Amal Khalil smiling, standing with the backdrop of the hills of Lebanon. She is holding a microphone with a windscreen with a logo.
Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed today in a targeted Israeli strike. The IDF fired live rounds and stun grenades at the Red Cross ambulances trying to reach her. She is the 4th journalist killed by Israel while in the field since 2 March.
Photo via X @HindRFoundation.
ICYMI, nominated for a Locus Award. 0% genAI, all handcrafted stories about the future of art. The cover is root-based living art created by Diana Scherer. Also includes an interview with @clarkesworldmagazine.com by @architamittra.bsky.social about genAI flooding the sff short fic market & more.
Yes that would be amazing
A bunch of blooming orange roses in a vase, on wooden table in front of a window. Next to it are mandarins in a dark blue bowl, and a white butter dish with dark blue patterns.
A bunch of blooming orange roses in a vase, on wooden table in front of a window. Next to it are mandarins in a dark blue bowl, and a white butter dish with dark blue patterns. Golden yellow curtains are drawn, now obscuring the window that was seen in the last picture.
Love it so much when roses open.
57 For you I’d do the whole thing through below, above for now, for love.
After feints the heart steadies, pointwise invariant, by the drown'd light of her fire. In the set course we pass layer after layer, loving what we still know. It is an estranged passion, but true, the daughter willed back by blue eyes, unscathed, down the central pain pathway. Timelike delirium cools at this crossing, with your head in my arms. The ship steadies and the bird also; from frenzy to darker fields we go.
Standing by the window I heard it, while waiting for the turn. In hot light and chill air it was the crossing flow of even life, hurt in the mouth but exhausted with passion and joy. Free to leave at either side, at the fold line found in threats like herbage, the watch is fearful and promised before. The years jostle and burn up as a trust plasma. Beyond help it is joy at death itself: a toy hard to bear, laughing all night.
Which makes the thinning sorrow of flight the last disjunction, of the heart: that news is the person, and love the shape of his compulsion in the musical phrase, nearly but not yet back, into the remotest past. Of which the heart is capable and will journey over any desert and through the air, making the turn and stop undreamed of: love is, always, the flight back to where we are.
devastated to hear that the poet J. H. Prynne died this morning. Prynne’s work has been a source of fascination, inspiration, puzzlement, & awe for me since ~2011, when his book Kazoo Dreamboats totally rearranged what I believed poetry could be. His poems are a tremendous gift I will reread forever
A fantastic museum
The people banning books are never the same people who actually read books.
For all the hate the Bsky team gets for being techbro douches who hate their userbase, they still don't get enough hate for literally assisting in a genocide by ethnically cleansing survivors off their platform. They've been at it for years now!
So happy to see this live. Sword and Kettle published my mini-chapbook 'Encounters with Wolves, in Three Acts,' included in this lovely anthology. It was published right before some of my first pro-sales to SFF magazines and holds a very special place in my heart. Please support them!
Some objects from real life that made their way into my fiction: a bronze mirror likely belonging to a hetaera, the Didarganj Yakshi - a sandstone statue of a woman holding a fly whisk, a sneaky reference to the dancing girl of Mohenjodaro, a vase depicting the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
One of the things that struck me over and over again while doing research on my book was just how cosmopolitan, blended and well circulated ideas, objects and cultures in the ancient world were. It undoes the myopic folly of the modern gaze so completely.
The thing that's so offensive about 95% of #AI technology is that it's real function is to replace human relationships: friendship, counselling, love, creativity, collaboration.
No donations in 2 days. From Mirna & Ziad's parents: 'Life in North Gaza is a daily struggle for survival. No work for two years means no basic essentials 💔 We seek a sustainable project to provide for our children and secure their future 🙏 Your donation is our only hope now'
ICYMI, I get royalties for this, if you want to help out a freelancing writer in the heat death of online promo.
THE LAST DRAGONERS OF BOWBAZAR limited ed N. American hardcover is officially out of print, & no longer available. My BFA-winning book about a family of interreal refugees in 90s/00s Calcutta is still available as an ebook, & a paperback in S. Asia. Shares appreciated, reads even more so:
For those of us who need a little spell against despair on this new moon. From Poetry Chaikhana, Lal Ded translated by Ranjit Hoskote.
At the stage of PhD writing where I want to abandon the thing, run away, and never admit how little I know. Apparently this means I'm ready to write it.
TIL every time you think the book is done, it boomerangs back to you. One day you will send the last ever version of it out into the world.
'Urgent help🥹🥹🥹🥹
I am in danger now.
My surgical wounds are infected, our tent collapsed in the rain,& my5 kids are crying without shelter. My wife has a heart condition. We need £200 for treatment&safety. Even £25 can help save my family.”
Verified
@mommunism.bsky.social'
With the Bengal election coming up, the BJP offers a teaser pogrom to give people a taste of what they intend to do to the state if they get voted in. As usual, they blamed their victims.
In Your Skin feels both tense and comfortably dreamlike somehow, like waking from a nightmare you are desperate to return to. The ethereal art and poetic writing keep drawing you in until it’s too late to look away. This book haunts. – Matthew Rosenberg
Preorders for IN YOUR SKIN #1 close on Monday March 30th.
Here's some of the nice things people have been saying about the book.
From the amazing @ashcanpress.com:
So, the next time someone tells you off for saying ‘shit’, just tell them you’re speaking Akkadian
Also, follow this account - a BlueSky gem
Hugo nominations end tomorrow (Saturday 9am PT). MAD SISTERS OF ESI is eligible for Best Novel – I hope you'll consider it. Regardless, go nominate the books you love!
Lina is struggling to care for her family, including her severely injured husband Mahmoud who's at risk of amputation, her mother-in-law with bone cancer, & her sick daughters, under Israel's genocide, which has left them homeless & starving. Mahmoud urgently needs surgery to save his life:
What a stunning cover!
Wading into the Harry Potter discourse to remind you that India just passed a disastrous bill that removes the right to self identification of gender identity, despite vehement opposition from the trans community.
The new trans bill in India takes away the right to self identify gender identity, delegitimises trans people and strips them of their fundamental rights. It medicalises identity and criminalises community care. It is completely inhumane and unconstitutional.
