katie cusumano

Why Did National Geographic Disappear Its Own Documentary About A Queer Climate Scientist? | Defector If you’re not a particular kind of mountain sports nerd, you might not be familiar with the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour. But for people who live their lives in the overlapping circl...

Last fall, I attended the premiere of a film that meant a lot to me. In late January, all of its hundreds of planned screenings were canceled without explanation. For @defector.com, I went digging:

me taking a quick break from my fact-checking job to read a little bit:

screen shot of a text conversation: "i talked to some teens lol" "'i talk to some teens' could be a line in your reporting bio lol"

me trying to figure out why kids are filling up half the block outside my parents' apartment

I Fought Plastic. Plastic Won. My futile quest to avoid the material that my entire world is made out of

"We cry plastic tears, leak plastic breast milk, and ejaculate plastic semen."

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The “Garlic Nerds” Building a Better Allium - Offrange Garlic ranks high on our list of beloved ingredients — meet the die-hard enthusiasts who are obsessed with improving it.

I started thinking about garlic in December, so it's thrilling to see this story out in the world 7 months later. thanks especially to Offrange mastermind @jessehirsch.bsky.social for letting this one go long & into strange corners (also, the art! 🧄)

ambrook.com/offrange/cro...

The “Garlic Nerds” Building a Better Allium - Offrange Garlic ranks high on our list of beloved ingredients — meet the die-hard enthusiasts who are obsessed with improving it.

“It’s a long-term nerdy project ... that hardly anyone’s ever going to stick through.”

for Offrange, I talked to independent farmers who are cultivating new garlic varieties in a radical new way — by making it wilder.

ambrook.com/offrange/cro...

The “Garlic Nerds” Building a Better Allium - Offrange Garlic ranks high on our list of beloved ingredients — meet the die-hard enthusiasts who are obsessed with improving it.

“It’s a long-term nerdy project ... that hardly anyone’s ever going to stick through.”

for Offrange, I talked to independent farmers who are cultivating new garlic varieties in a radical new way — by making it wilder.

ambrook.com/offrange/cro...

tomorrow night!! i’m reading with some other smart & cool people 🖤

horseshoe lake, washington

colchuk lake, washington

lake stuart, washington

campsite at lake stuart, washington

we spent a week in the enchantments in washington — a truly perfect place. we hiked 37 miles w/ about 13,000 ft of elevation gain and swam in every lake we could. at the beginning of the year, there were 14 federal forest service employees tending to this area; now, there is one.

30 Ideas About Writing Nonfiction – The Creative Independent The poet, essayist, and critic Elisa Gabbert offers 30 ideas around making your nonfiction interesting.

catnip to me ... elisa gabbert x david lynch x big thoughts about the word "interesting" thecreativeindependent.com/essays/30-id...

in this revision class, we will dig past cosmetic edits and get into the powerful business of reimagining your project from the ground up. it's scary and exciting!!!

write (revise) with me this summer! I'm teaching a monthlong workshop on taking your essays apart and putting them back together again. come hang 📝
literary-arts.org/event/the-ar...

Arson, sex shops, livestreamed funerals: Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman on the wild stories in her southern gothic rock Wednesday’s picaresque yarns are full of arson, sex shops and outcasts. At home in North Carolina, their leader explains why she likes things ‘a little bit scary’ – and what’s next after her split fro...

@mrsslrss.bsky.social x wednesday 🥲 www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...

the thing that makes me feel dizzy is that we are currently experiencing the climate consequences of decades-old emissions. the heat hasn’t even caught up with our present.

excerpt from Ted Chiang's New Yorker essay on generative AI: "It reduces the amount of intention in the world"

in the scheme of news this essay is now ancient, but I just got around to it and it still hits -- especially as far as its discussion of art as an accretion of individual decisions

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

still looking for ONE more kid to talk to about invisibility!

so far have heard about always winning hide & seek, spying on animals in the wild, dancing like a freak without fear of judgment, among other (very brilliant) things...

~* source request! *~

for a very fun project for the New York Times for Kids, I'm interviewing kids (age 8-14) about what they'd do if they were INVISIBLE. looking for wacky, thoughtful, offbeat ideas -- if there's a kid in your life who might be up for this, pls get in touch!

David Lynch as Weatherman - Believer Magazine It’s commonplace to regard weather-talk as the lowest form of small talk. As anthropologist Michael Taussig writes in My Cocaine Museum (2004), we “talk about the weather as a way of avoiding talking ...

"As others have noted, the brief history of David Lynch’s Weather Report offers no shortage of opportunities to be read as a performance of Lynchian tropes."

—from "David Lynch as Weatherman" by Ali Raz

www.thebeliever.net/logger/david...

yesterday at my college reunion I walked past a man who looked like my thesis advisor but also, in some crucial way, not like him at all. it turns out it was his twin brother.

Writer and illustrator A. Kendra Greene on becoming an artist by listening – The Creative Independent Writer and illustrator A. Kendra Greene discusses the power of noticing, collecting fascinations, and letting curiosity guide your process.

"I finally found ... a way of thinking about art as a matter of listening and not as a matter of having something to say."

I talked to the marvelous & wise A. Kendra Greene for @thecreativeindependent.com

thecreativeindependent.com/people/write...

The Last Hospitals in Gaza In the ruins of a health-care system, many medical facilities have become graveyards. Doctors continue to deliver lifesaving care—but they risk their own lives in the process.

From the New Yorker: "Israeli forces have now dropped more explosives in Gaza than fell on London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during the Second World War."

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Writer and illustrator A. Kendra Greene on becoming an artist by listening – The Creative Independent Writer and illustrator A. Kendra Greene discusses the power of noticing, collecting fascinations, and letting curiosity guide your process.

"I finally found ... a way of thinking about art as a matter of listening and not as a matter of having something to say."

I talked to the marvelous & wise A. Kendra Greene for @thecreativeindependent.com

thecreativeindependent.com/people/write...

personally, I do not pass the bechdel test. whenever my boyfriend goes out of town, I'm like, "did you know that I am dating the specialest boy? can I tell you eight facts about him?"

randomly arranged notecards that I have to organize into a coherent story with a beginning middle and end

today in writing

I am once again thinking about this line from @thecreativeindependent.com interview with perfume genius

thecreativeindependent.com/people/music...

ok do the gowanus canal next

Powell's Books image for event on Thursday, May 15 at 7 PM, for the novel Pelican Girls by Julia Malye

Portland! I'm chatting with novelist Julia Malye about her excellent book PELICAN GIRLS next week at @powells.bsky.social on Hawthorne - come join us!

Quote from NYT article about how AI "hallucinations" (aka completely made-up crap being passed off as true) are getting worse with each new iteration of the glorified autocorrect technology that's ruining the planet.

About to be Jokerfied by this blandly tossed-off statement in a piece about how the lie machines will never stop lying. Why concede that AI is "useful" in writing term papers? What is the purpose of writing assignments in education? Is AI accomplishing that purpose? www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/t...

I hate when cold calling someone for a quote actually works … phone anxiety so high I just want it to never be worthwhile

Earthly Delights Katherine Cusumano writes about the unexpected abundance of urban plant life.

on Being a New Yorker and The Idea of Nature, for @oregonhumanities.org 🖤🥀 oregonhumanities.org/rll/beyond-t...