Greg Zimmerman

Despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage

This is such a rarity! They mostly just ignore each other 😂

It’s been a week, man.

TONIGHT! Join us for our free panel with @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social celebrating the publication's 10 years. Panelists will discuss what makes a good review, the importance of book coverage these days, and how you can improve your chances to get your work reviewed.

Register: buff.ly/aBC7HDS

We got all in our feelings in the week's StoryStudio newsletter. 😅

Read:
✍🏼 Why the hard work of writing is better with community
✍🏼 Meet StoryBoard faculty member Denne Michele Norris!
✍🏼 TODAY is the Novel In A Year deadline
✍🏼 Much more!

mailchi.mp/storystudioc...

#writingcommunity

Tomorrow night, we ride…

What's your strategy when a not-paying-attention young person staring at their phone walks right into you or your dog on the sidewalk? It's happened three times this week lol. I don't want to be a cranky old man and yell "Look up!" but maybe that's what it's come to?

Tonight! The first 2-hour class in Carmen Maria Machado's four-session workshop, Speculative Nonfiction happens tonight at 6:30 pm CT.

Lectures are all presented live, but also recorded -- so when you register, if you miss one, you can watch on your own time!

buff.ly/AjcudRm

#writingcommunity

Really excited for this! Come here us talk about books and the importance of books coverage (eff you, Bezos), and writing, and more.

From a friend at Winter Institute — new Chad Harbach this fall. Literally gasped!

#books

Poster's Madness A streaming PowerPoint telethon for mutual aid

We are counter-programming the State of the Union with a fundraising telethon featuring everyone’s favorite Bluesky posters doing short presentations and sketches on stuff they are passionate about. Will stream on YouTube starting at 8:30pm EST

postersmadness.wordpress.com

This whole thing has "Grandpa told a racist joke at dinner and none of us had the courage to tell him to shut up" energy

Chicago Just Named A Snowplow ‘Abolish ICE’— Here Are The Other Winners The city received a record number of entries and votes for its annual snowplow-naming contest. The Department of Streets and Sanitation announced the six winners Monday.

GOOD JOB, CHICAGO

blockclubchicago.org/2026/02/23/c...

Just a reminder as we look forward to this weekend...

We're going to win. There's a ton of hard work ahead of us & a lot more really bad days, but we've won before, with less resources & more capable foes. So we will win again.

Every reader of every age will have access to the books they need.

‘Once-in-a-generation opportunity’: Indiana leaders tout Hammond site, a 20-minute drive from Soldier Field Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott called the proposed Chicago Bears stadium at Wolf Lake an opportunity for Hammond, Northwest Indiana and the state.

The mere fact they're claiming Hammond is a "20-minute drive" from Soldier Field shows how little they understand any of this. Maybe in the middle of the night doing 80 mph, it's 20 minutes.

"A lot of us writers are hermits by nature. But I don't think writing has to be a solitary, anguished profession." -- Dave Eggers on our Pub Crawl keynote conversation just now.

And here is exactly why we're working so hard to build a writing community! 🤩

My first thought was that this seemed premature, but 2026 has been about 18 months long already....

www.newyorker.com/best-books-2...

The New Yorker's best books of 2026 so far...

So Old, So Young, by Grant Ginder: I'll Be There For You (Probably) Here we have a paragon of the friendship-through-the-years genre

Book 14: So Old, So Young, by Grant Ginder

My advice is to first read this terrific book. Then, send it to your college friend group and fire up the group chat about which character you all think you all are. And then hope you're still all friends. 😅

open.substack.com/pub/thenewdo...

#booksky

OH at the Bears' board meeting: Okay, how can we totally kill the good vibes we created with a great season?

Truly incredible (and important) words by @mbwwelch.bsky.social for @literaryhub.bsky.social!!!

We're so thrilled about this! This is a FREE panel via @storystudiochicago.bsky.social's incredible Pub Crawl and all you have to do is register, which you can do right here:

us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

See you on Zoom next week! 🤩

What We Lose When Our Independent Bookstores Close I’m on my way to a reading when I get the call from my mother letting me know that my uncle passed away. The news isn’t unexpected. In the past few months, his worsening condition made a stranger o…

"I measure a full-fledged bookstore by its discoveries, its hand-written recommendation note cards, and the checkouts that turn into runaway conversations about what we’re reading..."

Hell yeah, @mbwwelch.bsky.social in @literaryhub.bsky.social!

lithub.com/what-we-lose...

This is going to be cool, in the nerdiest possible way. Or nerdy, in the coolest possible way. 😂

Register here: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Ugh, so performative. 😂

Buffalo Wild Wings can continue to call their wings 'boneless,' judge rules Buffalo Wild Wings can continue to call their wings "boneless" even though they are "essentially chicken nuggets," an Illinois judge ruled Tuesday.

I would read the shit out of a 5,000-word Gary Shteyngart essay about this.

buff.ly/hhGp7T7

That’s such a good idea! I’m definitely going to do that for fall books.

You know that thing about a preorder being a gift to your future self? It’s soooooo true. I had no idea what this was when I opened the package and was absolutely delighted by the surprise.

Excited to read, @mbwwelch.bsky.social.

(Dog for scale and timeline cleanse.)

English is probably toast. But one way he could help his fading cause is to boot this guy right now.

I just committed the cardinal sin of novel-writing. I forgot my character's dog's name.

Happy Valentine's Weekend! We hope you're feeling the love...and loving what you're writing! To help you love your writing even more, this weekend, we're offering 10% off any creative writing class!

Use the code VALENTINES10 at checkout to claim the discount

buff.ly/6GYxtgj

#writersofbluesky