Gavin, Small Beer, long covid, &c.

Went to ICFA, an sff conference in Orlando for the first time 20+ years ago. Brian Aldiss was there — woah, I’d loved some of his books as a kid. Horrid old man. Serial groper. Ruined con for many young women who did not return. Con took action but sloooowly as he’d been going, the fucker, for years

Publishing for Minnesota Silent auction 'Publishing for Minnesota' hosted online at 32auctions.

BKMN will be closed Friday Jan. 30th in support of the Minneapolis general strike.

Lots of stores closing tomorrow:
www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?i...

Publishing for Minnesota fundraising auction:
www.32auctions.com/organization...

Senator: it is long past time to reform this masked militia. It is time for abolishment and trials.

I’ve been calling to stop DHS and ICE funding since Renee Good was murdered. Americans are watching in outrage while their neighbors are murdered on tv and cities get taken over. Senators have the power to do something about it. We need to stop funding DHS now.

I don't know — it's from the page below. It does have a weird credit but I figured it was probably bad site code rather than anything else. Could be wrong!

"Demonstrators march in Tblisi, Georgia, on January 10,2026. © 2024 Sebastien Canaud/NurPhoto via AP Photo"

www.hrw.org/news/2026/01...

Screenshot of 2 posts: ‪1st post: Megan Greenwell‬ reposted their earlier post ‪@greenwell.bsky.social‬ · 5h My mom is a priest who’s been showing up at the courthouse in her city every week for months in a clerical collar to help immigrants and confront ICE. I’m not religious, but I find the moral leadership she and other faith leaders are showing exceptionally moving. ‪ which quote posted Jack Jenkins‬ ‪@jackjenkins.me‬ · 5h Singing and it's a video of many many religious leaders wrapped up for the cold with foam pads for their knees for kneeling and they are singing "Oh Sister let's go down to the river to pray" The 2nd post is Reposted by Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 ‪Giorgi Gogia‬ (bio: Associate Europe and Central Asia Director at Human Rights Watch) ‪@ggogia.bsky.social‬ · 18m 🚨 #Georgia is using new assembly restrictions to arbitrarily detain peaceful protesters, including for simply standing on a sidewalk near parliament. This chills free expression and violates international human rights standards, says @hrw.org www.hrw.org/news/2026/01... and has a picture of many people waving Georgian flags and holding up their phones with their lights on. There's a Ukranian flag being carried along too.

Protests against authoritarian regimes
1) today at the Minneapolis airport, USA
2) Tblisi, Georgia, Jan. 10, 2026

A tray of cookies that are shaped like Minnesota and say “Fuck Ice”

Cookies at the bookstore

cold

Scotland qualified for the first time in 28 years so: they should definitely boycott

Tens of thousands of demonstrators filling the streets with signs and banners

Demonstrators as far as the eye can see. Current status of the march in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota for Ice Out of Minnesota. They are turning onto 3rd Street from 5th Avenue.

Bari Weiss’s CBS News Won’t Even Condemn Israel for Killing a CBS Contributor Instead, the network’s new top anchor Tony Dokoupil peddles Israel’s talking points about it killing a Palestinian journalist. A CBS source calls it a ‘disgrace.’

— Israel kills 3 journalists, including CBS contributor
— AFP, the other impacted outlet, condemns killing & calls for investigation
— CBS doesn't, instead peddles Israel's claim that they were targeting a group with "a drone affilliated with Hamas"

Inside the Bari Weiss-led CBS response:

Oh would I like that! You should see the condition of my Virago edition — I think I'd given away all my good copies. It's the same plates as the F&F edition, amazing. But don't send if it's £££! Maybe the publisher can or I can order it :)

Me too! I could not remember how we'd gotten the text — group of volunteers . . . scanned by Paradise Copies . . . then came across an rtf file you'd emailed — amazing! — and then this which I had to post.

LMK what you think — I know by now it's not for everyone. I re-read it these past couple of days and it's sui generis. There are a couple of slower parts but mostly I just sail through it. I'll just go off an make my Halla Forever t-shirt or something.

Small Beer (Peapod Classics) cover: green bands on top and bottom with quote by Amal on front and Le Guin & Holly Black on back and Kevin Huizenga's pen drawing of Halla's legs coming down from the top band and lots of people and things from the book (winged horse, dragon, Constantinople/Micklegard) at the bottom.

1952 Faber & Faber cover of Travel Light with an illustration of 2 sides of a gold torc or bracelet

Beautiful cover of the new UK Virago edition of Travel Light with UKL quote ("Read it now") and "Introduced by Samantha Shannon". Cover illustration by Sanae Sugimoto with a red dragon and Halla (whose flowered cloak includes the ocean) on the Valkyrie's winged horse (which has bears and city buildings on it) with some red clouds, all going left to right with a real sense of motion.

Our well read copies of the Faber & Faber hardcover, Virago pb (so many of these have passed through my hands), and our paperback edition on the coffee table this morning in the sunlight streaming in the window behind this couch.

I was looking up something about Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light & came across this 2005 piece @jedediahberry.bsky.social wrote for the Small Beer newsletter.
Cannot wait to get the beautiful new UK edition—looking forward to reading Samantha Shannon's intro.
smallbeerpress.com/not-a-journa...

In solidarity with today's ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA blackout, MinnMax is donating $1 to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for every share of this Bluesky post for the next hour.

Picture of five-year-old detained by ICE.

ICE detained a five-year-old child and used him as bait in Minnesota.

Let that sink in.

This is sick. No more funding for Trump’s ICE thugs.

Oh my goodness! One of my favorite stories; I’ve been wishing I could reprint it for many years. Glad to see it’ll be available!

...the best in fact..! Joan Aiken was once celebrated as 'the greatest children's writer you have probably never read...'
But it's not too late, and she wrote for adults too ..

1. Cities and states should outlaw Amazon’s latest assault on small businesses — an AI tool that scrapes their websites and creates listings of their products within the Amazon app without their consent. It’s causing huge, costly problems. This can and should be banned.

Block by Frozen Block by Anya Johanna DeNiro an interactive poem from Saint Paul, Minnesota, January 2026

Here it is: Block by Frozen Block is a short, interactive poem I made in Twine as a vessel for ... all the stuff roiling around in my head as everyone here is fighting for our neighbors in big ways and small.

adeniro.itch.io/block-by-fro...

!!! indeed!!!

Such good news! A new home for Greer Gilman’s Moonwise and Cloud & Ashes and then, even better, a fabulous new novel, Lightwards:

Submissions - The Massachusetts Review Submission Guidelines Submissions The Massachusetts Review 2025 – 2026 Submissions Period is now open.  If you have submitted to us online, please check that your spam filters do not block our email. You can add massrev@external.umass...

After a not-so-brief hiatus, we've re-opened submissions to our #WorkingTitles series, our digital e-book collection of works longer than can fit in our print journal. For a full set of guidelines, check out massreview.org/new-submissi...

Curious what kinds of work we publish as Working Titles? Purchase a few from @weightlessbooks.bsky.social (They're only $1.99!!) weightlessbooks.com/category/pub...

Humble Book Bundle: Fierce Women of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror by Open Road Media Our latest ebook bundle has over 60 of the best sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books written by women! Every purchase supports Active Minds charity!

Your reminder that this amazing Humble Bundle featuring a whole litany of stone classics by female SFF writers dating back to Andre Norton (!) and including some of the absolute classics of science fiction (and, um, several books by me) is only $18.

www.humblebundle.com/books/fierce...

<begin>head explosion

Kiva is an easy way to make a real difference in someone's life. Will you join me in helping Josephine in Kenya Port Vila to pursue their dream?
www.kiva.org/invitedby/ga...

Just because animals are often guided by instinct and occupied with their own behaviour and survival, people often mistake them for being unintelligent. A lot of them are quite clever, tool-use or otherwise. I think people don't want to know how smart animals are, and what they're capable of.

These are the icy mountains of Pluto. It took 9 years to get these magnificent images… and 4.8 billion kilometers.