Phil Klay

The Epic Miscalculations of Trump and Khamenei Hubris has distorted their strategic decisions.

“Hard power alone can depose a regime, but it is notoriously incapable of cultivating a better successor.”

www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Ironic that one of the legacies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a presidency that can initiate wars on whim, without even the pretense of building a case to the American people first.

The American-Israeli Strikes on Iran are (Again) Manifestly Illegal After weeks of threats, the United States, joined by Israel, has launched military strikes against Iran. It remains to be seen whether these strikes will be fairly limited, or are the opening of an ex...

"Whatever happens, though, one thing is clear – that this use of force by the US and Israel is manifestly illegal. It is as plain a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as one could possibly have."

@ejiltalk.bsky.social

www.ejiltalk.org/the-american...

Thanks!

Thank you, Kori!

What a great opportunity to learn from two of our best veteran writers! Best writers full stop, also.

Austin Literary Event: National Book Award Winner Phil Klay to Lead Writers Colloquium MFA Program brings award-winning authors Phil Klay and Matt Gallagher to Austin for public writing workshop and literary event.

Texas people! The great Matt Gallagher and I are headed your way next weekend to run a free day of writing workshops!

Come join us on Saturday, March 7, courtesy of the Fairfield University MFA in Creative Writing.

www.fairfield.edu/news/press-r...

Tonight in BK! Come to a chat where I’ll ask Chris Beha about God, atheism, Montaigne, and mysticism.

As invasion enters fifth year, the children of Ukraine learn to fight back More than 385,000 Ukrainian teenagers are enrolled in a defense course, expecting war, or threats, to go on for years. In Russia, children are learning the same skills.

“If Russian troops ever return to Bucha, Katya doesn’t want to be scared. She intends to be ready.
The teacher asks for volunteers to try loading a rifle. Katya’s hand shoots up.”

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...

Songbird – Wesleyan University Press Resonant poems give form to the paradoxes of embodiment and interiorityUtilizing the short lyric poem in long sequence, Songbird addresses matters both urgen...

Congrats to my wonderful colleague Carol Ann Davis whose extraordinary collection SONGBIRD is out today from Wesleyan University Press!

www.weslpress.org/978081950222...

I need to read that Lahiri

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?

What are the best pieces of writing from the perspective of tourists?

Geoff Dyers’ Yoga for People That Can’t Be Bothered to Do It and especially the Italy scenes in Crossing to Safety come to mind.

Trump Calls on Netflix to Oust Susan Rice From Its Board

Weird when Trump’s overt corruption intersects with the old-school corruption none of us ever blinked at.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/b...

Just recently taught Derek Walcott’s The Bounty and my God what a poem.

“Between the vision of the Tourist Board and the true
Paradise lies the desert where Isaiah’s elations
force a rose from the sand”

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48318/...

I was on Twitter for the writers and the book recommendations, the essays, the poetry, the community. I am here now for the same. I’m a nerd. Please reply with a favorite recent essay or poem or story or book recommendation, and thank you.

I did! Such an incredible play and they did a great job with it.

Heading to see Coriolanus at TFANA

“from face to foot
 He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
 Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered
 The mortal gate o’ th’ city, which he painted
 With shunless destiny; aidless came off
 And with a sudden reinforcement struck
 Corioles like a planet.”

tfana.org/events/the-t...

Honored to judge the Commonweal Prize for Short Fiction.

@commonweal.bsky.social has been a critical part of my intellectual life for decades. They’ve published writers from Graham Greene and Alice McDermott to Andre Dubus and Mary Gordon. Looking forward to reading the submissions.

Delighted to be read this way, and alongside Salinger and Matt Gallagher’s wonderful DAYBREAK!

Also, very cool that @warontherocks is doing this as a series (info for submitting pitches in the link).

Opinion | Ash Wednesday and the Burden of Living Your Beliefs

“To a skeptical believer, the great mark of sincerity is the extent to which you attempt to live out your beliefs in your own life despite your own doubts, not the extent to which you silence those doubts or the doubts of others.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

Wish I was in DC for this. Feb 21 at 5pm @politicsprose.bsky.social will honor the Washington Post’s Book World section, with reflections from former editors, critics and contributors.

politics-prose.com/tribute-book...

@philklay.bsky.social saw this coming in his amazing novel Missionaries — which also has the scariest scene not written by Cormac McCarthy.

February 26, I’ll be in conversation with Chris Beha about his fantastic new book, WHY I AM NOT AN ATHEIST

“Education is for the student’s benefit, not for the benefit of their future employer…students go to school not merely to acquire skills but to develop an entire social and intellectual life: to have something good and to have it forever”
@thepointmag.bsky.social

thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

Gaza and the Conduct of Urban War: Civilian Harm, Risk, and Responsibility Urban warfare is often invoked as an alibi: dense terrain, an embedded enemy, human shields, imperfect intelligence. These conditions are real but they do

This is an important, credible, and damning article about the IDF in Gaza by Andy Milburn, a retired US Marine Raider colonel with combat experience from Fallujah and Mosul who maintained close contact with IDF officers during the war (while keeping a low public profile). Read the whole thing.

"I was in Afghanistan after 13 years of war—long after the exciting newness wore off and as domestic political opposition raged—and we still had Czech, Lithuanian, and Polish special forces, as well as conventional Australian, British, Bulgarian, Canadian, and Romanian units with us in Kandahar."

Tonight!