Rachel Abbey McCafferty

This whole thread (and the stories linked within) is worth a read, but this is the point I’ve been thinking about for years in terms of how we practice and teach journalism in the U.S. today.

The world is overwhelming and heavy, but we can be there for each other.

Make sure your furnace and dryer vents stay clear, charge your phones, take breaks when shoveling and check on your people.

“I cried years later, when I understood we hadn’t survived a journey. We had survived the end of a life we never got to finish.”

Maybe it’s telling you it belongs in your next story.

I can tell the 2016 nostalgia trend isn’t for me because while my life has changed a lot in the past decade (started publishing fiction! had kids! went freelance!), I also wear a lot of the same shirts.

I'm fully confident literary magazines will survive the AI apocalypse. There is no better time to become a creative writer. You already have an inside track because most people have never even heard of these things that can never die. We will be here with the cockroaches and Taco Bell

Beginnings for HAD Simone de Beauvoir once said beginnings are sheer acts of choice. Eliot believed the end and the beginning are all entangled. Anything that falls in-between is collateral. There must be a reason new beginnings are rarely gentle and often messy. Send me anything that explores why that might be the case. Think in terms of a fresh start, a clean slate, the beginning of a long journey, a reset, whether it be literal, metaphorical, or spiritual. Submissions open Wednesday, 1/14, 10 AM (MT) / 12 PM (ET) / 6 PM (CET). Submissions will be capped at 150, so be quick. The nitty-gritty: 750 words for prose (or 2 micro pieces of equal combined length) 1-2 poems & hybrid pieces (each no longer than 2 pages) All submissions will receive a response within 24 hours. Thanks all for participating. 💀 💀 💀 — Sarp

SUBMISSION CALL COMING!

Wednesday, 1/14, 10 AM (MT) / 12 PM (ET) / 6 PM (CET)
Subs will be capped at 150, so be quick.

The nitty-gritty:
750 words for prose (or 2 micro pieces of equal combined length)
1-2 poems & hybrid pieces (each no longer than 2 pages)

guest ed: @sarpsozdinler.bsky.social

Today is apples.

An important part of introducing new foods to my baby is having a corresponding movie or song earworm to go along with it.

Thank you!

My piece was close, but no such luck this year! I have to praise @mattkendrick.bsky.social, though — my rejection was so kind and encouraging. It honestly feels like a win to have something read with that care. Can’t wait to read the winners (and to send my piece back out into the world)!

Oh no there’s a new Paul Tremblay coming too

You know, we could just wait a little longer?

PSA: the new year doesn’t fully begin until the first Monday of the year. This is still liminal season.

I’ve decided being sick to start the new year is an in like a lion, out like a lamb situation for the year.

I’m a voice-driven reader. Horror and speculative and weird are my genres, but within those? I’m reading for voice, not necessarily plot. That heart and humanity is what sticks with me.

“That’s a miracle — but not a rare miracle. A miracle like a sunrise, or a strange cloud, or a weird bird. A miracle that happens often, that maybe we don’t appreciate enough. It’s special. Stories are special. Storytellers are special.”

There are 242 working days in 2026. If you write just one page a day - just 250-300wds, roughly 5 Bsky posts - you will have two full scripts or a novel by New Years Eve.

If you write just two pages a day - just 500-600 words - you will have five scripts or one epic novel.

Just. Keep. Writing.

Millennial nostalgia is missing Facebook’s old, original version of embarrassing trash (cringy statuses and photo albums) vs its current iteration of embarrassing trash (AI and bots).

if you send a micro submission to micro@identitytheory.com by 11pm eastern today 12/31, i’ll send you a response before the new year.
@identitytheory.bsky.social

guidelines here: www.identitytheory.com/about/micro-...

Hard to pick a favorite but this is one I remember being struck by, visually and musically, in real time. youtu.be/fTH71AAxXmM

In 2025, I wrote in spite of and I wrote because of and I wrote before and after and during and my goal for 2026 is to do the same.

“Everything is fraught
with terror when one’s life is blessed

by saving.”

Also, shoutout to the @mowillems.bsky.social pigeon books for brightening a NICU stay and the Scooby Doo choose your own adventure books my kindergartener got into for a fun blast of nostalgia.

And some not pictured because I read them in library ebook form: Hungerstone by @katalicedunn.bsky.social, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Love and Other Conspiracies by @mallorymarlowe.bsky.social, Children of Lovecraft (edited by @datlow.bsky.social) and Thrill Me by @benjaminpercy.bsky.social.

I am in the newspaper business, so I get it :)

A pile of books. Titles and authors in post!

Some of my favorite reads of 2025:
- Annihilation, @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
- Fever House & The Devil By Name, @keithrosson.bsky.social
- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, @sgj.bsky.social

Thank you! I’ll keep an eye out this weekend and do that if it doesn’t show up by next week!

Totally fine with waiting, but what do we do if we suspect we’re in that 2%?