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B. Pladek

@bpladek.bsky.social
809 followers 622 following 828 posts

Ben. Literature scholar & writer; Ass. Prof. of English at Marquette University. He/him, boring transsexual. DRY LAND (2023, UWP): uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/D/Dry-Land; other stuff elsewhere. website: bpladek.net

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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
realized today that one of the myths I consistently write against is the guarantee that knowledge saves
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
late summer prairie, Wisconsin; whenever I see the phrase "the door into summer," this is the summer I imagine beyond the frame
purple thistles and goldenrod in a Wisconsin prairie; behind, an aspen grove just starting to turn and deep blue skygolden window through an oak savannah onto a wet prairie
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
reading 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. +
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
another AY, another year of confronting the reality that the worst abusers of AI in the university are not students but faculty & admin
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
TIL Wisconsin has an official state soil (Antigo silt loam) & there’s a song about it
text and music to the Antigo Silt Loam song by F.D. Hole
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
don'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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
using 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
The shearer clipped down where the wool was thin over the belly, folded back the matted fabric, and cut between the skin and the two lapels thus formed, widening them quickly. When he came to the legs he slit open the bedraggled fringes, and as if he were skinning it, freed a tapering limb of wool. Where the ankle was hung with lumps of dung as large as birds’ eggs, the shears made a brittle click. The wool, solid like a hide, began to separate from the ewe’s body, and at last was attached only to her sharp back, from which it hung limply. Then he twisted about, pressed the head and forefeet in the crook of his arm, and worked downward along the spine. The wool, on one side grey with dirt, and yellowish on the other like the inner skin of an orange, sank in a soft heap on the floor. He straightened up and stepped indifferently away. The sheep staggered a moment in her semi-human position, and fell forward on her feet; the pointed hooves struck the floor; the ankles crumpled forward and straightened; she kicked out her hind legs nimbly, and stalked helplessly forward. Her yellow, emaciated body, planed and pitted by the shears, looked raw and unfinished between the wedge-shaped head and the bony grey feet. She stumbled, and nodded her head sickly. The two men, moving forward, herded her toward the stall. On the floor, dented and crushed into splinters by the feet of the horses which had been driven in with loads of hay or grain, the fleece lay bright, warm, and limp like a skin.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Love 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!
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
great 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.
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tits andronicus @tambourine.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
John Crowley on death www.laphamsquarterly.org/medicine/mid...
laphamsquarterly.org
In the Midst of Death | John Crowley
If the universe can’t outlive or transcend individual consciousness, does death even really exist?
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
if 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I had forgotten that Djuna Barnes's Nightwood takes place in the Les Misérables extended universe
She strayed into the rue Picpus, into the gardens of the convent of L'Adoration Perpetuelle. She talked to the nuns and they, feeling that they were looking at someone who would neer be able to ask for, or receive, mercy, blessed her in their hearts and gave her a sprig of rose from the bush. They showed her where Jean Valjean had kept his rakes, and where the bright little ladies of the pension came to quilt their covers; and Robin smiled, taking the spray, and looked down at the tomb of Lafayette and thought her unpeopled thoughts. Kneeling in the chapel, which was never without a nun going over her beads, Robin, trying to bring her mind to this abrupt necessity, found herself worrying about her height. Was she still growing?"
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
finally 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 nightmare
unmpress.com
Wisconsin Death Trip
First 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...
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
so 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
ah... regional literature
cover of the novel WISCONSIN! by Dana Fuller Ross: two burnished 70s-makeupped pioneers(?) in front of some log cabins. they're arguing. her eyebrows are on-point. he is wearing velvet lapels for some reason?? above the title, in allcaps: "THE MAGNIFICENT SAGA OF DEFIANT MEN AND PASSIONATE WOMEN CLAIMING A WILD LAND... AN DMAKING IT THEIR OWN." above that: an american fuckin eagle, radiating patriotism
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
reread 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
not excited for yet another WI election that will significantly impact my ability to live here safely becoming a National Referendum
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
yesterday 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
guy in sunglasses against sweeping dun and rose hillsides of soft, eroded rock; the west is shockingly pastel
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
new 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.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
hello my small fable about the lake of all middles in this, along with some amazing writers!
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Locus Magazine @locusmag.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
INCOMING: 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
text: the short stories, 12 bubbles floating over a sky background, they read: "Wire Mother", Isabel J. Kim ,
"Magical Girl Antifa War Machine", Esther Alter 
"The Peculiarities of Hunger", Woody Dismukes
"On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting", Bogi Takács 
"Because I Held His Name Like a Key", Aimee Ogden 
"In My Country", Thomas Ha 
"Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness", B. Pladek 
"Arachnomorphosis", Beth Goder 
"Slipcraft", Jarune Uwujaren
"Pandora’s Formula", Hannah Yang 
"Landline", Kelly Robson 
"Courtney Lovecraft's Book of the Dead", Sam J. Miller
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
old 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
Cover of Mineral Point: A History by George Fielder; mineral point is where Wisconsin’s nickname “the badger state” came from—not the animal but a bunch of 1830s lead miners who were so fixated on striking it rich they never bothered to build houses or grow veggies but literally lived in dirty scrapes in the ground, supposedly like badgers tho that’s an insult to badgers
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
also I'm in this! with my fuck-AI-in-literature-education @lightspeedmagazine.com story from way back in Jan 2025
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
clear 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.com
How to read postcolonial writing
The 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...
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
the 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!
To the left side of the image, a hardcover book The cover of the book shows an illustration of a caped figure in front of a surreal landscape. The title reads: "The Locus Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Of the Year: Volume 1". Text to the right of the book says: "The Locus Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Of the Year: Volume 1. An anthology of recommended short fiction from 2025"
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
hi 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
MKE, 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.com
He's lived in the US since age 4. ICE detained him in Milwaukee crackdown
Giovanni Sosa's case highlights the expansive criteria ICE is using as it detains people in Milwaukee and its new pattern of public street arrests.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
the 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*
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
scrotus 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Notes from a Regicide!!! Yes!!
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
more prairie posting
midsummer prairie in full bloom: orange butterfly-weed, purple prairie-clover, lead-plant, purple coneflower, and compass-plantsguy standing in the background of purple coneflower, lead-plant, purple prairie clover, white false indigo, and compass plant; further back, a golden sea of coreopsis
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
SH 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!
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
ok 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
so 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
I 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 particular
therecombobulationarea.news
New poll shows top three emerging in Democratic primary for governor in Wisconsin
Plus: In an "informed" vote poll where candidate biographies are shared, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez leads the field with 33%.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
the 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
my protagonist Rand Brandt, a weedy man in glasses and a collared shirt -- I don't actually know his namethe wall of toilets at the Kohler Design Center, featuring one of the many tasteful nude mannequins posed among the cans
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
listening 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
went 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
this 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
Pendarvis, a yellow limestone cottageBob Neal and Edgar Hellum standing in front of the Pendarvis property
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Natalia 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. 🚀💫🌗🍒
An image of thr Locus Award trophy next to the red cover of Natalia Theodoridou's debut novel, SOUR CHERRY, against a dark background.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
my 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!
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
this 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)
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
finished (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.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
TIL 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
surreal nightjar perched against a teal-black background with an egg below, looking at a collection of colored mothsportrait of Frank Harriott, wearing a wry expression and a carnation boutonnière
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
just 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
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
an oak savanna in spring is the greenest green
green green treesgreen green trees
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Ignyte Award-Nominated Writer/Editor LP Kindred @lpkindred.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Achievement 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.
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B. Pladek @bpladek.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
an oak savanna in spring is the greenest green
green green treesgreen green trees
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