Tom Kendall

Wake Island continues to be the most exploratory and sane outlet around. Constantly grounding while mind-expanding. They've returned to podcasting with this new episode: wakeisland.substack.com/p/evil-a-study…

Akira Kurosawa recounting the unforgettable experience of watching Solaris with Andrei Tarkovsky: “Andrei Tarkovsky was sitting in the corner of the screening room watching Solaris with me, but he got up as soon as the film was over and looked at me with a shy smile. I said to him, ‘It’s very good. It’s a frightening movie.’ He seemed embarrassed but smiled happily. Then the two of us went to a film union restaurant and toasted with vodka. Tarkovsky, who does not usually drink, got completely drunk and cut off the speakers at the restaurant, then began singing the theme of Seven Samurai at the top of his voice. I joined in, eager to keep up. At that moment, I was very happy to be on Earth.”

On Antoine Volodine's novel The Monroe Girls, an abject post-apocalyptic romantic comedy biblioklept.org/2026/05/07/on-…

@GabrielHart77 Good luck!

I just delivered the first draft of what could be the most important thing I’ve ever been involved with so I need a couple heartfelt Hail Marys out there. Outta the comfort zone, into the unknown. 🙏

Simultaneously intellectually rigorous and emotionally raw, DLR writes with a clarity that ought to be impossible about what lies beneath the zeitgeist.

In answer to the question: “Why do you write?” | Robert Coover biblioklept.org/2026/04/25/in-…

Over at my Svb$t@ck, I take a look at How I Killed the Universal Man by @TKendall30 from @WhiskeyTitBooks

@PMinervini @turingcop The airplane doesn’t fly with any intention. The pilot flies the aeroplane.

Let me say this clearly: airplanes cannot fly. Flying is an evolutionary mechanism that first insects and then dinosaurs used to avoid danger etc.

So What If A Strange Kid Makes A Film about Love? (Official Exhibition Catalogue) open.substack.com/pub/thomaskend…

A real honour to be read by one of my favourite blogs!

As many of the Top 100 books of the 21st Century as we could for in a tweet in order. 1. From Where We Are, Nicole Zelniker, Vine Leaves Press, 2024 2. Failure to Comply, Cavar, featherproof books, 2024 An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon, Akashic Books, 2017 How I Killed The Universal Man, Thomas Kendall, Whiskey Tit, 2023 Sea-Witch, Never Angeline Nørth, Inside the Castle, 2020 Bad Mexican, Bad American, José Hernández Díaz, Acre Books, 2024 The Berlin Wall, David Leo Rice, Whiskey Tit, 2024 Below the Falls, Rose McMeeking, Thirty West Publishing House, 2024 Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology, Lor Gislason, Third Estate Books, 2024 From the Belly, Emmett Nahil; Illustrated by Megan Llewellyn, Tenebrous Press, 2024 Bear Season, Gemma Fairclough, Wild Hunt Books, 2024 The Blue Mimes, Sara Daniele Rivera, Graywolf Press, 2024 How a Game Lives, Jacob Geller, Lost in Cult, 2024 The Psychographist, Carson Winter, Apocalypse Party, 2024 Eynhallow, Tim McGregor, Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2024 An Unkindness of Shadows: The Strange Adventures of Justin Margrave, John Linwood Grant, Lethe Press, 2024 Living in Cemeteries, Corey Farrenkopf, JournalStone Publishing, 2024 The Skinless Man Counts to Five: And Other Tales of the Macabre, Paul Jessup, Underland Press, 2024 My Lesbian Novel, Renee Gladman, Dorothy, 2024 I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, Mac Crane, Catapult, 2023 You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis, Kelly Weber, Omnidawn, 2023 I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, Taylor Byas, Soft Skull Press, 2023 “You Just Need To Lose Weight” And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon, Beacon Press, 2023 Freedom House, KB Brookins, Deep Vellum Publishing, 2023 spellbook for the sabbath queen, Elisheva Fox, Belle Point Press, 2023 Personal Problem, Brendan Joyce, Grieveland, 2023 the abyss is staring back, nat raum, Querencia Press, 2023 So, Who’s Courage?, tommy wyatt blake, Bullshit Lit, 2023 Pantoum Stress Disorder, MNJames, fifth wheel press, 2023 The Burden Of Joy, Lexi Kent-Monning, Rejection Letters, 2023 Nature Trail Stories, Shannon McLeod, Thirty West Publishing House, 2023 Late Nights at Full Moon Records, Sarah Edmonds, Thirty West Publishing House, 2023 OKPsyche, Anya Johanna DeNiro, Small Beer Press, 2023 Prokaryote Season, Leo Fox, Silver Sprocket, 2023 This Conversation is Being Recorded, Hannah Kezema, Game Over Books, 2023 Irna, Maria, Fiona & Me, Edcel Javier Cintrón-González, Spoonfuls Chapbooks, 2023 Troll, Dave Fitzgerald, Whiskey Tit, 2023 Split Tooth, Tanya Tagaq, And Other Stories, 2023 [NSFW], David Scott Hay, Whiskey Tit, 2023 The Hurting Kind, Ada Limón, Milkweed Editions, 2022 Beast at Every Threshold, Natalie Wee, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022 Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, Chen Chen, BOA Editions, 2022 Almanac of Useless Talents, Michael Chang, CLASH Books, 2022 x( )-id#top100 #books #writercommunity

THE TRENCHES a novel coming late 2026 from @ampsulphate #bookstagram #indielit #horrorbookstagram

ANNOUNCEMENT I have a new novel coming out with @AmpSulphate later this year. THE TRENCHES More info soon.

‘ Chat GPT et al. actually feels regressive to me in a lot of ways, though I suppose  it’s typical of our culture that advanced forms of aggregation are being treated as progress.’

My conversation with Thomas Kendall is now up on YouTube. Thomas' book is one of the most conceptually ambitious novels I've read in a long time and this conversation was super fun. You should listen -> youtu.be/6NOIIZMCJtg?si…

A short clip from my conversation with Thomas Kendall on writing his wildly ambitious posthuman noir, HOW I KILLED THE UNIVERSAL MAN. youtu.be/6NOIIZMCJtg?si…

youtu.be/6NOIIZMCJtg?si… has a really enjoyable (for me at least) talk with @chriszeischegg here

@xraylitmag @ErgotPress

Perry Ruhland talks to Samuel M. Ross about his novel 'The Veldt Institute' ! interesting discussion about what 'ambient literature' could be: "It’s not a genre so much as a catch-all for people creating form-spare, sensation-heavy literature..." xraylitmag.com/samuel-m-moss-…

A clearing, open.substack.com/pub/thomaskend…

"There are no entertaining moments in 'Mirror' (1975). In fact I am categorically against entertainment in cinema: it is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience." --- Andrei Tarkovsky Full Excerpt: "'Mirror' (1975) is an autobiographical film. The things that happen are real things that happened to people close to me. That is true of all the episodes in the film. But why do people complain that they cannot understand it? The facts are so simple, they can be taken by every one as similar to the experience of their own lives. But here we come up against something that is peculiar to cinema: the further a viewer is from the content of a film, the closer he is; what people are looking for in cinema is a continuation of their lives, not a repetition. There are no entertaining moments in the film. In fact I am categorically against entertainment in cinema: it is as degrading for the author as it is for the audience. The purpose of 'Mirror', its inspiration, is that of a homily: look, learn, use the life shown here as an example. There are so many films now, and they are all so different, that very soon it will be impossible to plan for distribution to cinemas. That will be the beginning of a new phase in the development of film, which is after all the youngest art form, it is only about seventy years old. Films will start to be handed out as cassettes, people will take them home, every viewer will find himself face to face with the film he particularly likes. And what of cinema, the mass medium, you may ask ? Mass is not a criterion of quality. The same could be said about the number of people involved in the making of a film. Numbers are not the point. A small team working together is preferable to a large collective. Another question: What is going to happen to Mirror? We don't know yet. For the moment the film is only being shown in three cinemas, and they started with two. They are trying it out first, because the organs responsible for distribution are afraid it might be a failure. When they heard that people sat on and wouldn't leave, one of the highly placed distribution officials observed that normal people leave the cinema." [A talk by Tarkovsky in the Building Institute, 1975 about his film 'Mirror' (1975)]