Alan Drew

Hey poets and teachers out there! Villanova is hiring for a tenure-track assistant prof position. Great school and a wonderful English Department. Check it out below.

jobs.villanova.edu/postings/33001

The flew the entire military leadership in so they could see for themselves that the Secretary of Defense is a mouthbreathing dipshit and the Commander in Chief is a senile, weak old man who might keel over at any moment.

My father was 82nd Airborne, retired as a Colonel in the California National Guard. I can't imagine what he's feeling listening to Hegseth and our dear leader.

America: the country where we devour our children.

James Dobson, Influential Leader of the Religious Right, Dies at 89

I grew up in a home with people who took many of their marital and parenting cues from Focus on the Family. I'm pretty sure that's a significant reason why I became a writer.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/u...

Opinion | When Novels Mattered

Well, Brooks really doesn't want to write about novelists here. And what limited reading he must be doing. (Though I'm with him on Colleen Hoover.) Also, it's funny how Iowa has become the bogeyman for soft thinking about the state of American literature.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/o...

What the Trump admin understands is that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are cowards.

Word.

Yeah, but our weak and pathetic mainstream media won’t do that.

“Tasted a little tear gas— tasted like fascism”

Faith Purelink · Album · 2025 · 6 songs

Digging this new Purelink. Ambient isn't the right word for it. Headphones in, volume up. Beautifully layered music.

open.spotify.com/album/4QJJWf...

Total euphoria caroline · caroline 2 · Song · 2025

Most exciting new music I’ve heard in a while. The songs feel on the edge of falling apart, an emotional breakdown catharsis.

open.spotify.com/track/5GHYjI...

There is one place, however, where Musk, with the help of his minions, achieved his goals. He did indeed shred U.S.A.I.D. Though a rump operation is now operating inside the State Department, the administration says that it has terminated more than 80 percent of U.S.A.I.D. grants. Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them of children, and will most likely lead to significantly more by the end of the year. That is what Musk’s foray into politics accomplished.

Musk should be asked about this in every interview he does now and forever. To ignore it is a dereliction of duty.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

Taken four months off from writing, to focus on teaching. Enjoyed work, slept well, felt refreshed. Semester's over, diving back into a messy novel, so cue nightmares of plane crashes, of fish hooks stabbing hands, of faceless monsters tugging at ankles, pulling me into darkness. Here we go...

The devastating, shortsighted attack on literature continues. List from Magic City Books. Who'd they miss? Note: the small publishers selected here for financial attack include (among other very worthy and important presses) @transitbooks.bsky.social, publisher of 2023 Nobel laureate Jon Fosse.

Hey, Philly people! Come on out for a night with Paul Lisicky. It's free and open to the public. Hope to see you there.

Look at me, look at me, look at me, I'm tough, look at me, look at me, look at me, I'm a winner, look at me, look at me., look at me...

Had a fantastic night hanging out with the great Victoria Chang at the Villanova Literary Festival. What a reading! And what good company.

Thanks so much for coming out!

It feels a little like this these days.

Poet Victoria Chang will be reading this Tuesday night at Villanova. Philly people, come on out!

An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison The Trump administration says that it mistakenly deported an immigrant with protected status but that courts are powerless to order his return.

So this is what we are.

"The Trump administration says that it mistakenly deported an immigrant with protected status but that courts are powerless to order his return."

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Two weeks from today! Philly people, come on out. The reading is free and open to the public.

Thou doth protest too much.

Unless the the Republicans grow spines, the world is soon going to be a very different place.

This morning at Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) HQ in DC as mandatory return to office began, this video played on loop for ~5 mins on screens throughout the building, per agency source.

Building staff couldn’t figure out how to turn it off so sent people to every floor to unplug TVs.

Had a few moments today to contemplate a greater nation.

Putin Has Long Wanted More Power in Europe. Trump Could Grant It. Remarks by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are fueling concerns that the U.S. will move away from Europe and align with Moscow.

Just wondering if MAGAs, when they went to the polls, thought, Yes, I'd like the US to be a Russian satellite state.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/16/w...

US aid freeze claims first victims as oxygen supplies cut off Seventy-one-year-old woman dies after being sent home from USAID funded hospital. Others die after hospitals close in refugee camps

Abandon and kill people, obliterate our standing in the world, and give China and Russia an opening to reshape global alliances.

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

It's a great collection. Teaching it to my students at Villanova, who will be in Belfast in a few weeks. They're loving it.