Seph Murtagh

Renata Adler, bringing the goods in PITCH DARK. Extraordinary passage, extraordinary novel.

Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates melancholy from happiness.
-- Woolf, Orlando

The Canon of Asian American Literature – Post45 Data Collective This dataset traces the Asian American literary canon through nearly 1,900 scholarly citations from 1971 to 2023, capturing which authors and texts have shaped the field over time.

"Representing the canon that scholars of Asian American literature have built, it is the most expansive dataset to date on Asian American literature."

Data and essay: doi.org/10.18737/092...

The thing people who are terrified don’t understand about cities is that all you need to know is what is your business and what is not your business

Ah, the sour smell of fallen, trampled fruit fermenting on city sidewalks. It's one of my favorite smells of the year. Fills me with a great inner peace. We are nearing the end of the torrid heat.

Yeah incredible right?!

I had to google “sun butter” lol

Sitting in my office, starving, receiving updates from daycare that my daughter is being fed "sun butter and jelly sandwich, green beans and fruit cocktail"

Thank you!

Gus O'Connor on Jen Craig — Socrates on the Beach

Great new review of Jen Craig's Wall up over @greggerkesocrates.bsky.social's Socrates: "Her novels are at once obsessive attempts to give a full account of grief-laden lives, & a demonstration of the impossibility, the ridiculousness, even, of such a pursuit" socratesonthebeach.com/gus-oconnor-...

Our home bar from those days (which is sadly gone now that we’ve entered our sober toddler parenting era. I’m an IPA guy now 😢)

Found the hand-drawn cocktail book that my wife and I made during our drunken shut-in covid days.

Got a lil bagatelle at beloved @hexliterary.bsky.social

Sunday morning writing mantra, via DeLillo, from inside my cocoon of dimmed lights, closed doors, and noise-cancelling headphones: "A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it."

say it again:

4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities

demolishing higher education is economic sabotage

I believe these are the first four academic books to cite an episode of American Vandal, which, like, there will be prizes.

On Gabriel Blackwell's Doom Town I’m generally not a superstitious person, but there have been times in my life when catastrophes have piled up with such alarming speed and synchronicity, that I've been inclined to believe that the u...

Wrote 1000 words on Gabriel Blackwell's DOOM TOWN, a strange and deeply affecting novel that I won't soon forget.

We're excited to start off our featured author posts with Elvis Bego's work "A Part"! Check out the rest of his work on our website (link in bio) in our Summer 2025 Issue out now!

Dasa Drndic, Trieste

I've been reading Trieste by Dasa Drndic for the last few days and it has absolutely wiped me out. Reading it next to Celan, Pound, etc., and my head is spinning. What a work of fiction - as well as a historical and documentary indictment of the world that reads it.

Such an exceptional novel. Read it a few years ago and it blew my mind. Don't think I've ever read a work of fiction that so urgently challenges the willing suspension of disbelief. Nothing quite like it.

Happy Bloomsday to all who celebrate

New work in @havehashad.com today! Another cheesy little dad piece that might be the cheesiest little dad piece I’ve written yet (while also maybe the one I had the most fun with?)

“She has an allergy to mosquitos"
Me: “Yes, but what is it CALLED"

My 17 month old daughter has developed an allergy to mosquitos and I'm frankly annoyed that no one, from my wife to our pediatrician to her daycare providers, seems to want to use the official name for it.

No

great interview

“I don’t want to overstate the case, but what’s at stake is life and death”: An Interview with Ben Libman — Cristina Politano Ben Libman is a Paris-based Canadian writer who has mined the geographical specifics of his family’s history, from Nazi-occupied Austria to post-war Canada, in order to challenge the creation…

“I don’t want to overstate the case, but what’s at stake is life and death”: An Interview with Ben Libman (@benlibman.bsky.social) —Cristina Politano (@monalisavitti.bsky.social)

minorliteratures.com/2025/05/29/i...

This is my ego as a novice lit mag editor talking, but I imagine someone, somewhere will benefit from reading this entire issue whole, preferably in order of presentation.

yourimpossiblevoice.com/issue32/

Everything about this is a tragedy, every level, from cheated freelancers to authors obscured to readers who don’t get served either.