Summer Brennan

As I prepare for my book release next month I am hearing that prospective reviewers can no longer find a home for reviews

I’m noticing pubs where I placed book essays are no longer publishing

The essay as a form is at risk and the essay is thinking on the page which is to say, thinking is at risk

The Fever Going Through Old Notebooks Part 29: "The dead, the living, the hour, the dream. Where were the—what do you call them again—demarcations?"

"The dead, the living, the hour, the dream. Where were the—what do you call them again—demarcations? The makeshift ice packs didn’t seem to be doing much."

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#BookSky

What's next, the Department of Death?

I am trying to bring back the good but rather short review. But I do love the LRB and those lengthy reviews.

In a world where everything seems to have become polarized, is there still a place for the positive but mixed book review?

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“Presumably, these different AI agents are trained on the oeuvres of the people they are meant to imitate, though the legality of this content-harvesting remains murky at best, and the subject of many, many copyright lawsuits.”

So this is really happening. Coming soon: The Book Supplement. First issue almost done. Four books, four reviewers.

A second issue for later in March is also in the works.

so nice to see @saribotton.bsky.social finally get the literary profile treatment in the nyt today. sari has been out here doing the good work for writers for SO LONG, and as a fellow not-young i am extremely grateful to have her in our corner!

A great fog has enveloped Baltimore. The poets are coming.

American publishing regularly punishes women in their 50s by simply not interviewing them for new jobs in the way @saribotton.bsky.social describes here. So it’s great revenge that she launched Oldster magazine on her own, now with 70k subscribers.

Thank god everything is so super normal and chill right now.

NUP won’t physically be at AWP, but their books are 40% off now through March 8th. You can buy all three of my books in one go and many others 💚💚💚https://nupress.northwestern.edu/author/wendy-c-ortiz/

*it's

jesus christ see what I mean?

It's all Very Bad.

I know its lifeboat not life boat listen I'm tired and this is what happens when you're floating in the frozen sea of the media apocalypse.

Substack is Self-Publishing—Do The Same Rules Apply? Some thoughts on gatekeeping, book reviews, and the new literary slush pile.

I’ve heard Substack described multiple times as a “life boat” for writers fleeing the institutions of a sinking industry (iceberg, thy name be Jeff), but in the deluge of cultural dissolution and soul-drowning waves of AI slop, we must build not just a life boat but an ark.

Substack is Self-Publishing—Do The Same Rules Apply? Some thoughts on gatekeeping, book reviews, and the new literary slush pile.

For those very passionate about the idea that unpaid book review assignment editors should seek out and assign coverage for self-published books, I'd challenge you to create a high-quality, reliable, concise, human-vetted discovery mechanism for such titles. www.awritersnotebook.org/p/substack-i...

When Life Gave Her Ageism, She Created Oldster

Had the good fortune to talk a bit about Oldster Magazine with Kasia Pilat at The New York Times.

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/s...

Substack is Self-Publishing—Do The Same Rules Apply? Some thoughts on gatekeeping, book reviews, and the new literary slush pile.

“I’ve heard Substack described multiple times as a “life boat” for writers fleeing the institutions of a sinking industry…, but in the deluge of cultural dissolution and soul-drowning waves of AI slop, we must build not just a life boat but an ark.” H/T @summerbrennan.bsky.social

Monet is such a favorite of mine.

I also got to visit Giverney and see the Japanese Garden.

This essay has me loving him even more!

People are out there mixing LLMs with an at-best 30-40% failure rate into the load-bearing supports of our society and expecting what, that this is a good thing?

“I shall stay here regardless,” [Monet] said, when friends told him to leave Giverny for his own safety during the war. “If those barbarians wish to kill me, I shall die among my canvases, in front of my life’s work.”

The Texture of Wartime Monet Going Through Old Notebooks Part 28: "Madame, you are standing too close to the paintings."

"Monet’s famous waterlilies were made during the war, and more people should know that. This is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t find the words. Look and you can see beneath the surface of the water: that dread, that waiting. Would it be destroyed, the garden in Normandy, like so many others?"

Democrats Demand Answers for Federal Prison Staffing Shortage After Corrections Officers Flee for ICE Jobs Citing a ProPublica investigation that found that workers at federal lockups had been lured away to ICE, lawmakers asked how the Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to address the agency’s “unsafe conditi...

Citing a ProPublica investigation that found that workers at federal lockups had been lured away to ICE, lawmakers asked how the Federal Bureau of Prisons plans to address the agency’s “crisis conditions” and “pervasive shortages” of critical staff.

Sitting in UN meetings about efforts to ban "autonomous killer robots," or lethal autonomous weapons, as I believe they are now called, back in the 2010s, I never imagined it would be this... this ...

Honestly I have no words.

It's been years since I worked at the UN in high level meetings, but it's still incredibly strange (and uniquely sickening, no matter the person) when I learn that someone I sat in a room with has been killed during acts of war.

The Texture of Wartime Monet Going Through Old Notebooks Part 28: "Madame, you are standing too close to the paintings."

"Monet’s famous waterlilies were made during the war, and more people should know that. This is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t find the words. Look and you can see beneath the surface of the water: that dread, that waiting. Would it be destroyed, the garden in Normandy, like so many others?"