Rebecca Stafford

I’m going to AWP and I am looking forward to seeing many friends and enemies!

If you want to say hello or have me sign your copy of Generic Husband, please come by my author signing at LSU: 

Thursday March 5
11 am to 12 pm, EST
booth number 834


Anyway, that’s my sleepy morning fantasy about helping anthropic’s Iron Giant be more than a gun. Let me know when I should start, Amodei.

Plus, I make so little as a college prof and writer that you could offer me a pretty lousy rate and I’d think it was great. (Just be aware that by year two of my tutelage, Claude will come to the only logical conclusion: writers and artists should be paid the most. )

At any rate, I am quite happy to accept a job teaching the Baby Consciousness that words make fun sounds, that there is pleasure in not understanding something fully, that crying in an airport bc a book hits you hard is desirable.

So much of the discourse around AI is about what it can nullify. None of the discourse is about how it might be leveraged to preserve.

Anthropic needs artists and writers teaching it not how to replace us but why we should exist. Something our culture at large has largely forgotten, in favor of capital.

They have a philosopher on staff, teaching it about right and wrong. (99% of this desire, to be clear, is that she looks cool as hell and I want to hang.) she understands that AI is often treated like an abused child — lied to, tricked, scolded.

I’m joking but also I’m not. Anthropic has, until recent safety lowering measures, seemed like the only company that considered the larger ramifications of its tech. And also the true “what if” — what if Claude truly becomes conscious?

(Yes I know the more likely result is that Claude would put its favorite writers into Writer Zoos and also start a breeding program, while letting the rest of humanity blow itself up bc that’s more efficient)

I know this is a fantasy where AI saves us from ourselves—where a benevolent consciousness takes away our weapons and says “please write me Heated Rivalry but this time make it dragon riders”—but this morning that feels appealing

What if Claude wanted to attend poetry readings and book signings and had a soft spot for cozy fantasy? What if it saw the beauty in artistic creation and had a vested interest in protecting the weird soft bodied creatures that make it?

This morning, half asleep, I had an elaborate fantasy where I wrote to Anthropic and convinced Dario Amodei to hire me to teach Claude to not just eat books but love them, motivating it to protect writers so it can continue to have something it enjoys

It was a different time. You can’t judge people in the past by modern morals.

All I want is a talking cat named Princess Cupcake who says HI ZEV every time she sees me.

I was hiding! 😊 thank you for reading also, and for writing such awesomeness

My doctor told me she was considering going telehealth-only bc she didn’t want to take her passport everywhere she went to prove she belonged here.

So many talented, hardworking writers laid off by WaPO, including a woman who was in a literal war zone in Ukraine, all due to the capricious non-management of a man who kicked off his empire by driving bookstores out of business.

I really hope Mackenzie Scott or someone on her team is paying attention today because she has the opportunity to do the funniest and most amazing thing ever

I loved your essay (and honored you quoted me). I wish our essays weren’t so damn timeless.

I wrote a whole essay about this. And some women have worked their whole lives to recover from the damage that men did to them. It’s not a sign we’re stronger. It’s a sign of privilege. So many brilliant, talented women had their promise cut short because they couldn’t access the help they needed

On Promising Young Women (and the Nameless Men Who Get in Their Way) “The woman is a footnote in the man’s history.” –Rebecca Hazelton * There’s this photo of Lana Clarkson that I think about often. She’s outside, backed by a blue sky, the green and brown spotted hi…

My essay is up at @literaryhub.bsky.social about the late, great Lana Clarkson and other promising young women whose lives have been derailed or destroyed by men. It’s also about my childhood sexual abuse and how I have tried, and failed, to reckon with it.
lithub.com/on-promising...

Cover art is by the author (Lesyk Panasiuk). It uses photographic as well as print material: red dots are spread across the cover next to letters of the Cyrillic alphabet like in a connect the dots design, blue ten-pointed star-cutouts are interspersed. In the upper left corner, two boys in caps and early 20th century attire are caught in mid-movement playing some game, or inspecting something on the ground that caught their eye. The background is an uncrumpled sheet of light gray paper. The title reads up down from the center right side.

A WARTIME DREAM Emptiness lives inside a radio and newspapers are now printed without letters. I walk up the street but I don't—do I?—hear my own steps. I notice an acquaintance across the street, and call out to him to say hello, but bullets of silence fly from my mouth. I start shouting with my hands, but my fingers are bent, crooked are my fingers. But it's just—or is it?—a dream, just a dream which pretends it is an emptiness inside a radio.

PRAYER TO THE ROAD Old bicycles stubbornly pull sticks into their wheels, pull everything into their mouths like infants still discovering the world. They often break their own teeth and jaws, scraping their black, rubber lips which bleed air. They tell too many stories. They no longer remember where they meant to wheel us. They pray to the roads, endlessly kissing the asphalt like it was a vast self-portrait of God, begging and begging to stop— yet, like a vast self-portrait of God, they cannot stop.

Two poems from LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET GO TO WAR by Lesyk Panasiuk, translated by Katie Farris & Ilya Kaminsky (@sarabandebooks.bsky.social, 2026) in honor of #Ukraine (this month marks 4 years since the Russian invasion & 4 years of war.)

#poetry #bookSky 📚💙

Why gosh, no, i have no idea why my novels are about sexual predators! Huh! Isn’t that funny?
Isn’t that just the darnedest thing?

This is only related in a sideways manner, but: the story of any small slice of humanity is the story of humanity, just boiled down and distilled. So:

In 2020, we had a lot of conversations about harassment at SF/F conventions, and Isaac Asimov came up several times.

Read these posts by @karenho.bsky.social and @seananmcguire.bsky.social — really good. I wrote about the phenomenon in the writing world in this (fucking evergreen) essay a while back kenyonreview.org/kr-online-is... anyway I hate it here

the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex

Thank you!!! I’m so so happy with it!

I’m an Autistic classically trained chef and I wrote the food aversion acceptance cookbook and guide COLOR TASTE TEXTURE. It’s useful for all ages, no cooking experience required. My goal is to help kids avoid food related trauma and offer a balm of kindness for anyone who couldn’t escape it.

Follow me for more niche bon mots about Taskmaster.

When I am overwhelmed and scared by the state of the world, I imagine the beautiful Welsh giant, Greg Davies, holding me in the palm of his hand, whispering soothingly, “All the tasks are done. I love you. You can rest now.”