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Chantal James @chantalalive.blacksky.app · 15h

Another thing regarding mutual aid & who your community is, is a lot of disabled people in particular are very isolated. They're in deep poverty & complete abandonment. Literally. So they hop online to have community. Sometimes it's the only community they have & the only way they can get help.

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 12h

Plan for this week: go to the library and read Elizabeth Taylor.

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 15h

I LOVE SID SHARP!

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 1d

Cecilia was SO GOOD. I also recommend checking out her short stories!

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april @april-now.bsky.social · 1d

who uses verbs better than k-ming chang? nobody, that's who. her writing floors me she's just so astoundingly good

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 1d

One of my faves ❤️

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april @april-now.bsky.social · 1d

do you enjoy stories about budding female friendships that are infused with carnality & surreal imagery & wild erotic desire? duh of course you do! which is why you need to be reading k-ming chang *now*

here are the opening pages to her novel 'organ meats'. i think a lot of you would like this!! 💙📚

In the center of summer, soft with rot, Rainie and I decide to be dogs. Cousin Vivian says you can't be a dogpack with only two dogs, Rainie and me, but I say she forgot to count our shadows, Rainie and me plus two shadows, which makes four dogs, which is a lot of dogs. The dogs we know are strays, and they always travel in pairs or in sixes, and they sometimes get hit by cars and crows pluck the meat from their bones, though mostly they leave the bodies of the dogs alone, because there isn't much meat on them. I decide that being a dog requires three main things: First, that we drink with our tongues, which is easy, because I drink out of bowls anyway,

ever since Abu decided to grow flowers in all our glasses. The second thing is that we must have collars, because we are not strays. We belong to each other. We cannot be strays, because our ribs are not visible, mostly because we wear shirts. And we have names, mostly because we have mothers. Also, strays stink and have fleas, and we are required to bathe, though one time Rainie got bedbugs and she and her brothers wore rashes as long as capes down their backs and then Vivian and I got them too and Abu burned our sheets, bleached the carpeting. I halo Rainie's neck with red thread from Abu's sewing kit and make a knot where she swallows, then tie a symmetrical thread around my neck.

Now we're collared together, I say. I get the knot right only on the second try: The first time, Rainie's neck turns to steam, and I can't get the thread to grip anything. There is something in her that resists it, that doesn't want to bind herself to me. She lives by flitting. Even when she stands on the wrinkled pavement in front of me, she shifts from foot to foot like she's surfing something, turning the street into a sea she'll ride away from me. Rainie tugs at the thread, tries to wedge a thumb between the knot and her skin, but I tell her it has to fit us snug as a bloodline or else we can't be synonyms.

The third thing is that we must learn to bite, even though our teeth are crooked and easily uprooted. We practice biting our own arms first, leaving purple perforated circles, and then we move on to biting shoulders, which requires our jaws to unhinge wider. I bit my cousin Vivian while she slept, kneeling in front of her mattress and gouging my teeth into her shoul-der and gnawing the sphere of meat, imagining that Rainie had called me to fetch it, to bring it back to her whole, a tennis ball of bone, except we do not answer to names. When I bit

ne Ot Se e S e S t

her, Vivian flopped like a fish and landed outside her dreams, gasping, and I had to return her blood in a bottle. Rainie and I practice stretching our jaws, widening them enough for a crow to fly in and roost, and when our mothers see us sitting on the sofa, gaping at nothing, drool draping our chins, they leap at us and ask if we've become melon-headed.

When Rainie and I feel that we have properly committed to our new species, we walk the streets as a dogpack, our shad-ows tailing us. When our knees are sore and bleeding and gravel-crusted from crawling, we decide that we will be two-legged dogs. We sit in the shade of a bald sycamore tree, its trunk like a drunk woman hooked over the fence of an aban-doned lot, and in the corner of the lot are dogs sleeping in knots, panting loud in the heat, tongues chugging like con-veyor belts. We bark at them, whine, but they don't recognize us, probably because we wear collars made of red thread, which mean we own our blood and they do not. When we lean on the fence, they leap up and foam white at the mouth, frolicking in their own snow. But they never come close enough for us to know. Rainie thinks the empty lot is full of dumped Styrofoam and exploding sofa stuffing and chunks of the moon's infected flesh, but I know all that whiteness is the cream of their dreams. I want to enter their shoreless sleep, to paddle alongside their tongues, but Rainie and I haven't yet convinced them that we are dogs too, and so they only watch us through the fence with eyes dark as doorways, their minds shining through like lamplight.

On the way home, we see two dogs on the street, one on top of the other, the one on top driving itself into the one on the

bottom, and both of us stop, both of us watch. The dog on the bottom keeps trying to run away, its teeth barging out of its mouth. We have never seen anything move that way, the dog clambering on top, the hilt of its hips. It's Rainie who tugs me away and says, Let's go home, quick, let's go, as if the dogs have caught us, as if we are the ones being watched.

The next day, when I knock on the door of Rainie's unit, she answers with her red-thread collar on, her neck owned and boneless. Let's be dogs, I say. Let's go back to the sycamore that leans over the lot and let's chew the leaves till our tongues dew with blood. But Rainie says no. I know she's still thinking about what we saw, the dogs, the blond one, its balls swinging like apples, the sweet stink of them both. She looks behind her, as if hoping her mother might say, Stay, clean the sink with me, tweeze the over-grown carpet, but both our mothers are out at the factory, de-signing colors and collars to stitch onto babies. So she trots out with me, walks with me to the lot two blocks away.

On the way to the lot, the sidewalk bucks beneath our feet, meeting our steps midair, high-fiving our heels. I say the side-walk is a skin, and trees are born out of it, roots pecking for air. But Rainie says no, it's the heat that causes the concrete to grasp at the cool of our bodies. We don't agree. One time, Rainie claims, she was riding a bus with her mother and she looked out the window and saw a big truck with a wasp's ass churning the bodies of gray slugs and pouring the jelly onto the street. That's what the sidewalk is made of, she says, while trip-ping on a crack as wide as a casket. Ahead, past the rows of duplexes and fourplexes jostling one another, the sycamore hooks a skeletal finger at us, beckons our breath, reels it out of our lungs. It's so hot that the street has dissolved into tea and tries to shore at our feet, so we leap. That's a lie, I say. It's skin,

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 1d

Another most anticipated book of the year. If you haven’t read Arboreality and The Talosite yet, get on that!

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C. McGuinn Freeman @cmf406.bsky.social · 1d

I know I'm always telling you all to go listen to the brilliant David Naimon's interviews, but this one, with the DELIGHTFUL Olga Ravn is really amazing: tinhouse.com/podcast/olga...

Olga Ravn : The Wax Child - Tin House

Set during the 17th century witch trials in Denmark, and relayed to us through the voice of a magically animated wax child of one of the accused, Olga Ravn’s new book, which creates something uncannil...

tinhouse.com

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Goreville Shriek 🔪😱 @amcnal.bsky.social · 1d

They deserve each other (derogatory)

Return of the Cmonstermacques @cmonmaque.bsky.social · 1d

Justin Trudeau is dating Katy Perry and we’re all just gonna have to deal with that

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Mikki Kendall @karnythia.bsky.social · 1d

The $5 footlong has become the $6 six inch. I don't even eat Subway and I still think it's time to knock all this shit over

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 1d

I think the hype is real! Have you read any of her previous work? I’d love to get my hands on some of her poetry.

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Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell @hottycouture.bsky.social · 2d

As a fashion historian, I will die on this hill: the point of having blue hair and nose rings (or spiky nails or stripper heels or tattoos or an all-black wardrobe) is not to look pretty or cool. It's to look (and feel) powerful--something many young American women crave right now. And it's working.

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 2d

Kid Rock: Do you know what is stupid… these chicks running around on campuses with blue hair, five nose rings.

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Radz Pandit @radzpandit.bsky.social · 3d

“Welcome to the Club” focuses on a woman in crisis, as she tries to drown herself, fails, and returns home to prepare lunch for her family. Putting on dry clothes & hiding the suicide notes, she views her surroundings with an eerie sense of unreality, until a neighbour makes a disquieting remark.

GOOD AND EVIL AND OTHER STORIES by Samanta Schweblin.

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Electric Sheep @electricsheepsf.bsky.social · 3d

A story in Helen McClory's collection, "Lore," creeped me out so much I still remembered it years after I read it. It's in her wonderful collection, MAYHEM & DEATH. It's available at 404 Ink if you're in the UK.
@helenmcclory.bsky.social @404ink.bsky.social

Mayhem & Death - Helen McClory — 404 Ink

‘A writer completely unafraid’ - Ali Smith | ‘Shiny dark licorice mind candy’ - Margaret Atwood

www.404ink.com

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 2d

New Mieko Kawakami novel coming next year: www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/735249...

Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami | Penguin Random House Canada

Rising star Mieko Kawakami reaches new heights in this pacy, thrilling novel, a Japanese Breaking Bad, in which a group of friends fight for freedom, independence, and survival in Tokyo of the 1990s, ...

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 2d

“I think I love her with that part of me that is never illuminated.” Olga Ravn, The Wax Child

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Heather J. "Witchy" Wood🧙‍♀️ @rollwithheather.bsky.social · 3d

Hamilton Review of Books: 30 Halloween reads🎃 #CanLit
hamiltonreviewofbooks.com/blog/the-gri...

The Grimoire: 30 Spine-tingling Titles for Halloween 2025, Part 2 — Hamilton Review of Books

In Part 2 of this year’s roundup of spine-tingling titles for Halloween 2025, we bring you anthropological vampires, family demons, cannibalism, witchcraft, persecution, science gone wrong, bunnies, a...

hamiltonreviewofbooks.com

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 3d

Yessssss

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deb the jovial ♐♃ @sunoppositemoon.blacksky.app · 3d

I don't really fangirl over anyone, but Hayley Williams definitely crossed into some new portal with her new album. This is her performing "True Believer" and look what she has on her electric piano. youtu.be/sNNYei__joU...

Hayley Williams: True Believer | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

YouTube video by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

youtu.be

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Anton Hur @antonhur.com · 4d

I translate books from Korean into English. I was shortlisted for and later judged the International Booker Prize. I have thirteen (?) books scheduled to be published over the next three years.

Next up is CAPITALISTS MUST STARVE by Park Seolyeon, for which I am touring the UK later this month.

A stack of copies for Capitalists Must Starve at a bookstore

Catch
Park Seolyeon and Anton Hur on their North-South
UK tour!
A TATED ANS PRESE
Capitalists
Must
Starve
A NONEL.
Scolycon
18/10
→ Wimbledon Book
Festival, London

25/10
→ Mount Florida Books,
Glasgow
19/10
→ ESEA Lit Fest at Cheltenham
Literature Festival's
VOICEBOX

26/10
→ Breakfast meet-and-greet at Lighthouse, Edinburgh
→ with In Other Words

21/10 → Launch party
at Roundtable Books, London

27/10
at Tills Bookshop, Edinburgh
→ House of Books
22/10
→ Juno Bookshop, Sheffield

& Friends, Manchester
24/10
→ Topping & Company
Booksellers, Edinburgh

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Clare Blackwood @clareblackwood.bsky.social · 4d

Tickets to the Blue Jays ALCS games are now starting at around $700 resale, so I guess I'll be tunnelling my way in via right field like some sort of baseball-loving mole

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LiamMcIntosh He/Him 🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸 @liammci.bsky.social · 4d

One of my favourite books I’ve read this year and already has an impact on my politics.
“Not only does Canada have a colonial history, it has a colonial present. Perhaps there is still time to prevent Canada from having a colonial future.”- @shipster.bsky.social.

LiamMcIntosh He/Him 🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸 @liammci.bsky.social · 24d

#NowReading: By @shipster.bsky.social. Admittedly I’ve been meaning to read this for a while but have been intimidated by the possibility of me being not smart enough.

Book: Canada in the World: Settler Colonialism and the Colonial Imagination by Tyler Shipley.

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 3d

Amal El-Mohtar has a short story collection coming out next year, Seasons of Glass and Iron, that I’m really looking forward to!

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Alex @alexplatt.bsky.social · 3d

It’s such a wonderful, special novella.

Mari Ness, writer of things @mariness.bsky.social · 4d

Ever read something and fall into dark despair because you will never ever ever be able to write something like that?

In related news I just finished up Amal El-Mohtar's THE RIVER HAS ROOTS, available from Barnes & Noble and other retailers:

www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-river-...

The River Has Roots|Hardcover

AN INDIE NEXT AND LIBRARYREADS PICK!The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to th...

www.barnesandnoble.com

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