Currently, I think my two favorite fiction writers might be Julia Armfield and Martin MacInnes. Both write smart novels that are also page turners—prose suffused with a sense of descriptive unease and imperceptible horrors that feel palpable even when they fail to materialize.
NBN is good. I did an interview with The History of Literature podcast that was fun.
Enjoying a chilled stout and listening to Mark Knopfler’s “The Ragpicker’s Dream” is one of my favorite holiday traditions.
Wishing you all peace this season.
JOE SHOT FIRST?!? 😱
I didn’t think the first AI paper I’d find during grading period would be… from a respected, peer-reviewed journal asking me to review a submission.
Fucking bleak.
Against AI is constitutively labor-minded. It’s been a generative topic of discussion among certain people in my department.
This is the classics version of the sci-fi meme “we have created the Death Star from the famous story DO NOT CREATE THE DEATH STAR.”
I think @jordanscarroll.bsky.social nailed it when he diagnosed a serious incapacity for reading among a certain instrumentally minded demographic.
how is Rose Betts the most majestic combo of Imogen Heap and the Decemberists? And how am I only learning about her now? I’m obsessed.
This is one of the first songs I remember hearing as a child that has stuck with me—can’t wait to read! The taconite reference also reminds me of Springsteen’s “Youngstown.” We need more environmental histories via folk songs.
Like my man Zevon says, “If I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for a while.”
We’ll miss you Bon. You were the best cat anyone could ask for.
Colleagues and fellow scholars, here’s info on a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies that I’m coediting with Matthew Gannon and @katemarshall.bsky.social: “Long Modernism, Altered Natures,” cfp below—send us your abstracts!
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/09/...
I love Watertown
That’s bullshit
My newest piece on Peele’s NOPE and the McManus bros’ THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND is out in SFF&TV, along with several other banger essays. Check it out here (if you don’t have access, dm me)
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18...
Let’s be real, LLM is just way too similar to MLM.
Of course, this requires a lot of cannibalizing those 37 false starts.
Sometimes, the way a draft of something gets written is 37 false starts and aborted efforts and then BAM. 7500 words in two days.
1. 2005
2. Brick
3. Burrito bowls
This right here is why we study literature.
This is wild Nathan. Thank you for posting about it.
The upshot of extractive capitalism is a house of mirrors where what’s below is above, as we’re crushed within centuries by what was buried over epochs.
The frontier is alive and well in the world-ecology.
My review of Sarah Dimick’s tremendous new book, UNSEASONABLE, is out at ISLE. Academic friends and fellow environmentalists, check out Sarah’s awesome work!
academic.oup.com/isle/advance...
Stoked and stacked for IMAGINING CRISIS IN 21C AMERICAN LITERATURE in the fall!
The new clipping. has been my commute soundtrack for the last few weeks
www.theguardian.com/music/2025/m...
“Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Great Depression, Shadow Ticket follows Hicks McTaggart, a detective who is tasked with finding the heiress of a cheese fortune.”
I mean, that tracks.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
ngl it ain’t easy reading Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE when I feel the urge to write down notes about every. single. page.
I can vouch, this book is 🔥
