zaydee Sanchez. More info here: tinyurl.com/28rt8pz2
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Thank you for the warm welcome friend! I'm slow on the uptake but figuring this all out 😭
