C.B. Bernard
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cbbernard.com
C.B. Bernard
@cbbernard.com
910 followers 1.2K following 1.1K posts
Novelist (ORDINARY BEAR, SMALL ANIMALS CAUGHT IN TRAPS), nonfiction writer (CHASING ALASKA). Pacific NW/Alaska expat in Rhode Island exile. Dogs, books, boats. Feet in the ocean, head in the clouds. Find me at www.cbbernard.com.
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cbbernard.com
Same, same.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/m...
A woman sits on a porch with a coffee. The headine says "Is it Monday? I"m not really into these things."
November 20, 2025 at 1:46 PM
cbbernard.com
Convincing you to read ORDINARY BEAR by sharing the first sentence. But I cropped the photo wrong, so you get two paragraphs...
STAINS OF UNCERTAIN PROVENANCE 1 THE BEAR STOOD ON FARLEY’S SOFA RIPPING FOAM FROM THE CUSHIONS, day-old seal blood crusted on its jaws and chest. The sofa—a shade of green not readily found in nature—had belonged to an oil company investigator named Hennessy. When Hennessy left Alaska a decade earlier for Sand Point, Idaho, to marry a Russian woman he’d met online, Farley inherited the sofa along with his job, his company house, and the rust-hollowed Ford F-150 he drove. Some days Farley thought he’d inherited his lingering existential ambivalence as well. Too big for the house, the sectional extended the length of the living room and angled into the galley kitchen like a threadbare peninsula, blocking the fridge from opening more than a foot. It looked tiny beneath the bear, which dug through the cushions with a kind of joy, throwing stuffing behind it like snow. The real snow had melted early this year across much of the Arctic. The pack ice too. Watching from across the dump, Farley wondered if the bears had resorted to trying to make their own in the face of climate change. This fucking world, he thought. Not for the first time.
November 11, 2025 at 5:06 PM
cbbernard.com
"The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries." --Kurt Vonnegut

@everylibrary.bsky.social @drinksinthelibrary.bsky.social
A flier promoting a conversation between novelist C. B. Bernard and Drinks in the Library host Gigi Howard on the EveryLibrary Live podcast, Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 7 PM.
November 7, 2025 at 5:39 PM
cbbernard.com
This makes me think of the New Yorker cartoon someone sent me when I moved to #rhodeisland.
Statue of a man dressed like Thurston Howell III, holding a martini glass, towering over the bluffs of Newport, RI.
October 17, 2025 at 3:14 PM
cbbernard.com
Favorite exhibit at the Newport Car Museum.
Plastic tiny styles car on display.
September 20, 2025 at 7:42 PM
cbbernard.com
Man stands in a field with his hands in his pockets, staring at the mountains. It says "Never miss a good chance to shut up."
September 10, 2025 at 8:55 PM
cbbernard.com
"There are three rules of writing, the first one is that nobody knows the other two." - @blacktopkid.bsky.social
September 6, 2025 at 4:13 PM
cbbernard.com
We are a deeply stupid culture.
A sitting U.S. congressman (guess which party) losing his mind in public about a chain restaurant's rebranding. He even gave his life to Christ in the parking lot.
August 21, 2025 at 10:31 PM
cbbernard.com
We just can't have nice things anymore.
A screenshot of a column by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles announcing the end of AP book reviews.
August 15, 2025 at 2:36 PM
cbbernard.com
A notebook labeled "People I Want to Punch in the Face." It's very full.
August 14, 2025 at 6:21 PM
cbbernard.com
Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian family and friends, but especially to any Canadian citizens who want to adopt a nice middle-aged American novelist, his wife, and their sweet-tempered dog.
Nessie the English cream retriever, raised on The Tragically Hip and pea meal bacon, rolls on her back after a Toronto Maple Leafs' loss.
July 1, 2025 at 11:29 AM
cbbernard.com
Greetings from Rhode Island's 649,000th consecutive rainy Saturday.
Rain falls on boats at Stone Cove Marina in Wakefield, RI.
June 28, 2025 at 3:53 PM
cbbernard.com
I spend my days writing novels that underperform on sales because THIS is what America really wants. #writinglife
Netflix banner advertising something called "Trainwreck Poop Cruise," showing a cruise ship on a brown wave breaking out of a toilet.
June 24, 2025 at 1:40 PM
cbbernard.com
One of the signs that spoke to me most at today's #nokings rally in Providence, RI.
Sign says Anti Putin, Pro Poutiine at today's No Kings Rally in Providence, RI.
June 14, 2025 at 11:31 PM
cbbernard.com
Live your life so that no one ever hates you the way the Guardian's photo editor hates Trump.
An angry hemorrhoid, red with irritation.
June 7, 2025 at 10:42 PM
cbbernard.com
We have actual owls nesting off the kitchen.
June 5, 2025 at 2:01 AM
cbbernard.com
Apparently Chirp has audiobooks of my novels on sale for under $4. Narrators Chris Henry Coffee & Phil Thron do bangup jobs, maybe give them a listen on this rainy Memorial Day weekend? (ORDINARY BEAR is "a thrilling 2024 release" that's up for the Barry Award, just saying...)

tinyurl.com/chirpcbb
An ad from Chirp showing the audiobook covers for the novels ORDINARY BEAR and SMALL ANIMALS CAUGHT IN TRAPS, by C. B. Bernard.
May 23, 2025 at 9:23 PM
cbbernard.com
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt releasing a schoolie striper on Cape Code.
May 20, 2025 at 2:45 PM
cbbernard.com
The PNW authors section of Wallace Books in Portland is a pretty good physical representation of the inside of my brain, tired shelves bowing beneath the weight of history and narrative.
Tired wooden plank shelves bowing beneath the books they carry.
May 13, 2025 at 2:07 PM
cbbernard.com
Seen at a friend's house in Portland.
Sign in a houseplant saying "I'm staging a comeback, please say nice and encouraging things."
May 12, 2025 at 1:27 AM
cbbernard.com
After tearing her ACL, Nessie had surgery back in March. She used to run in a field with a pack of neighbors' dogs each afternoon but can only walk short distances now. So the pack decided to walk on leash and swing by our house every day so she can see them, and it just makes her so damned happy.
White dog in a purple harness on a brown lawn.
April 30, 2025 at 7:43 PM
cbbernard.com
New England friends, join me 9 am Saturday for a chat with Ron Currie Jr. at the @nbptlitfest.bsky.social about his stunning new novel, THE SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE. Come for me and Ron, stay for the full day of free events.
The cover of Ron Currie's THE SAVAGE, NOBLE DEATH OF BABS DIONNE, showing a crow staring down at a smoking cigarette butt with a lipstick stain on the filter against a green background.
April 24, 2025 at 11:05 AM
cbbernard.com
Happy Porky Bickar Day to all who celebrate. #alaska
Mt. Edgecumbe last erupted April 1, 1974—or at least that’s what Sitka residents thought when they woke to funnels of dark smoke lofting from the cone. That morning, a local joker named Porky Bickar hired a helicopter, dropped a stack of oil-soaked tires into the basin, and set them on fire, a joke he’d planned for years waiting for an April Fool’s Day with clear skies. “Just don’t make an ass of yourself,” his wife told him when he got out of bed that day. Porky’s patience and resolve met with great reward. The legend of his prank spread. In 1980, he received a card in the mail from a stranger in Colorado with a newspaper photo of Mt. St. Helens erupting and a short note: “This time you’ve gone too far.” A section from C.B. Bernard's CHASING ALASKA: A PORTRAIT OF THE LAST FRONTIER THEN AND NOW
April 1, 2025 at 12:04 PM
cbbernard.com
Narrator (in Sam Elliot Voice): Star-spangled asshole.
Meth-head and "musician" popular with "the youths" wears a gaudy, America-themed athleisure suit in the Oval Office (at least it's not beige) while grinning next to a bag of demented Cheetos.
April 1, 2025 at 12:01 PM
cbbernard.com
March 23, 2025 at 6:36 PM