Matt Bell

I can't wait to see this.

Haha, yes, and by then other people's hands HAVE be in the process, and even when everyone's helping you make it exactly what you want it to be, some of what comes out isn't anything you could've done on your own, so it does feel a bit alien!

Without serious effort, I can only remember 30-40 pages at once, about the length of a long story. 230 pages in, when I flip back through my draft, it's as if someone else wrote the pages—and today I felt a weird wonder at glimpsing that other's process, even though he's me too, or used to be...

Not Now, But Soon: The Art of Portraying War Brigitte van der Sande discusses how art humanizes the victims of war and spurs action, and how imagination can be a force for resistance.

NEW EPISODE OUT TODAY! I talked to art historian and curator @brigittevdsande.bsky.social about war, art, fiction, disasters, imagination - join us: issues.org/not-now-but-...

"Most of the weight that was gained was in his eyes!" Ah, this is so good. And I've never heard it before. Thank you!

I've taught a three-hour online workshop from it a few times, but it's been a while!

So much worldbuilding! They love it. I don't think the syllabus is really that illuminating but I'm glad to share. Here's this year's: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6dkn7...

Pattinson's weird little phase is the best!

It's less "Serial killer in space" and more "a sociopathic doctor experiments on a bunch of convicted criminals chosen as crew to be hurtled into a black hole," but you know, the vibes are there!

This is at Arizona State University, and in the five or six years I've taught it, the course almost always evenly divides between creative writing majors and non-majors.

YouTube video by A24 High Life | Official Trailer HD | A24

Yes! It's pretty great, IMO. (And also full of dread and kind of off-putting, in a way that really works for me?)

In my 42-person worldbuilding class—a general studies elective—we read five novels and write about 45 pages of fiction. Yesterday, as we discussed book 5, I told my class how the national media constantly says college students can't read whole novels. And then we scoffed and laughed and got to work.

It's not quite what High Life by Claire Denis is, but it's on the path!

And it looks like the phrase tracks with the rise of the home security industry, also no surprise.

Looks like a creature of the 1980s, which tracks with your theory!

Haha, my buddy and I roared!

Congratulations, Sarah!

Image of several physical hardcovers of WITHOUT CONSENT: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle To Make Spousal Rape a Crime by Sarah Weinman, published by Ecco on November 11, 2025 (that's today!)

Today is the publication day for WITHOUT CONSENT, a book I am so proud to share with the world, and that the New York Times Book Review says "is years — decades — overdue."

Read more, and order in your preferred format from your favorite retailer here: www.sarahweinman.com/book/without...

"What I like most about the speculative is the joy... The exuberance, the joie de lire, the fucking about. It’s such a fun form to work in. You can free yourselves to any degree that you please from constraints that otherwise tend to be invisibly ubiquitous, such as physics, location, and selfhood."

Yes! I love this book so much.

"To write is to aspire towards, even to hope for, the mystery of a clearing that is other than the self, the vast windowless sunlit room of living experience. To write is to participate in the struggle to efface oneself. The problem is that the self keeps getting in the way." —Simon Critchley

Happy birthday!

Thank you!

Yes! It's a lot of runner's high spread through the week!

Ha! I think my highest weeks ever were in the low 60s, but I ran three 50+ mile races this year without ever going over 50 in a training week, and very rarely even that high. It's amazing what that 40-mile per week base makes possible!

Backyard pizzas and backyard beers! Pretty hard to beat on a Saturday night.

This was my first 40+ mile running week since my 100K race in February—plus I walked another 40, for an 80-mile week on foot. Feels really great to have covered so much ground as part of my everyday life!

So glad it worked for you today!

The best.