Summer Brennan

Substack is Self-Publishing—Do The Same Rules Apply? Some thoughts on gatekeeping, book reviews, and the new literary slush pile.

“I’ve heard Substack described multiple times as a “life boat” for writers fleeing the institutions of a sinking industry…, but in the deluge of cultural dissolution and soul-drowning waves of AI slop, we must build not just a life boat but an ark.” H/T @summerbrennan.bsky.social

Monet is such a favorite of mine.

I also got to visit Giverney and see the Japanese Garden.

This essay has me loving him even more!

People are out there mixing LLMs with an at-best 30-40% failure rate into the load-bearing supports of our society and expecting what, that this is a good thing?

“I shall stay here regardless,” [Monet] said, when friends told him to leave Giverny for his own safety during the war. “If those barbarians wish to kill me, I shall die among my canvases, in front of my life’s work.”

The Texture of Wartime Monet Going Through Old Notebooks Part 28: "Madame, you are standing too close to the paintings."

"Monet’s famous waterlilies were made during the war, and more people should know that. This is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t find the words. Look and you can see beneath the surface of the water: that dread, that waiting. Would it be destroyed, the garden in Normandy, like so many others?"

Democrats Demand Answers for Federal Prison Staffing Shortage After Corrections Officers Flee for ICE Jobs Citing a ProPublica investigation that found that workers at federal lockups had been lured away to ICE, lawmakers asked how the Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to address the agency’s “unsafe conditi...

Citing a ProPublica investigation that found that workers at federal lockups had been lured away to ICE, lawmakers asked how the Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to address the agency’s “crisis conditions” and “pervasive shortages” of critical staff.

Sitting in UN meetings about efforts to ban "autonomous killer robots," or lethal autonomous weapons, as I believe they are now called, back in the 2010s, I never imagined it would be this... this ...

Honestly I have no words.

It's been years since I worked at the UN in high level meetings, but it's still incredibly strange (and uniquely sickening, no matter the person) when I learn that someone I sat in a room with has been killed during acts of war.

The Texture of Wartime Monet Going Through Old Notebooks Part 28: "Madame, you are standing too close to the paintings."

"Monet’s famous waterlilies were made during the war, and more people should know that. This is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t find the words. Look and you can see beneath the surface of the water: that dread, that waiting. Would it be destroyed, the garden in Normandy, like so many others?"

The Texture of Wartime Monet Going Through Old Notebooks Part 28: "Madame, you are standing too close to the paintings."

open.substack.com/pub/summerbr...

🤘📚

“If you build it, they... might not come, but at least you did something” (+ 2026 reading log, week 8) Melissa Lozada-Oliva, Camille Bordas, John Updike, Samantha Schweblin, Curtis Dawkins...

avoided lots of other work and wrote up my weekly short story reading log + a blog post thinking about @thelincoln.bsky.social's punk rock mindset & @summerbrennan.bsky.social's book review supplement & @miriamgershow.bsky.social's 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025 & just making/doing things

Well, this fucking sucks.

"I'm 40 years old; I can't be dealing with this" is such a mood

FONSECA photographed in glorious company by the inimitable @manderleypress.bsky.social! ❤️🧡

I wrote a book! (Yes, this often happens to me.) And yes, it's the pink stripe in the rainbow flag when you stack them right. It's out Tuesday and I start doing events on Monday with the most amazing people. List here and more below: www.rebeccasolnit.net/events1.html

Join us next week to celebrate our new issue ZYZZYVA 131, this time on the San Francisco side of the bay at the fantastic Golden Sardine bar. Ft. readings from contributors Brian Ang, Nica Giromini, and Kelly Gray.

Friday, March 6, 6pm
@ Golden Sardine, SF

Brought to You By: How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy

Now available for pre-order!!! bookshop.org/p/books/brou...

Master Class: Fairytales as Inspiration with Edward Carey — The Shipman Agency 1 Session: Sunday, March 8 11:00am-2:00pm ET Edward Carey How to reignite your imagination, sharpen your fiction, and give yourself permission to be braver and stranger in your writing through the ...

The wonderful Edward Carey is teaching a class on fairy tales as inspiration. Inspired by the one he used to teach at UT Austin's MFA. Perfect if you're not going to AWP or if you'll be home in time that Sunday March 8th. www.theshipmanagency.com/classes/mast...

Jasmine Flowers, Ghosts, and Vanilla Ice Cream Going Through Old Notebooks Part 27: "If you want to start believing in ghosts, stop sleeping at night and write a book about dead people."

"If you want to start believing in ghosts, stop sleeping at night and write a book about dead people. Find the graves of people with big personalities who have been forgotten by history, leave flowers on those graves, and then stop sleeping at night. See what happens."

Doing research for the forthcoming Book Supplement by reading old Patricia Holt reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle archives from the 1990s, and all I have to say is ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ www.zyzzyva.org/2023/03/13/r...

"In her column, [Pat] championed local authors, [...] as well as independent presses and bookstores. Pat was a Joan of Arc of sorts, taking on in print a new website with monopolistic potential—Amazon—and otherwise serving as a pillar of integrity who put readers and authors first..."

Doing research for the forthcoming Book Supplement by reading old Patricia Holt reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle archives from the 1990s, and all I have to say is ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ www.zyzzyva.org/2023/03/13/r...

Jasmine Flowers, Ghosts, and Vanilla Ice Cream Going Through Old Notebooks Part 27: "If you want to start believing in ghosts, stop sleeping at night and write a book about dead people."

"If you want to start believing in ghosts, stop sleeping at night and write a book about dead people. Find the graves of people with big personalities who have been forgotten by history, leave flowers on those graves, and then stop sleeping at night. See what happens."

The Book Supplement Cometh! Book reviews, not too long, delivered (somewhat) monthly.

We're doing it. We're going to write some book reviews ✍️📚

The Book Supplement Cometh! Book reviews, not too long, delivered (somewhat) monthly.

We're doing it. We're going to write some book reviews ✍️📚

(Page 122 of Excavation: A Memoir by Wendy C. Ortiz) NOTES ON AN EXCAVATION Why I Didn't Tell I didn’t want to be average. I didn't want it to end. I was comfortable keeping secrets. I was afraid of being blamed. I felt responsible for his acts. I was numb. I was told I exuded sex and therefore I must be to blame. The truth is, I did tell. I didn't want it to end. I told an adult. I grew comfortable with anguish. With hostility. Tragedy. I was numb. That adult has since apologized for his inaction on my behalf, shared with me his fear of the situation, his own newness to the profession at the time.

“Why don’t victims tell someone about the abuse?”

“Why I Didn’t Tell” from Excavation: A Memoir (Northwestern University Press, 2025; [1st edition Future Tense Books, 2014])

"I want a real supplement, with different reviewers, all paid, and an assigning editor—paid as well...

My dream is this: a monthly book review supplement, about six reviews per month, focusing on books that the readership of this newsletter might find interesting."

Info in the post! 🗃️📚

More Privacy and a Good Coat Going Through Old Notebooks Part 26: "Save me, not so much from fear, but from the twisted shape fear makes of me."

"I am like every other person who has ever lived, astonished by time and its misfortune, astonished by the uncertain curse of beauty and then by its decline. Will there be strength, we want to know, to push the little red boat out into the harbor one more time?"

Do you have a book coming out in 2026? Tell me about it!