Ellen Kirkpatrick

And now we are two Celebrating Flaming Hydra’s second birthday

TODAY: celebrate our second birthday with us with some free selections from the archive! 🎈🎂 www.google.com/url?q=https:...

Solitary Pursuits, or Frankenstein and the Toll of Creation On ambition, isolation, and why the way we make things matters just as much as what we make.

A brief look at what it means to create in solitude, how process shapes outcome, and why making things alone carries its own toll. Frankenstein, tech ambition, creative solitude, and the cost of disappearing into the work.

#WritingLife #WritingCommunity

Woodpig Press is a new micro-press based in Wales. We're a loose collection of publishing freelancers who oppose AI and think books should be more about art than money. We want to publish the unusual fiction and non-fiction that mainstream publishers ignore.

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#booksky

cc @davidlynchsworlds.bsky.social -- thought this might interest you 👀🙂

Firebug's Passin' A brief, fictional remembrance of David Lynch

A small-town remembrance for David Lynch, or a version of him imagined through memory, myth, and the strange glow someone can leave behind.
New piece up now.

#DavidLynch

ellenkirkpatrick.substack.com/p/firebugs-p...

Loved this! I had no idea about the 1939 NYC guide, and now I’m completely obsessed. Clearly I need to track down a copy… my reading list just got a lot more interesting.

The Ending That Changed Stranger Things Forever… Stranger Things wrapped on 31 January 2025, a day that shows how endings and beginnings are only what we choose to see in a moment — New Year’s Eve or Old Year’s Night, depending on the angle.

Been thinking about how a single shift in perspective can completely rewrite a story.

My latest piece digs into #StrangerThings and the ending that reframed the entire series for me.

'What’s missing isn’t nostalgia, it’s the nerve to deliver on the story’s own radical promise.'

#TVThoughts

The Bulb Region The Bulb Region is an online literary journal dedicated to short form. Prose, poetry, comics, essays, humor, hybrid, and anything in-between.

LAUNCHING SOON 🌷 THE BULB REGION!

Fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, prose poetry, hybrid, comics, cultural criticism, personal essays, and everything that falls in-between!

Save the date: January 13, 2026.

bulbregion.com

𝘊𝘖𝘖𝘗 by Nida Sajid is officially out tomorrow! There is so much buzz around this book — MULTIPLE people who stopped by the Tower Hamlets Book Sale said they’d come specifically for this!!! — and we can’t wait for it to finally hit the shelves 😌

www.hajarpress.com/books/coop

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Once again: @sirosenbaum.bsky.social with the most poignant and memorable comic you'll read this year. No kidding.

It's all here on @flaminghydra.com, so subscribe today.

Libraries are transformative. In fact, Farnham Library saved me. Kept me afloat when I was being bullied at South Farnham Middle School in the 1980s.

This poem from Whatever You Do, Just Don't is my homage to it...

Children Deserve Better Survivors of child abuse have been having a rough time recently, with the late child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes in the news nearly every day. Even though nearly all are united in denouncing h...

TODAY: @modernistwitch.myatproto.social on the rights of the child. “The first essay I ever wrote was a plea to adults to take children seriously. Forty or so years down the line, I find I am writing the same essay.” flaminghydra.com/children-des...

"Themes Around Human Connection and Loneliness Are a Constant Throughline in All of My Works" - Rein Lee on Exploring Identity and Queerness in Comics, and Finding Your Way in the Small Press Communit... Rein Lee is one of Broken Frontier's 2025 'Six Small Press Creators to Watch' and they talk to us about their comics and practice.

Last week at Broken Frontier..THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH! “Themes Around Human Connection & Loneliness Are a Constant Throughline in All of My Works” – @rein-lee.bsky.social on Exploring Identity & Queerness in Comics, & Finding Your Way in the Small Press Community. www.brokenfrontier.com/rein-lee-int...

A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness - Pluto Press A devastating indictment against international complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine

Honoured to endorse Francesca Albanese's book, out now with @plutopress.bsky.social

A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness: Reports on Israel’s Genocide in Palestine.

Free to download, with the option to donate to @unrwa.org.
.

@franceskalbs.bsky.social

www.plutobooks.com/product/a-mo...

YouTube video by revolution.social with @rabble “Think Like a Commoner" Author David Bollier on the Commons & Why Open Platforms Aren't Enough

A great conversation on @Revolution.social podcast with host @rabble.nz Henshaw-Plath. We discussed the power of network protocols, the dynamics of commoning in digital spaces, and Big Tech failures to understand their dependence on trust and sharing. Refreshing! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5nZ...

Captain Nemo: A Swap Story, or Why We Can’t Barter Our Way to a Better World — Pop Junctions Ellen Kirkpatrick dives into the character of Captain Nemo, particularly Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s gender-swapped version. She argues that story is the beating heart of social action, helpin...

✨I have a new essay at @popjunctions.bsky.social on swap storytelling, radical imagining, and why swapping approaches often fall short—not just in fiction, but in social and political realms too.
Oh, and Captain Nemo 🦑
Big thanks to the Pop Junctions team for the space and support💖
bit.ly/nemo-swap

Ellen Kirkpatrick Reviews Neige Sinno — Barrelhouse Can literature bear witness without aestheticizing pain? Can story save us? Make us stronger? And what even counts as story?

Thrilled to share that my review of Sad Tiger is now live at Barrelhouse✨

Neige Sinno’s genre-defying memoir—trans. by Natasha Lehrer, out from Seven Stories Press—left me breathless. Grateful to @barrelhouse.bsky.social for the space & support💖
tinyurl.com/sadtiger-rev...
@sevenstories.bsky.social

Five Times I’ve Seen My Father Cry by Matti Ben-Lev When my sister was born. I was seven. That swollen creature, face plum and puffy. I’ve never seen my father’s eyes shiver quite like that, not even when Mom left, ten years later. After their divorce,…

one of my fave things about theme calls is when they inspire and turn into work that I'd maybe never expected but that totally knocks me out. today's story from Matti Ben-Lev is such a perfect example of that.

"When I got my second DUI..."

https://www.havehashad.com/ylr2s

One of the year's highlights this 👇

Wonderful!! Thank you so much! Excited to read it... 🤩

Just caught this episode – so good! Marc Garrett’s reflections on being a working-class artist hit hard. Great conversation exploring class, creativity, and resistance.🔥A proper shout from the margins. #FeralClass #RadicalArt #MustRead

Hello! Congrats on your publication in Feminist Review! The abstract really caught my eye. I don’t have institutional access—would you be open to sharing a copy for personal research use? Thanks so much! 👋📚🙏

"Cartoonists for Palestine" is a beautiful 250-page book featuring over 60 comic stories. I'm honored to be part of it with Issa, a story written by Francesca Mannocchi. The book was published by the American publisher Crucial Comix @mirkdrop.bsky.social

📖 Order the book here: tinyurl.com/26exa9wf

Page 2 Double page spread. Left hand side a large full page panel. Terran omega floating in space. An armoured heroic looking character carrying a staff of pure light and wearing a helmet that’s a cross between dr fate and galactus. Floating behind here (and where’s she’s flying towards) is a large chunky salvage ship (which is big and blocky and has two very obvious hands for gripping salvage) Terran Omega : "No, I think I'd like to do this myself" Second page has a column of panels. First: Terran omega flying towards a door (she flies gently while standing) Second; her hand reaches towards the door and is cracking with energy Third: her helmet and staff now inside the airlock of the ship Terran: I'm inside Terran: ... Radio: *static* Terran: Hmmm... on my own. Terran: Ok Fourth: she’s walking carefully down a corridor filled with smoke Terran: Now. Let's look around.

You want free comics? I got free comics...!

If you subscribe to my patreon.com/pauljholden you can read this in full colour (so far!)
Terran Omega Page 2-3

EMMYS WATCH 2025 — Television that Changes Us (Part 1): An Interview with the Peabody Award’s Jeffrey Jones on We Disrupt This Broadcast — Pop Junctions ‘Emmys Watch 2025’ showcases critical responses to the series nominated for Outstanding Drama, Outstanding Comedy, and Outstanding Limited Series at that 77th Primetime Emmy Awards. Contributions to t...

To kick off #EMMYSWATCH2025, Pop Junctions shares a 2-part interview on the @peabodyawards.bsky.social/Centre for Media and Social Impact podcast, We Disrupt this Broadcast. In Part 1, Lauren Alexandra Sowa interviews Jeffrey P. Jones about "Television that Changes Us".

365 Days of Trans (January) by Tyler Tea Friend Trans Day of Being Hungover Trans Day of Rebirth Trans Day of Forgetting to Take the Estradiol Trans Day of Getting a Papercut Trans Day of Getting It Trans Day of Getting Over It Trans Day of Yes,…

the streak of banger new list poems continues today with Tyler Tea Friend!

"...Trans Day of Horror
Trans Day of Honor
Trans Day of Dishonoring
Trans Day of Dishing..."

https://www.havehashad.com/7ho8l

Good luck with the novel 💭🎉 can't wait to see how your ideas evolve through the research... 🤩

woot! big congrats (this one's been a favourite of mine for ages, soooo good to see it getting the love it deserves!!)

a woman in a suicide squad costume is sitting on the ground reading a book . Alt: Harley Quinn is sitting in a cell drinking espresso and reading a book.

Thank you, and thank you for including it in this issue! As an emerging writer, I really appreciate your support and the space to talk about an issue I care deeply about, and I'm excited to see how readers respond and the conversations that may arise...