B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 03/09/2026realized today that one of the myths I consistently write against is the guarantee that knowledge saves 161
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 23/08/2026late summer prairie, Wisconsin; whenever I see the phrase "the door into summer," this is the summer I imagine beyond the frame 0193
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 21/08/2026reading some John Crowley in the wake of his death & thinking abt LLM proliferation in scholarship. the thesis of Crowley's oeuvre is that esoterica & the desire for knowledge of a secret world is one way of rendering love for *this* world; the real was the secret, the marvel, all along. + 192
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 21/08/2026another AY, another year of confronting the reality that the worst abusers of AI in the university are not students but faculty & admin 0130
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 17/08/2026TIL Wisconsin has an official state soil (Antigo silt loam) & there’s a song about it 3307
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 15/08/2026don't have better to say than what's been said, but I'll note that my uni had a white tenured prof in the 2010s who we tried to fire for doxxing a POC grad student so bad she got death threats. he sued & WI supreme court overturned the firing. not just allowed but legally enforced double standards 140
Reposted by B. PladekB. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 13/08/2026using this as an excuse to post an extraordinary description of shearing a sheep from Wescott's 1924 novel The Apple of the Eye. such perfect minute observation--the click of the shears on dried dung! the pith color of the inner fleece! even the choreography of sheep and human bodies is so exact 163
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Love Wescott so much--brilliant stylist, keen observer of people & esp of smalltown rural WI life at the turn of the c20. Always thrilled to see his work republished! 160
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 10/08/2026great state-of-the-problem essay that elegantly links the LLM-scandal newscycle's conseq for marginalized writers w extra/intracommunity discourses abt what counts as "authentic" rep & the industry's old, old racism problems; also applies to recent academic scandals. 175
Reposted by B. Pladektits andronicus @tambourine.bsky.social · 09/08/2026John Crowley on death www.laphamsquarterly.org/medicine/mid...laphamsquarterly.orgIn the Midst of Death | John CrowleyIf the universe can’t outlive or transcend individual consciousness, does death even really exist? 38234
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/08/2026if Hong wins the primary & establishment dems don’t get behind her & a far-right crank takes office, BUT they can then self-congratulate on telling a story that “progressives don’t win,” it’s gonna be over the bodies of a lot of trans kids. this is my biggest fear in re the gubernatorial race 030
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 07/08/2026I had forgotten that Djuna Barnes's Nightwood takes place in the Les Misérables extended universe 040
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 06/08/2026finally reading Wisconsin Death Trip, only to discover it quotes extensively from my fav forgotten WI writer Glenway Wescott as a faithful chronicler of the c19-20 rural American nightmareunmpress.comWisconsin Death TripFirst published in 1973, this remarkable book about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town has become a cult classic. Lesy has collected and arra... 230
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 06/08/2026so far this year, w notable exceptions of Plastic Prism Void & Magic Mountain, my best reads have been re-reads or unpublished MSes. & I've hit some stinkers--not "not for me" but books that gratingly fail to achieve their goals ANYWAY this is to say: rec me a thing u loved. doesn't need to be new 330
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 01/08/2026reread Little, Big & while it's still a stirring love-letter to the real world (only half-disguised as a love-letter to the world beyond the real), man oh man we just did not need all that stuff about Frederick Barbarossa 041
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 30/07/2026not excited for yet another WI election that will significantly impact my ability to live here safely becoming a National Referendum 050
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 26/07/2026yesterday I returned from 2 weeks of hiking in the US west w nearly no internet. like its ppl, this country is at once brutal & deadly & heartbreakingly beautiful. it's also parched, charred, clearcut, often over 100F. idk how the west will survive the 2030s. anyway here's me at the Badlands 0110
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 24/07/2026new one from me @lightspeedmagazine.com: a bird-and-people refuge/e camp in a water-wars future; children learning violence despite their parents’ best efforts; a ghost; a tragedy; maybe an epiphany. This one’s sad. 32610
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 17/07/2026hello my small fable about the lake of all middles in this, along with some amazing writers! 051
Reposted by B. PladekLocus Magazine @locusmag.bsky.social · 16/07/2026INCOMING: The first part of the TOC for our new anthology project! First up, the short stories. We have so many amazing and talented writers in this section, give lots of love to all of them! Stay tuned for the NOVELETTES! Follow & back us @ kck.st/4wtYJ6X in bio 04315
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 10/07/2026old hyperlocal histories of small towns are such bizarre & fascinating reading & it‘s sad that the internet/death of print journalism means they’re unlikely to be printed anymore 082
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/07/2026also I'm in this! with my fuck-AI-in-literature-education @lightspeedmagazine.com story from way back in Jan 2025 041
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/07/2026clear distillation of a damning colonial angle to the current cross-genre zeal for purple nonsense metaphors lauded as "poetic" (in re: Granta & AI): "The real question... is why a particular form of trained, statistical incoherence was so readily legible to its judges as postcolonial seriousness."africasacountry.comHow to read postcolonial writingThe Granta controversy surrounding a Commonwealth Prize-winning story tells us less about AI than about the enduring metropolitan expectation that writing from the South should sound opaque, excessive... 32411
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/07/2026the great folks @locusmag.bsky.social are crowdfunding a new best-of anthology--starting with 2025, a banner year for short fiction! In a time when traditional publishing faces so many threats, collections like this matter more than ever. support it at locusmag.com/anthology! 134
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 07/07/2026hi booksky, looking for recs for spec novels that end w magic *returning* to the world; bonus pts if lit-spec; bonus bonus pts if they end w a moment of surreal/ambiguous transcendence. examples of the vibe: Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist; Clarke's Jonathan Strange; Crowley's Little, Big; Ryman's Was 10158
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 02/07/2026MKE, ICE is on the south side kidnapping people (Voces as well as local media confirmed). GFM for this man and his family in the post below. www.jsonline.com/story/news/l...jsonline.comHe's lived in the US since age 4. ICE detained him in Milwaukee crackdownGiovanni Sosa's case highlights the expansive criteria ICE is using as it detains people in Milwaukee and its new pattern of public street arrests. 100
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 01/07/2026the new Lisa Robertson (Riverwork, 2026) is lovely & also feels like it was written in 1998 or maybe 2003, w its archives & indices & rhizomes & Barthes. first book I've encountered where a turn-of-the-20thc style feels so mannered & jarringly *past* 020
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 30/06/2026scrotus giving free speech rights to unlimited campaign spending while stripping trans women of their constitutional protections & upholding birthright citizenship by the slimmest of margins = the final telos of citizens united. people isn't people. only money is people 130
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 16/06/2026SH is a vital magazine in the SFF short fiction ecosystem, committed to uplifting marginalized voices & promoting a horizontal editorial model. They're also one of still-too-few outlets for excellent reviews. Please support them if you can! 011
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 13/06/2026ok wow so was not expecting a mic drop of a ghost scene at the end of The Magic Mountain, a book I thought was unspoilerable bc the final twist is literally just WWI 170
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 12/06/2026so happy OFTV's back with a new ep that gives the people what we want: fun trans history & an outro that's a nearly full play of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon." never have I felt so seen 072
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 11/06/2026I received this "informed" poll, which was v obvs funded by the Rodriguez campaign but did not disclose so when I asked (repeatedly) abt it. It was a joke; scant mention of other candidates, biased questions, seemed to be digging for ammo against Hong in particulartherecombobulationarea.newsNew poll shows top three emerging in Democratic primary for governor in WisconsinPlus: In an "informed" vote poll where candidate biographies are shared, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez leads the field with 33%. 000
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 06/06/2026the toilet museum and my MC: a thread. for my novel DRY LAND (2023) I found photo referents for chars. my MC was based an unknown guy in a 1930s horseshoe team pic I saw in the dinky basement museum of the Kohler Design Center—a bath/toilet showroom in Sheboygan WI that features a wall of toilets 1226
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 04/06/2026listening to Silas Marner while writing a public lecture on Les Mis & having just read Little Dorrit: I've somehow ended up in a c19 vortex of world-weary calloused dad/Daddies being Fixed by adopting waifish daughters 160
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 03/06/2026went into this James Purdy novel expecting gay art drama, 1930s edition; received instead sadomasochistic gay Faulkner. not complaining! but what a wind-up, what a pitch 050
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 02/06/2026this weekend my husband & I visited Pendarvis, an old Cornish miner's cottage c. 1830 in southwest WI that was restored into a tearoom in the 1930s by an openly gay couple, Bob Neal & Edgar Hellum; a reminder that there's so much interesting queer history outside the metropoles 0151
Reposted by B. PladekNatalia Theodoridou @natalia-theodoridou.com · 31/05/2026😳 SOUR CHERRY won the Locus Award for First Novel!! 😳 Thank you so much @locusmag.bsky.social and congratulations to all finalists and winners! I wish I could have been there with you all. 🚀💫🌗🍒 5729939
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 31/05/2026my fuck-AI @lightspeedmagazine.com story featuring a broken-spirited middleaged trans man, evaporated Lake Michigan, & reddit being the only social media to survive the US's fracture, is in this! 3348
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 30/05/2026this is v good. sending out energy into the universe that we can get more trans masc litfic like CRAWL / Realistic Fiction (& also unlike them. I too love horny irony abt masculinity’s inherent absurdity & am tired of Representation, but I want more than both. fill the desert) 142
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 29/05/2026finished (v rough) draft of new novel. still so much work before I've got a beta draft, but it's done. I've had a magical-thinking self-denial thing going since last Sept in hopes of bribing the universe to make a publishing thing happen. It didn't, but this did. maybe it was abt this all along. 1180
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 29/05/2026TIL that my uni has the papers & art of Karl Priebe, a fantastic c20 WI queer surrealist known for his detailed bird paintings & loving/celebratory portraits of the midwest's Black arts community, incl his lover, Ebony editor Frank Harriott, who died tragically young; Priebe was his caregiver 1121
B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 26/05/2026just read a book abt a clever, vicious, unreflective MC whose author despises her so much she winds up being boring & the book's (unfortunately strenuous) effort to Say Something a hacky mess. feels very sins of fiction: 2026 edition. our little rut in the Malebolge 280
Reposted by B. PladekB. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 24/05/2026an oak savanna in spring is the greenest green 192
Reposted by B. PladekIgnyte Award-Nominated Writer/Editor LP Kindred @lpkindred.bsky.social · 24/05/2026Achievement unlocked! Shout out to @tbonejenkins.bsky.social and @artlitlab.bsky.social for inviting me, @bpladek.bsky.social and @alexjennings.bsky.social to read and discuss our work. It was mad fun and an incredible experience. 1154