Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 19d

to say more: there’s a fine line bween taking transness unseriously enough to avoid treacly sentiment & letting fear of sentiment turn transness into a bit, replicating the anxious contempt w which the cis world views us. it’s fun to see the diff ways books navigate that line. writers are good!

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 24d

also nearly all of the new books that have frustrated me in the the most interesting ways, itself an important artistic service

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 27d

excellent, thank you!

B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 27d

only a few in scholarship citations, and not in order!! adding to my TBR immediately (though it'll be hard to unseat the Bryher x H.D. letters from their throne in my heart -- not as romantic but incredible in so many ways, and alas mostly available only in archives)

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 27d

truly!! also have you read A.S. Byatt's Possession? the central love story is "what if RB x EBB hushed it up instead of married"

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 27d

thanks so much. <3 means a lot, been a rough month of having to trunk stuff-of-my-heart bc it didn't sell.

also hello, iirc you are a fellow EBB's Aurora Leigh fan? love her, love the poem, love how it's secretly a rewriting of Dante's Commedia

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 28d

thanks for saying so -- it's been a really rough month of failure in the ole writing mines, so hearing this is really lovely. <3

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Reposted by B. Pladek

Bryan Camp @bryancamp.bsky.social · 29d

This story, for all its bleakness, opened up the tight fist of fear that is my heart, held my hand, and made me feel a little less alone.

B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Jan 9

New story from me @lightspeedmagazine.com, maybe the bleakest I've ever written. It's about:

-AI’s effect on teaching literature
-what literature can (& can't) actually teach us
-trans fatherhood
-the road to hell being paved with white saviorism

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/tell...

Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness - Lightspeed Magazine

USER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week. it was ...

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

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Reposted by B. Pladek

B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Sep 3

hey Milwaukee, this Friday I’m part of the Book Drop series with @brookesmoody.bsky.social & Richard Vargas at 7 pm at Amorphic Brewery! I’m reading a flash that involves magic fish & bad deontology. Come on out!

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Sep 4

the AJCU scene even! I'd also be interested in helping co-edit a volume like this if you want another collaborator within the academy who is very tired of "dark academia" = Oxbridge/Ivies or Oxbridge/Ivies wanna-bes

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Sep 4

hello from the ACJU scene, I have a story about unionizing magic NTT faculty that I have never been able to place

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Sep 3

hey Milwaukee, this Friday I’m part of the Book Drop series with @brookesmoody.bsky.social & Richard Vargas at 7 pm at Amorphic Brewery! I’m reading a flash that involves magic fish & bad deontology. Come on out!

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Sep 1

Le Guin here rhyming closely with a line from Auden's Yeats elegy that I think about daily: "for poetry makes nothing happen... it survives, / a way of happening, a mouth."

From Le Guin's Orsinian Tales:

"Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir.

He sat still a long time. Music will not save us, Otto Egorin had said. Not you, or me, or her, the big golden-voiced woman who had no children and wanted none; not Lehmann who sang the song; not Schubert who had written it and was a hundred years dead. What good is music? None, Gaye thought, and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and Leaders, music says, 'You are irrelevant'; and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, 'Listen.' For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky."

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Sep 1

surprised to discover that Le Guin's Orsinian Tales are some of her best work, a melancholy exploration of what the 20th century, esp the Cold War, meant to central Europe. Its closest peer is Jan Morris's masterpiece Hav (you know something's good if I compare it to Hav, which has no real rivals)

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 31

such a clear statement of intent that the US is only invested in Palestinian death, nothing else, not even death as cover for a land-grab, just death

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · Aug 31

⚠️ US suspends visas for ALL Palestinian passport holders

“The new measures affect visas for medical treatment, university studies, visits to friends or relatives and business travel, at least temporarily.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/w...

U.S. Suspends Visas for Palestinian Passport Holders, Officials Say

www.nytimes.com

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 29

this video is how I learned that the well-dressed librarian who rides the same bus as me every morning, but who has not been there for several weeks, has probably transferred their hours to the new location!

(said librarian isn't the dancer, though he's great)

Steve Mullis @stevemullis.net · Aug 29

Them: “Cities are all rotting hellscapes!”

Cities:

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 28

Oh awesome! I hope it helps, and congrats on surgery—sending you good thoughts for a speedy recovery! ❤️

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 20

Now available everywhere!! this is my favorite of @isabelcanas.bsky.social's marvelous novels yet (!!! it's a crowded list!!!), and it has my absolute favorite villain she's written so far! GO BUY IT SO YOU CAN MEET HIM 🖤 💀

Isabel Cañas @isabelcanas.bsky.social · Nov 23

THIS COVER. Out Aug 19,2025!

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737414...

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Reposted by B. Pladek

Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · Aug 20

this week's (free) post is about the adage "deescalate all conflict that isn't with the enemy" and what it means to be an enemy, and don't worry I manage to reference both Sun Tzu and Tolkien so I've still got it

margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/we-know-wh...

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 19

Been on a Byatt kick for the past few years and love Possession and its fake!Brownings; really excited for your newest! trans Possession is everything I want

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 19

it’s like: if u, collectively, have the time to practice a six-part acapella filk, u, collectively, have time to practice pronouncing finalists’ names

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 19

yeah we do!

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 18

It was lovely meeting you, and anger/soli/FFS about the presenters skipping everyone in khōréō's names. What an encapsulation of the event's failings.

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 14

nearly all of the best new books I've read so far this year have been by trans writers, please keep making them

I don't believe in the "oppression creates art via pressure like a diamond" myth: you all are just that brilliant regardless of the fascism. keep it up

Cat Fitzpatrick @catfitzpatrick.net · Aug 13

It is easy to feel this way but I truly think, for trans writers at least, writing books now is urgent. Write good books about your friends, get them printed, get them widely distributed, get them in the world. There has never before been an opportunity like the one we currently possess to do this.

kate wagner @katewagner.wehwalt.net · Aug 11

is there anything more pointless right now that writing a book? feels that way to me

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · Aug 10

update: bailing schedule now every 45 minutes for visibly less pooling water, which I'm taking as a win

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