Matt cheating on Liam... surely not! Hope listeners to the UDF podcast enjoy his appearance on A Meal of Thorns. A fun chat about Ready Player One!

🔥 What a privilege to join the comrades at @workerslit.bsky.social to talk about @scumbelievable.bsky.social's brutal, beautiful novel, "Black Flame" 🔥

A Meal of Thorns 48- READY PLAYER ONE with Matthew Leggatt The pleasures and perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play versus gamified labor, and whether the internet used to be fun: Matthew Leggat of the Utopian & Dy…

The pleasures & perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play vs gamified labor, & whether the internet used to be fun: @matthewleggatt.bsky.social of @utopiaanddystopia.bsky.social joins to discuss Ernest Cline’s READY PLAYER ONE!

Sickos dot jpg but it's the live slug reaction

A Lord of the Rings mug full of tea, a box of paracetamol, and my phone playing the Meal of Thorns podcast.

Hungover, drinking tea and listening to the Meal of Thorns Silmarillion episode. Perfect Sunday.

"We could all stand to be weirder and to know less about each other"

Podcast: Talking about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell on A Meal of Thorns - Lawyers, Guns & Money I’ve made no secret of my admiration for Ancillary Review of Books‘s podcast A Meal of Thorns. In every episodes, host Jake Cassella Brookins invites a guest—an author, critic, or academic—to discuss a single book. Selections range across genres (a recent episode focused on Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep), discussing books new and old, famous and obscure. I […]

Podcast: Talking about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell on A Meal of Thorns

Dr Matthew Leggatt, Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities @uniwinchester.bsky.social, is the next guest on speculative fiction podcast Meal of Thorns, talking to host Jake Casella Brookings about Ready Player One. The episode is available from Monday (20 April) on Spotify, Apple and YouTube.

One of the best on one of the best. Get in there.

In Your Spare Time: From the Blog of Ursula K. Le Guin: Julie Phillips reads "In Your Spare Time" This week, Julie Phillips reads Post 1, "In Your Spare Time," which Ursula posted in October of 2010. The original post can be read at Julie Phillips' website is  

I'm up this week on the @ursulakleguin.com blog podcast, reading the title essay, "In Your Spare Time." It's a great Le Guin for skeptics and beginners, a little bento box of her ideas and prose—irreverent, thoughtful, and moving.

inyoursparetime.libsyn.com/julie-phillips-reads-in-your-spare-time

For the early morning crowd, my latest podcast venture is visiting @klaxoncomms.com 's Hugo History podcast.

good episodes on the way

Not wanting to take credit but... we have a history of interviewing people whose books have then gone on to shine at the Locus Awards! Good luck andré! Fully deserved!

Now that I've got your attention...
bookshop.org/p/books/audi...

A blue card reads "Halifax Ghost Walk" with a picture of the Citadel belltower and details on the event.

A blue card reads "North Brewing Presents The TriCon Starlight Party" with the North logo and a yellow graphic of moons and stars, along with details on a party.

A blue card reads "TriCon 1st Annual Editorial Idol" above event details and three circular photos of editors/judges

A blue card reads "Imaro Book Club" over a circular cutout showing a book cover, and details on a book club event.

TriCon after dark! Whatever your jam, we will have fun, nerdy things for you to do while you are in town.

We're almost done the daytime schedule of panels, workshops, lectures, launches, and more, but fun? That's ready to go.

More details, sign up forms and more at tricon-halifax.com/events/

It was such an absolute pleasure to be interviewed for this piece!!

Bunch of new followers recently, so a) hi; b) I have a very weird, very angry, very gay book coming out in November about Evangelical religious trauma and horny exorcism and how to cope with a twinky demon who won’t give up on you

Available for preorder now now now 😈 ghoulish.rip/product/witn...

We've heard much worse arguments.

Belatedly listening to this BTGS with Rym Kechacha- really dig the discussion of the theatre as a weird physical space & its roles & analogs in fiction. Also great brief MEANDER SPIRAL EXPLODE discussion.

Over the moon over this honor! I ❤️ @storystudiochicago.bsky.social & I ❤️ their mission!!!

Engaging discussion of a book I have never read and have no interest in reading, but that's why I love @mealofthorns.bsky.social and critics like @casella.bsky.social and @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social!

I especially enjoyed the discussion of the genre/literary fiction divide of the 90s-00s.

Dispelling Fantasy: Authors of Color Reimagine a Genre by Joy Sanchez-Taylor I struggled to process the full implications of this volume's title even after reading the book.

My review of Joy Sanchez-Taylor's Dispelling Fantasy: Authors of Color Reimagine a Genre is up at Strange Horizons: 'this book makes a compelling case for dispelling fantasy and I recommend both it and the fiction it discusses to readers who want to move on from the outdated norms of the past'

Critical Friends Episode 22: Romancing The Genre In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Jenny Hamilton and Anushree Nande join Dan Hartland to discuss romance and romantasy.

🎙️NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS JUST DROPPED🎙️

I sit down with the @anushreenande.bsky.social and @readingtheend.bsky.social to think critically about romantasy, in my case from outside looking in - and also to consider with scepticism the critical response to it.

Lots to dig into that isn’t dug enough atm.

You can tell it's the future because they spell things weird! @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social joins to discuss David Mitchell's formally clever genre-wall-breaker of a novel, CLOUD ATLAS:
ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2026/04/06/a...

Podcast Latest Episode: About the Podcast: A Meal of Thorns is a critical book club hosted by Jake Casella Brookins. Each episode, we’ll be looking closely at works of speculative fiction, thinking a…

If you're looking for things more in the book discussion direction, check out: @nochorus.bsky.social's SFUltra, all the @rangedtouch.bsky.social series, @strangehorizons.bsky.social's Critical Friends podcast, & @deathsentencepod.bsky.social for starters. And A Meal of Thorns:

@worldbuildcast.bsky.social, @writingexcuses.bsky.social, @publishingrodeo.bsky.social, @sffaddictspod.bsky.social, & @justkeepwriting.bsky.social are some to check out. More generally on publishing, @printrunpodcast.bsky.social is great.

we can all tell

David Mitchell, Emily Wilson, Rick Riordan, Robin Hobb, Vajra Chandrasekera

and me

A painting by James Gurney, which is the cover of Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time. It's a realistic painting featuring dinosaurs and humans parading in utopian bliss in Sauropolis, the capital of Dinotopia.

It's eating at me that I'm spending a good chunk of my reading and writing time this year doing a Secret Thing that will not see the light of day until 2027. I've gotta work hard to keep up other reading/writing to make it look like I'm actually doing stuff this year.

So my next essay is on...

Tuned In: Review of andré carrington’s Audiofuturism Sullivan Summer Under Review:Audiofuturism: Science Fiction Radio Drama and the Black Fantastic Imagination. andré m. carrington. Fordham University Press, April 2026. I have a distinct memory of r…

Tuned In: Sullivan Summer reviews andré m. carrington's AUDIOFUTURISM, coming next week from @fordhampress.bsky.social!