Kit MacAllister

Hugo nominations are open and I need more eligible SFF poems for my ballot. Send recommendations!

"A science fiction or fantasy poem of any line length or word count published for the first time in 2025."

Wow. I massively overuse the word perch/perched. Things are perching left and right, snow, people, buildings. Gimme a noun, I can perch it.

Best adjective (really, compound adjective) in the book so far: "ever-ebullient." 🫧 Ebullient literally means boiling or fizzing. Such a perfect word for the character it describes.

Sabon appreciation post.
Original type by Jan Tschichold. Type specimen by Stephanie Lee.

Just finished The Calorie Man by Paulo Bacigalupi. Holy mackerel, what a great story.

Blinding Lights - Medieval Style

Good morning knaves:
open.spotify.com/track/2ZyBMm...

To sky people:

I've been doing some speculative poetry recently and it's so much fun! It feels like dancing.

Topographical map made of clay.

Topographical map made of clay.

Topographical map made of clay.

Had a great time world building in clay today at the Ursula K. Le Guin exhibit at Oregon Contemporary. Big thanks to Sarah Hensel for organizing this excellent workshop!

Lots of lit mags opening up today. 💖

Created my annual business goals document for writing. The really steamy part of being an author. 🫠

Beyond pleased to announce that my short story, The Library of God will appear in issue 16 of The Buckman Journal!

The story follows a cardinal who finds enlightenment though a chicken, inspired by the Portrait of Cardinal Domenico Rivarola by Sir Anthony van Dyck.

More details Soon!

My current grammar book ranking:

1 - Dreyer's English
Witty, concise, educational.

2 - Strunk and White
Stuffy and outdated but honestly a classic.

3 - Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Snarky, but also quite entertaining.

4 - The Glamour of Grammar
Too meandering and anecdotal for my taste.

Radiant Star (Hardcover) An electrifying new space opera of power, politics, and faith, set in the world of the Imperial Radch, Ann Leckie's ground-breaking, Hugo Award-winning science fiction epic. The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star is an inconvenience: A backwater religious site on an unimportant planet soon to be absorbed into the imperial Radch’s own, superior culture.

Wanna pre-order Radiant Star and also get it signed (by me)?

www.left-bank.com/book/9780316...

Just got edits back on a short story, and it's a lot better than I remembered!

A House Built as a Bridge, Suspended Over a 23-Foot-Deep Gorge

Oops, I forgot the link!
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/r...

Love it! This feels like high-end designer Solarpunk. I'm definitely saving this as design inspiration for future SFF home design.

Finally finished Arcane season 2 and I'm so sad there's not more of it! An insane amount and love and craft went into that show. It's ruined TV for me.

locus magazine cover -- house on an eerie hill

We can't review what we don't receive! Check out our submission guidelines to consider sending us your work! We love small press authors and are always on the lookout for New & Notable work.
locusmag.com/aboutlo...

The cover of Paolo Bacigalupi's short story collection, Pump Six, with a mastodon skull and an old spring illustration.

Just started Paulo Bacigalupi's short story collection, pump six. The first story, Pocket full of Dharma was really good!

My most unhinged, most unsellable short story was just picked up for publication. Apparently I need to go harder.

In all seriousness, very excited. I'll share more when things are a bit more official.

Psst. Looks like Strange Horizons will be open to submissions for 48 hours starting on Jan 19th, 3pm UTC.

One of my favorite sci-fi tropes is the space-faring society that's so advanced that they've forgotten where earth is, or even that there once was an origin planet. It's like a reverse Atlantis.

I'm reading William Gibson's Burning Chrome and watching Arcane Season 2 at the same time and it's rewiring my brain.

An abstract portrait of a city by MC Escher.

I just finished Calvino's Invisible Cities and I loved it SO MUCH. Fabulism isn't for everyone, but Calvino does it so well: gorgeous language, vivid imagery. I'd recommend this to readers who enjoy the surreal and who don't need a lot of plot to pull them through if the language is good.

On a Winter’s Night, by Kate DiCamillo

harpers.org/archive/2022...

For you, on this fine day, my favorite Christmas story: On a Winter's Night, by Kate DiCamillo.

I 100% assumed the end would be: resolve to finish your synopsis.

Faculty Article: Stop Using the First Person! Next time you start writing a work of fiction, stop (or at least pause) before you type out that fateful word “I.” Why? The...

A nice article on POV from Alexander Steele of Gotham Writers.
www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/arti...

Sometimes writing is just driving around street-view in Google Maps until you find your protagonist's house.