wrote a bit about Fish Tales & black women's lit

Nice seeing my book “Afterlives of the Plantation” with Laura Helton’s wonderful “Scattered and Fugitive Things.” Laura & I were on fellowship together SchomburgCenter in 2019 workshopping the chapters that became these books. How special to see them together! #FullCircleMoment

Wonderful example of the kind of work Princeton University’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities (IHUM) makes possible. “Toni Morrison: Kinesthetics and Kinship,” convened by Victoria McCraven and Amber Stanford. artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/whats/news/gra…

RIP John Martin, publisher of Bukowski, Bowles, and (a bit of a surprise?) early Joyce Carol Oates. The story of how he started Black Sparrow Press is right out of one of the down-and-out books he published. nytimes.com/2025/07/10/boo…

Congratulations to the honorable mention of this year’s SHARP (@[email protected]) Book History Prize, Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, for REQUIRED READING: THE LIFE OF EVERYDAY TEXTS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE Princeton University Press #SHARP2025

Congratulations to the honorable mention of this year’s SHARP (@[email protected]) Book History Prize, Mark Lester, for DEUTERONOMY AND THE MATERIAL TRANSMISSION OF TRADITION (Brill) #SHARP2025

To this debate one should add Evan Brier’s excellent new book NOVEL COMPETITION: AMERICAN FICTION AND THE CULTURAL ECONOMY, 1965–1999 U of Iowa Press. Brier tackles the question of “mattering” head on and tracks the decline in novel-reading over time. nytimes.com/2025/07/10/opi…

Lost the game but won in trolling.

A man of deep goodness, warmth, talent, and charm. He challenged himself in music, art, cinema, spoken word and writing. We did Shakespeare together, crime drama and played dear friends on TV at one point. Art imitating life. Forever youthful, he had a huge capacity for joy but

'It’s Possible To Be Happy And To Have Love': Malcolm-Jamal Warner On The Joy His Wife And Daughter Brought Him essence.com/lifestyle/pare… via @ESSENCE

Amy Von Lintel's "Art at the Crossroads: The Surprising Aesthetics of the Texas Panhandle" is superb art history. I grew up in the Panhandle, and this is the kind of book that makes you proud to be from a place. (And what a beautifully published book, Texas Tech University Press!)

A name that could be read front to back and back to front with hardly any notice: "The verses at the center of the mystery were discovered by another notable writer: Montague Rhodes James, a medievalist scholar now better known for his ghost stories” nytimes.com/2025/07/15/wor…

This could literally pass as a scene straight from The Office

Best detail of the “lost” Roger Corman FANTASTIC FOUR (1994): "the set was recycled from another Corman movie, a 'Jurassic Park' knockoff called "Carnosaur.’” Do YOU remember seeing CARNOSAUR at your local Blockbuster? I do. nytimes.com/2025/07/25/mov…

#HappyBirthday to novelist, playwright, and activist #JamesBaldwin! (1924-1987). He was born #onthisday, 8/2. Explore some of the albums in our collections featuring #Baldwin. #SchomburgCenter #Schomburg100 #Blackauthors #BlackLiterature #Harlem ow.ly/HbYA50WyWQg

As John Keene puts it, Essex Hemphill “knew that the most devastating critique could hinge on many of poetry’s numerous resources, all of which he wielded when needed.” thenation.com/article/cultur…

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas joined Left of Black host  Mark Anthony Neal to discuss her book 'The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games' (@NYUPress) youtube.com/watch?v=NAG7m3…

To be reprinted this November by New York Review Books. Embarrassing to admit that I did not know that Jack Kerouac had a daughter, a gifted writer whom he kept at a distance through his life; fascinating memoirist novel, a darker/female version of On the Road.

An exquisite appreciation of J. M. W. Turner’s vision that doubles as a travel essay about how the landscape that was the subject of his art has changed from his time to our own. nytimes.com/2025/08/01/art…

Congratulations to Michael James Harrington for co-winning the Mary Esteve Emerging Scholar Essay Prize for his essay on the queerness of Black Western iconography. Kudos to Post45 Journal for publishing Michael’s and other winners’ work in this special issue. post45.org/2025/08/wild-w…