Jennifer Berney 🌈

I'm thrilled to come full circle with this excerpt from my book in @Longreads today. Publishing an essay with them two years ago led to this book finding a home. So grateful. longreads.com/2021/02/09/bin…

Hundreds of salmon are now spawning in Klamath River tributaries above the 4 recently dismantled dams for the first time 60 & 112 years. It is exciting and bodes well for the future. Still, it will take several years for fish runs to recover & there is still much more work to do.

sparing myself the small personal violence of listening to another "interviews with undecided voters" podcast

@krysmalcolmbelc whoa, this is fascinating and somehow appeals to me more than NaNoWriMo (maybe because there's less opportunity to lose momentum and abandon the project)

a prof in my MFA had us do this and tbh it’s one of the things i remember most from school. before those 3 harrowing days i just didn’t think of myself who could write a lot of words in a sitting and turns out i can 🤷🏼 been thinking ever since about high volume workshop.

Did not predict the collective Tim Walz orgasm this site would become, but I'm here for it.

Tonic masculinity!!!!!!!!!

@RottenInDenmark I can't read these long explanations without imagining them trailing off, shaking their heads, frustrated by their own incoherence

Okay, time out. Listen up. Contrary to the vile disinformation being spread online, there are no trans women competing in boxing at the Olympics. In fact, there are no trans women competing at all in the Olympics. None. Zilch. There are two non-binary athletes competing who were assigned female at birth: track and field star Nikki Hiltz (U.S.) and soccer star Quinn (Canada). There is one trans man competing (that means he was assigned female at birth): Hergie Bacyadan (Philippines), who became the first trans man to ever compete at the Olympics. He was soundly defeated by unanimous decision in the first round of women’s boxing by China’s Li Quan. I take pride in all of these athletes who are breaking barriers, and it’s completely disgusting to watch insecure and hateful men on this site spread lies and half-truths about trans athletes. My congratulations to Ms. Quan on her resounding victory, to Mr. Bacyadan for his historic accomplishment in qualifying for the Games, to Hiltz and Quinn for their representation on the highest stage, and to every athlete living up to the highest standards of competition and character. We’re not gonna let bigots ruin these Games for us. They don’t get to have that power.

I have gone down so many reddit rabbit holes around PDA and audhd and parenting so I am so glad @JennBerney went deep on Low-Demand Amanda! romper.com/parenting/low-…

One fun activity is logging onto this site and then trying to figure out what essay everyone is talking about but not directly naming.

nevermind i have a walk from the parking garage so here’s one thing to think through: we don’t write essays to be loved! that’s our friends’ job! the self in CNF is crafted to address the topics at hand. knowing the “i” of the essay doesn’t mean you know the writer for real.

@realgirl_fieri yes!!

@realgirl_fieri It irks me when parents give a chipper "no thank you" when their kid is doing something like hitting them in the face. I'm in favor of not being reactive, but, like, "stop it, that hurts," feels more sincere.

I loved talking to Diana Whitney, and loved just as much being able to revisit that conversation by editing it for Electric Lit.

@JamesTateHill I laughed out loud

Every publisher rejection: we just don't know how to market this novel Every day in Publisher's Marketplace: Never Let Me Go meets The Shining if it were written by Willa Cather on an acid bender, in which a sentient grain of sand searches for its father who is a whale

[In response to a discussion board post about a livestock guardian dog nursing an orphaned kitten]

I just, um, saw a video of a barn cat nursing a *baby goat* in a farming Facebook group I'm in, and I am forever changed.

This essay is by far the most personal piece I have ever written, and publishing it feels like the scariest—and most important—thing I have ever done. It is about the hell that was my childhood, and how systems of power and abuse are created—and upheld. guernicamag.com/the-protagonis…

Book birthday! Thanks to all our writers and artists for sharing their amazing work. And to @WSUPress for making our dream of a book into reality.