Aarthi Vadde

Generative AI & Fictionality: How Novels Power Large Language Models Generative models, like the one in ChatGPT, are powered by their training data. The models are simply next-word predictors, based on patterns learned from vast amounts of pre-existing text. Since the ...

New paper w/ @teddyroland.bsky.social on "How fiction powers generative AI systems." We designed a computational experiment to test the impact of the vast amount of fiction in LLM training data on how LLMs communicate, w/ implications for both AI design + literary theory. arxiv.org/abs/2603.01220

“what publishers have to sell in an AI economy isn’t just text but judgment. The content can be dissolved into weights or assembled into someone else’s context. The expertise — the capacity to evaluate, certify, and set the standard —cannot.” Great nuts and bolts piece on publisher-platform nexus

Yay, Sarah! I’m glad you feel seen 😂, and truly think the book is fantastic 💜

Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era

y'all !!!!

I love that the blurbs are basically like, "listen, she is never not telling you about some bleak shit" 😍❤️‍🔥 (thank you @aarthivadde.bsky.social and @markmcgurl.bsky.social)

New essay about some creeps, contemporary and canonical, in the history of the novel. I'm thinking about the nexus of the romance plot, commercial surveillance, and "the desire of the other." DM me for a PDF!

I loved this piece on James Patterson because it shows how strange authorship is, how well Patterson understands celebrity in adjacent markets to books, and how such savvy has rendered him an important patron of literature with a capital L. Plus, Vauhini followed the money to a masters thesis!

Hear me out, @npr.org... new weekly show featuring authors, editors, agents, publishers, prize judges, fanfic aficionados, TV scouts, and READERS of all kinds. It's called "BookTalk" and you've already got your new host IN STUDIO!

The Artist Is Present (Online) | Los Angeles Review of Books Sophie Bishop’s new book tracks the pressures artists face to conform their ‘brands’ to the demands of the algorithmic boss.

I find Sophie Bishop's research on "influencer creep" very generative and have been turning to it a lot. So I was pleased to be able to write a review of her book here!

If you're in the Triangle area, the @post45.bsky.social grad symposium is happening tomorrow and Saturday, organized by the excellent Julia Gordon and @cassandraluca.bsky.social. Plus, a talk by me and a roundtable on sociality and the university!

Internet Literature in China | Columbia University Press Since the 1990s, Chinese literary enthusiasts have explored new spaces for creative expression online, giving rise to a modern genre that has transformed Chi... | CUP

While I don't think there can be another @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social (🙂), I have come across a book that seems perfect for your student, Deidre: cup.columbia.edu/book/interne...

Very excited for this!

Congrats to @urducosmo.bsky.social and Preetha Mani for this beautiful special issue on South Asian modernisms that was several years in the making. A really fantastic catalog of essays theorizing "language itself—masticated, metabolized, and regurgitated by colonial process" in SA vernaculars!

what has value in an era of 'AI arbitrage'? how people ended up believing in Moltbook, why we're in a science-fictional era and what that tells us about making money in the era of AI

I wrote about 'AI arbitrage' which is a thing I've been thinking a lot about lately. People taking advantage of uneven distribution of knowledge about what AI has made trivially easy.

naomialderman.substack.com/p/what-to-tr...

Thanks so much, Gunter!

Thanks and is it possible to be belated on proofs? 🙂

Amazing- thank you! I’d love to take that class. I need a survival guide

Thank you! We have to meet in person!

Thanks, Nathan! All the 🎉🎉🎉

Thanks so much, Deirdre!

🥳🥳🥳

Thank you!

Thanks, Hoyt! 🎉🎉🎉

Thanks, Scott!

and me for Content Machines! 🤩

Page proofs arrived today (!) and actual book coming August 2026!!!

Modernism/modernity seeks a Book Reviews Editor (3-year term, 2026–2029).

The role involves commissioning and editing reviews for both the print journal and Print+.

Deadline to apply: March 16, 2026

Please share widely.

Novel 58.2 is now live!

Oh, that makes sense! I was wondering why it wasn’t on the Duke Law list and made the (I guess dubious) decision to include it here.

Public Domain Day 2026 | Duke University School of Law January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925! By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle[1] CC BY 4.0 Please note that this site is only about US l...

Happy public domain day to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, the first four Nancy Drew novels, Betty Boop, and more! web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...

‘This Is Our Time’: Acclaimed Poet to Honor Mamdani With Inaugural Poem

Very pleased that New York City will have an inaugural poet and such a fine one in the great Cornelius Eady. Poet Elizabeth Alexander of the Mamdani arts and culture transition committee doing good work: “Poets and artists…can say things that politicians can’t say.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/n...