Ellen Wayland-Smith

Thank you so much! 🙏

It's profoundly saddening to read that AP will no longer be assigning or running book reviews because readers don't engage with them enough and they take too much effort to plan and assign. People complain about critics as gatekeepers; wait until all that's left is marketing.

Selected Essays | Ellen Wayland-Smith on Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Point Podcast On this episode of the podcast, Jess and Zach return to Selected Essays to talk to Ellen Wayland-Smith about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s “My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion,” published in the New...

This month on our podcast, Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine return to Selected Essays to talk to @ellenws.bsky.social about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s essay “My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion”:
thepointmag.buzzsprout.com/1791285/epis...

Honestly one of my favorite Goodreads reviews for The Science of Last Things yet. Highly accurate!

Excited - a few late birthday presents just arrived, selections from @ellenws.bsky.social , @ferrisjabr.bsky.social , and @dghaskell.bsky.social . Only read the prefaces so far. But they all look wonderful! Where to start…?!

Thank you so much for the kind words! And happy birthday 🎉

No Kings On June 14—Flag Day—Donald Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday. A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn’t staged in Washington. ...

Find your local June 14th protest.
No to Kings.
www.nokings.org

Such a delight to speak with Helen Whybrow about her beautiful new memoir, The Salt Stones, for @orionmagazine.bsky.social. orionmagazine.org/departments/...

From time to time I like to share this starter pack I created. Help get #litmags off Twitter! Share this!

go.bsky.app/7cWNC2j

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

~Etty Hillesum

What Would It Take to Re-Sacralize Nature? | Los Angeles Review of Books Ellen Wayland-Smith admires how Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?” places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we regard as mere backdrop to human activity.

"Macfarlane’s book is a grand gesture toward reimagining our human obligation to the planet—not as anthropomorphic invention but as (re)discovery of an original, and now lost, trust." @ellenws.bsky.social examines Robert Macfarlane’s "Is a River Alive?" lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

What Would It Take to Re-Sacralize Nature? | Los Angeles Review of Books Ellen Wayland-Smith admires how Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?” places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we regard as mere backdrop to human activity.

Such a pleasure to review @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s stunning new book, “Is a River Alive?” For @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social. lareviewofbooks.org/article/what...

it feels like a gift when a butterfly appears out of nowhere.

[Butterflies by Odilon Redon]

The first measles death in the US in a decade -- the tragic, preventable death of a child whose parents chose not to protect them with vaccination -- should spark an immediate nation-wide campaign to ensure all children are protected against preventable diseases. Anything less is unconscionable.

If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy. Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly.

The attacks on DEI are a pretext for a much more radical agenda of reversing the gains of the civil rights movement, an objective the Trump administration is pursuing with zeal. A Great Resegregation. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

I've been thinking about this a lot since I read it. www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

Levan Book Chat—Ellen Wayland-Smith, The Science of Last Things A discussion of Ellen Wayland-Smith’s new book, The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self (Milkweed Press, October 2024). The author will be joined in conversation...

calendar.usc.edu/event/levan-... I’ll be in conversation with Eula Biss, Lochlann Jain, and Maggie Nelson next week, Friday January 31 at noon PST. All welcome to register— would love to see you there!

Interesting discussion of the fiction/nonfiction distinction— a question my creative writing students are always fascinated by.

Subscribed! I finally deleted FB so now I can read you here. ❤️

Thank you for reading! 🙏

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading.

Far from Hollywood's wealth, Los Angeles fire survivors feel forgotten Residents say that insurance companies might shortchange less affluent households.

The media has focused on wealthy, White neighborhoods. But the fire in Altadena--a racially and economically diverse suburb--deserves more attention, because insurance may not cover their rebuilding costs, forcing families out and leading the neighborhood to gentrify.
www.reuters.com/world/us/far...

Bluesky writer friends! Have you written something that you think would make a great movie? And would you want to hear pitches from a class of talented, motivated film students in lower Manhattan, in person or on Zoom?

Yeah, you would. (1/2)

Text: James Russell Lowell Prize Honorable Mention. Image: the book cover of My Dark Room.

Congratulations to Julie Park on her book My Dark Room receiving an honorable mention from the James Russell Lowell Prize at #MLA2025! Learn more about the book here: https://buff.ly/3VNPwXo.

Our Most Anticipated 2025 Books - Chicago Review of Books 15 books you need to add to your 2025 reading list.

Thank you @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social!
"We deserve more competent literary thrillers, and The Set Up more than delivers with a undeniable plot and sharp writing."
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
@jonwynn.bsky.social
chireviewofbooks.com/2025/01/06/o...

Oh I’m sorry! I was trying to credit my publisher Milkweed Editions. I guess they are not on here.

Thank you, @milkweed.bsky.social for hosting a reading of The Science of Last Things last night. And thank you to all the Minneapolis natives who braved 12 degree temperatures to be there. It was truly special.

And finally, here are some of the gorgeous gingerbread cookies my daughter decorated.