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Reposted by Olga Zilberbourg

Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 1d

I hope to see many of you at our Lit Crawl event on October 25, 2025. For SF Writers Workshop, our theme this year is "We've Got Notes for You!" Five of our current and former regulars will read their writing and tell us how workshop feedback has informed their revision process.
#BookSky #SFevents

An image of a blackboard with a stack of yellow pencils in the foreground. Text in yellow and white reads:
San Francisco Writers Workshop Presents
Five writers read their stories and share the feedback that made them great.
Then YOU get to critique a juicy story, Live!
Below:
Author's portraits with signatures:
Beverly Parayno
Peng Ngin
Tim Sullivan
Jo Beckett-King
Tony Tepper

Below: We've Got Notes for You!
October 25, 2025
Lit Crawl, Phase II, 6:30 pm
Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 13h

Looking forward to this!

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Dmitri Manin @dmanin.bsky.social · 13h

San Francisco people, come hear us!

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Katherine E. Young @katherineeyoung.bsky.social · 1d

Fabulous small museum that gives a good home to local poets--please support them if you can!

MoCo Underground Writers Showcase [Julia Tagliere] @mocounderground.bsky.social · 1d

Hey, friends, you know how I love my little local Sandy Spring Museum, where I’ve hosted the Writers Showcase since 2019? They’re doing a big Founder Day fundraiser today; it’d mean so much to me if you’d check it out: givebutter.com/SSMFoundersD...
Every little bit helps, thank you! Mwah! ❤️🙏🏻🥳🌻

Sandy Spring Museum - Founders' Day of Giving

Celebrate the founding of Sandy Spring Museum. Make your gift today!

givebutter.com

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 1d

I hope to see many of you at our Lit Crawl event on October 25, 2025. For SF Writers Workshop, our theme this year is "We've Got Notes for You!" Five of our current and former regulars will read their writing and tell us how workshop feedback has informed their revision process.
#BookSky #SFevents

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Reposted by Olga Zilberbourg

Bradley Gorski @bgorski.bsky.social · 3d

I got to talk with Maria Lipman about my book last week. Check it out!

John Raimo @johnraimo.bsky.social · 4d

Maria Lipman interviews Bradley A. Gorski (@bgorski.bsky.social) for @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social: "Cultural Capitalism: Literature and the Market After Socialism" ( #bookhistory, #skystorians) newbooksnetwork.com/cultural-cap...

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alina pleskova @alinapleskova.bsky.social · 2d

it's been a minute since i've sent/published new poems anywhere— hope you like this one, written for the At What Cost catalog's Style issue, curated by Jessica Scicchitano

style.atwhatcost.me#alina-pleskova

ALINA PLESKOVA
FOR CONSIDERATION
I aspire to compete in the international space-out competition
which I've unwittingly trained for all this time-
tenderized by blush-hued mushrooms, elderly metalheads,
the time Rachel said the sky over the highway looked like a wrinkled sheet & Dylan said
I was just about to say that, & I didn't take a photo
because I wanted to recall it only so
My practice is rooted in wondering how the same ingenious species that invented concertos, disco balls,
& broccoli - all seemingly for the hell of it - can't endeavor to dismantle the despotic state apparatus threatening its joy & survival, or at least take cues from the birds who repurpose anti-bird spikes for nest-building
My work doesn't interrogate the tension between tempering a certain shame to make one's art more lucrative & knowing your art makes

your friends cringe
It might ask instead:
Why lower the rarified to regular volume?
Why refashion the sacred into a vibeless ornament?
A mote on the stylus of my consciousness messes with the pickup

O accolade-patterned bio-
O frosted plaque of competency-

I've sensed an emptiness at the back o
f your gaze

How else do we intend to carry out
our absurd impermanence?

I endeavor to become lichen,
or the lone mail carrier for one of those seaside towns
built into cliffs-
toned calf muscles
gleaming in my wake

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 2d

So true. US-based fiction of Russia is very much about US-based problems, and that Russian stereotypes serve as a convenient foil.

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 2d

Ugh! He's a big deal novelist too, argh

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 2d

fantasies about Russia and Russians occupy such a weird place in US-based fiction. so weird.

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 2d

reading a popular novel by an american writer, where a character is a russian emigre. She's so cold! Her grown daughters are so traumatized by her coldness! Halfway thru the story her daughters are, like, "oh, we're russian too!" and so they down vodka shots and try to have a heart-to-heart. omg

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 4d

I will find my genie.

Reposted by Olga Zilberbourg

Agatha Chocolats @agathachocolats.bsky.social · 6d

In six words or fewer, write a story about this photo.
#sixwordstory #WritingCommunity

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 4d

Inspiring

Nathan Anderson/Submersible Press @njapoetry.bsky.social · 4d

A little piece I wrote about Submersible Press.

rob mclennan @robmclennan.bsky.social · 4d

newly posted at @periodicities.bsky.social : Nathan Anderson : Submersible Press / @njapoetry.bsky.social ;
periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/10/nath...

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Des @mkcanuck.bsky.social · 8d

@ttbrader.bsky.social @barbaramcveigh.bsky.social @mrmuleman.bsky.social

Oh good lord…it’s a 12 pack this year people…

I love the original 24 (25!) so still mulling this over…🧐

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 6d

If I were to start a workshop for ESL fiction writers, one thing none of the group members would be allowed to say in critique is, "But English-language readers won't understand that!"

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 8d

Absolutely fascinating work -- wow, this is all so interesting, thank you!

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Siobhán Hearne @siobhanhearne.bsky.social · 8d

Peripheral Histories? has just published a new author interview with Beatrice Penati about her excellent book 'Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan' @peripheralhist.bsky.social www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/rural-h...

Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan

Beatrice Penati’s new book Rural History of Soviet Central Asia: Land Reform and Agricultural Change in Early Soviet Uzbekistan (published with Brill, 2025) provides a comprehensive account of early S...

www.peripheralhistories.co.uk

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Elizabeth Rosner @elizabethrosner.bsky.social · 13d

Now available in paperback at your favorite indie bookstore. Squirrel not included. #ThirdEar #book #listening

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Ilze Duarte @ilzeduarte.bsky.social · 13d

A writing workshop! Whether you're looking for inspiration or a fun time with other writers or both, we invite you to join us as we celebrate the first anniversary of TAKE ME WITH YOU NEXT TIME by fellow Betty author Janis Hubschman.
Free to attend, registration required. Link to register below.

Betty Books @bettybooks.bsky.social · 13d

📣 Reminder! Don’t miss Writing the Next Chapter, a virtual story writing workshop with @janishubschman.bsky.social, author of Take Me With You Next Time.

We're celebrating the 1-year anniversary of her powerful debut short story collection—and you’re invited! 💫

📅 Register here: bit.ly/4pp9ZPd

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Kristina Ten @kristinaten.bsky.social · 13d

Thanks so much for reading, Eva! I'm glad to hear it resonated. Have you read Victoria Lomasko's The Last Soviet Artist? I found it really interesting—thought you might, too!

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Reposted by Olga Zilberbourg

♿️ Eva V Roslin (They/She) 🟨⬜️🟪⬛️ 🍁 @evavroslin.bsky.social · 13d

Dear @kristinaten.bsky.social, your essay was so meaningful and hit me really hard on multiple levels. I didn't know about the region you mentioned in Georgia, but I know that there have been and is still a fairly large Armenian population, which is my background. Thank you for sharing 💜

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 13d

I love this essay so much!!

Punctured Lines @puncturedlines.bsky.social · 13d

Don't miss @kristinaten.bsky.social on the blog with an essay about nostalgia, complex geographies, & the inspiration for her speculative collection TELL ME YOURS, I'LL TELL YOU MINE. Stillhouse Press, October 7, 2025--preorder!
#BookSky #speculativefiction

puncturedlines.com/2025/09/16/w...

words on a page: I have a tricky relationship with nostalgia. It’s a complicated thing when you’re a child of empire, more complicated when you’re a child of two. I was born in Moscow to a mother with Siberian roots and a father with Georgian roots, whose own father was one of many Soviet Koreans living on Sakhalin Island before being forcibly deported, under Stalin’s regime, in cattle cars to rural Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia (my grandfather was the only one of his siblings to survive this displacement). After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, my parents and I moved to the United States. I grew up in Arizona, then New York, going to summer camp and raising Neopets and marveling at the novelty of AOL Instant Messenger, and I didn’t give much thought then to all the things I write about now: empire, patriarchy, all the terrifying ways a repressive state can assert its power. These days, it seems as though I think of little else.

Which isn’t to say I’m immune to nostal

words on a page: This species of nostalgia relies on a warped glorification of the past, with aims to influence the future. In Russia, it might look like Putin’s reinstatement of the Soviet national anthem in 2000; or, in more recent years, the steady reinstallation of monuments to Joseph Stalin throughout the country, monuments which had been systematically removed starting in the 1950s with the de-Stalinization reforms. In the States, it might look like a longing to return to “simpler, better times,” which, on its face, recalls some idyllic bygone era when it was socially acceptable to ride your bike to a friend’s house without calling first, to knock on their door, ask them to come out and play—and who doesn’t want that? But beneath this rosy vision often churns an undercurrent of traditional values about marriage, childrearing, and the nuclear family, along with anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

“Back in my day, we would…”

“Back in my day, we wouldn’t…”

Remember the “good times,” these his

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 16d

Kinda jealous!

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Olga Zilberbourg @olgaz.bsky.social · 16d

Good to know that schools do close for the holidays some places in the US. Not in San Francisco!

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