B. Pladek
LightNews LightNews
banner
bpladek.bsky.social
B. Pladek
@bpladek.bsky.social
640 followers 510 following 520 posts
Ben. Literature scholar & writer; Ass. Prof. of English at Marquette University. He/him. Debut DRY LAND out now from UWP: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/D/Dry-Land
website: bpladek.net
Posts Replies Media Videos
bpladek.bsky.social
my beloved "sad man tries to crack dream-Mary Renault's egg and she says no" story from 2024's @strangehorizons.bsky.social just got a lovely podcast treatment, produced by the excellent @darthj.uno and read absolutely beautifully by @ardenfitzroy.bsky.social!

strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...
Opening of "The Spindle of Necessity" on Strange Horizons: "Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it." cover of Mary Renault's The Charioteer, a young white man with reddish hair in a green coat
November 11, 2025 at 5:43 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
...& who should be better known for writing hundreds of bitchy, brilliant letters* chronicling trans life between the wars via the proleptic trifecta of lay psychoanalysis (excessive), cock puns (bad), & fursonas (elaborate).

*now housed in Yale's Beinecke library -- 200+ boxes, neatly typed.
Bryher signs a letter as "Fido", addressed to H.D, who is "horse" (alternately Lynx, Kat, Cat, Mog). The picture is of a griffon terrier; "griffon" was one of Bryher's 10+ code words for cock. Letter from Bryher to H.D, signed Fido, with an addition by Kenneth Macpherson, then H.D.'s husband, writing as "Rover" and written in truly excruciating doggy baby-talk: "Darlingest, wuffs from the bogger i mean bugger i mean bigger if not better dawg. Lovely letters from the Lynix. Tell Gayog to come orf it and be 'human. Sounds too bloody awfyl, I know him like that too, one feels like crushing a damp ice cream on the nape of his nuque. Prague in Tibbalds Road sounds positively underworld." "Gayog" is Bryher, "Rover's" fellow dog.
November 9, 2025 at 10:55 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
Midwest queer scholars: if you’re at this year’s MMLA at Marquette, I’m giving a paper on my mild obsession Bryher, the 20thc transmasc bajillionaire semi-known for being H.D.’s wife-guy, funding every Modernist ever, & saving people from nazis… www.midwest-mla.org/digital-prog...
black and white photo of Bryher, a butch English person with an Eton crop situation going on Bryher and H.D. sit on a bench bouncing Perdita, H.D.'s daughter who they raised together, on their laps. Bryher is wearing knee-length breeches and long socks; H.D's wearing a dress and squishy hat
November 9, 2025 at 10:55 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
[whispers quietly] you weren’t a good boy. you were the best
gritty green hiking bag busted in most places
October 29, 2025 at 10:45 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
WI/Madison folks: come out to @roomofonesownbooks.bsky.social next Wed, Nov 5 at 6 pm to celebrate the magnificent new short story collection from @syr.bsky.social, WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE, out now with @stelliform.press!

It includes an OPEN MIC, so come read! <3
roomofonesown.com/event/2025-1...
Cover of WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE by Syr Hayati Beker: a mermaid and a fish with legs about to make out on a background of black floatiness and stars
October 27, 2025 at 12:04 AM
bpladek.bsky.social
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."
September 1, 2025 at 3:28 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
It's still pride so I should mention, if anyone on here liked "Spindle," that I wrote a gay little novel about a man whose magic power to grow plants cannot, to his dismay, save nature. Also WWI and Wisconsin history!

Get it from the lovely @uwiscpress.bsky.social:
uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/D/Dry-...
the cover of DRY LAND: white text on a black background from which a green tree sprouts. PRAISE FOR DRY LAND: “A winning combination of history, magic, and science.” —Kirkus “B. Pladek’s Dry Land is a quest narrative, seeking forms of renewal for ravaged ecosystems and fraught human relationships. With quiet grace and a fearless gaze toward the entanglement of preservation and destruction, this meditative novel questions both the romance of landscape and the landscape of romance.” —Sofia Samatar, author of The White Mosque and A Stranger in Olondria “A gorgeously imagined, deeply personal story of love and war, of the places we make and the places that make us. But most movingly, Pladek has written an ode to the ordinary magic of our extraordinary world.” —Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth “Rand is not interested in becoming the war hero everyone wants him to be, but he’s beguiled by the idea of becoming a savior of nature. These glorious but unreal fantasies come into conflict in the midst of Pladek’s lush, evocative descriptions of Wisconsin plant life. As a meditation on our place in the wilderness and our capacity for hubris, Dry Land feels especially relevant.” —Charlie Jane Anders, The Washington Post
June 26, 2025 at 11:33 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
queers, if you want a book to hold your heart through the current awful, preorder this magnificent collection by @syr.bsky.social, out in September from @stelliform.press. it's a guidebook on how to love a world (& each other) through constant, unendurable loss. www.stelliform.press/index.php/pr...
Cover of Syr Hayati Beker's What a Fish Looks Like: black, with two silvery-blue merpeople gently cradling each other at center (one human-head-fish-tail, the other fish-head-human-legs).
June 19, 2025 at 7:55 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
Hey Milwaukee folks, Anodyne coffee is unionizing! You should send an email to support them. Details below / in alt text.
Flyer: Anodyne Workers Formed a Union! Support us in our fight to preserve and improve our standards and culture. How can you help? Send an email to hello@fairwave.com saying 1) that you support the workers, 2) urge them not to engage in union-busting, 3) don't waste our tax dollars on an unnecessary election when 94% signed cards, 4) voluntarily recognize the union NOW. For more info, contact us at info@mashworkers.org.
April 17, 2025 at 3:52 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
I didn't know the @locusmag.bsky.social awards had an actual ballot (thought it was all write-in) and realized today that "The Spindle of Necessity" is on it! it's still the trans story of my heart, so if you feel moved to read/vote, I'd be honored.

link: strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-...
Opening of "The Spindle of Necessity" on Strange Horizons: "Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it." cover of Mary Renault's The Charioteer, a young white man with reddish hair in a green coat
April 10, 2025 at 11:55 AM
bpladek.bsky.social
so excited to dive into Dennis E. Staples's newest!!
Cover of Dennis E. Staples's novel Passing Through a Prairie Country, a black book cover with a red skull on it.
March 23, 2025 at 5:46 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
everything's still shit & I'm trying to focus my fight-back in non-social-media spaces---but good things still happen. eg: I have an ARC of A/S/L!! one of the epigraphs is from FFVII! I'm an FFVIII girlie but still, respect
Cover of A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton: black with pixellated buildings a la early Zelda or that one King's Quest I played to death, I think it was IV
February 19, 2025 at 1:09 AM
bpladek.bsky.social
Hugos are open, so I'd be honored if you considered "The Spindle of Necessity" @strangehorizons.bsky.social, my only piece of fiction this year & the trans story of my heart. strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-...
The Spindle of Necessity first lines, white text on a black background. Cover of Mary Renault's The Charioteer, a young white man in a green coat on a yellow background.
February 11, 2025 at 2:55 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
oh right link here strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-...
The Spindle of Necessity first lines, black text on white background
February 1, 2025 at 9:46 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
So stoked to have my @strangehorizons.bsky.social story "The Spindle of Necessity" on the BSFA longlist, in some incredible company! <3 thank you so much to everyone who has read and shared; it's still the story of my heart. (read it here: strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-...).
"The Spindle of Necessity" title and first few lines on Strange Horizons BFSA webpage, black with white text
February 1, 2025 at 1:24 AM
bpladek.bsky.social
2024 year-in-reading! I was novel-drafting for most of the year, so endlessly re-read my prose benchmarks (Bryher, Glenway Wescott). Spent too much time with A.S. Byatt and not enough with new releases (10 from '23, 13 from '24).

Below are 4 I loved (brief thread):

www.bpladek.net/2024/12/31/2...
Yasmin Zaher, The Coin Vajra Chandrasekera, Rakesfall Magda Szabó, The Door Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
December 31, 2024 at 2:53 AM
bpladek.bsky.social
Awards eligibility!

I'd be honored if you considered my story “The Spindle of Necessity” @strangehorizons.bsky.social. It’s abt our love for books & our need to see ourselves in them.

A trans guy meets a beloved author in a dream, who he suspects was trans too.
strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-...
Opening to "The Spindle of Necessity" at Strange Horizons: "Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it."
December 2, 2024 at 2:52 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
"The vote sends a message to Marquette leaders and the public about the direction faculty feel the university is headed... more than 100 professors and academic departments raised concerns about budget decisions and a lack of transparency in decision-making."
www.jsonline.com/story/news/e...?
news story from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Feeling unheard, Marquette faculty vote no-confidence in administration."
November 26, 2024 at 7:43 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
Lou calls his apartment “Albion University” (56). There’s only one apt complex on the street that deserves the name. It looks like a school. The word “Albion” is carved over the lintel. I walked by this building every day on my way to work.
Albion University in Milwaukee, WI.
October 30, 2024 at 2:18 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
I’ve wanted to make this post for some time but could only do it after I moved. It’s about coming out, Milwaukee, & Lou Sullivan. Thread, but here’s a pic preview and a tl;dr: I lived on the same tiny Milwaukee street as Lou for 8 years. Thread.
cover of WE BOTH LAUGHED IN PLEASURE: THE SELECTED DIARIES OF LOU SULLIVAN, edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma, introduced by Susan Stryker: pink background, bare pale ass quote from WE BOTH LAUGHED IN PLEASURE where Lou describes moving to "Albion University" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
October 30, 2024 at 2:16 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
got my contributors' copy of the awesome-looking AFTERLIVES anthology by @psychopomp.bsky.social and edited by @vajra.me! would've posted earlier but moving house has made me even more sporadic on social media than usual. excited to dive in once this hectic term ends!
AFTERLIVES anthology, with a crowned skull on the cover, atop boxes calico cat among boxes of books
October 30, 2024 at 1:53 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
placeholder post (will do longer one next week): it's officially been a year since DRY LAND, my debut novel, appeared with the lovely U of Wisconsin Press!

more people than I could've imagined have read my bittersweet little trees book, & I am very grateful
uwpress.wisc.edu/books/6180.htm
DRY LAND cover, a green tree on black background
September 26, 2024 at 10:17 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
on the brilliant RAKESFALL by @vajra.me, which you should go read NOW: this is philosophical SFF at its absolute best. RAKESFALL's allegory loosely follows a set of reincarnated resistance fighters whose malleable relation it uses to tackle a stunning # of ideas (thread, 1/5):
calico cat next to RAKESFALL by Vajra Chandrasekera
July 23, 2024 at 6:38 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
Hey Haverford & Bryn Mawr folks! I'm going to be doing a talk/reading from DRY LAND on March 28 at Haverford (first time I've been back to the bi-co since graduating in '07, RIP my youth)
March 22, 2024 at 2:57 PM
bpladek.bsky.social
so DRY LAND was shortlisted for the Crawford, among an absurdly talented field led by @vajra.me's magnificent THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS (read it!)

I'm honored, grateful, & surprised that my quiet, thinky, small-uni-press debut w a great press team but slim budget is on awards radar; it's so cool <3
Locus page for the nominees/winner of the Crawford Award
March 5, 2024 at 3:33 PM