Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 05/08/20252008. My first book launch, seventeen years ago. I remember seeing this photo for the first time and thinking I looked fat. Now I see it differently. Why can’t we just be generous with ourselves at the start, why only in hindsight? *sigh* 030
Reposted by Cati Porter Ren Powell @ren-powell.bsky.social · 30/03/2025I’m reaching out with a one-time request I believe is important. You might remember me from my PEN days. My social reach has shrunk off Meta. I’m hoping you'll find this worth sharing. @carolee.bsky.social @catiporter.bsky.social @robbienestor.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/renpowel...open.substack.comCall for SubmissionsAn anti-fascist poetry anthology 042
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 09/03/2025As a mom of two Gen Z young men, I have been blown away by how my sons and their friends say I love you to each other and basically can’t do anything without one another. Facetime in the bathroom. Constant communication. Their abundant and very public affection gives me hope. 110
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 03/03/2025So far this year I have read 9 books and have two significantly in progress. This is how I’m coping with America becoming an absurdist reality TV show. I don’t know any other way to do this. How are you managing? 020
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 16/02/2025Taking a knife to this heart seems almost criminal. But I did it. And it was good. (Ally’s Valentine to the household, plus homemade cinnamon rolls with pink frosting.) 040
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 13/02/2025Just finished reading these two memoirs back to back. Highly recommend. Read Grealy first, then Patchett. It is the story of a friendship. It is a medical memoir. It is a memoir about the prize & fellowship circuit. It is a love story. But don’t just read one without the other. 050
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 04/02/2025Sometimes conversation / is too fast / for my slow thoughts / so words / fall from my mouth / like a rockslide / bury the thought beneath 020
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 03/02/2025Hip the moon / suck light through a straw / ground all the birds tonight / the earth needs the weight of their song 030
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 15/01/2025What kind of reader are you? One book at a time, cover to cover? Or several at once, like me? Right now I have three books actively in progress: one paperback, the memoir Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy; audiobook Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; and eBook How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. 020
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 12/01/2025Thanks, Marian. We just lost his brother in December so this one is a gobsmack on top of a gobsmack. Pets aren’t people but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. 000
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 10/01/2025There are so many worse things in the world but I’m having a hard time making peace with the fact that our time is limited. Cancer sucks. He is 16. 130
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 21/12/2024I was on a waiting list for months for the Lessons in Chemistry audiobook. A friend loaned me the book but I never got around to reading it. Thought I’d take the shortcut. Listened until it became evident that the characters were wholly unbelievable. Returned it same day. Anyone else read it? 020
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 13/12/2024I’m looking forward to reading these next (but must finish Yiyun Li’s Dear Friend first). 000
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 13/12/2024memoir rec list on a separate spreadsheet. It helps to have a list when I’m in a bookstore. My last trip was to Half Off Books in Fullerton where I found one on my list, Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty, about her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy. Nearby on a shelf? Lucy Grealy’s memoir. 120
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 13/12/2024I joke that I’m a book junkie but there’s truth to it. I am always on the lookout for my next read, even if some of them are fails, and generally have at least one physical book in progress along with an audiobook. I have been reading more memoir than anything else lately and started compiling 120
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 13/12/2024I’ve been sticking with the audiobook and am into it now, about halfway through. I’ve had to let go of completely following every detail and instead am just letting it flow. It will be interesting to “read” it in hard copy too. There are definite pros and cons to each mode of consumption. 000
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 06/12/2024I was wondering. I will try that. Thanks, Jessica! 000
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 06/12/2024(con’t) so I want to cut myself some slack, but I also wonder if I’m giving up too soon. How do you all know when to push through a book and when to throw it back? Do you force yourself to finish everything? Will I end up loving Mrs. Dalloway if I pick it up in hard copy instead? 000
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 06/12/2024(con’t) right now, and then I thought I should finally read Virginia Woolf so checked out Mrs. Dalloway, which I really wanted to love but am having trouble following. All of this to say I’ve read 54 books this year: 18 physical books, 8 e-books, and the rest audiobooks. And some have been intense 100
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 06/12/2024(con’t) I can tolerate. If I can’t get into it right away, or if the book seems too ‘easy’ it’s not worth my time. Or maybe I’m just giving up too soon. This week alone, I’ve checked out and returned a story collection called ROAR, Butler’s FLEDGLING (I love Butler but I just can’t do vampires 100
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 06/12/2024(con’t) or eating or whatever. Like consuming books through vision, I sometimes drift off and have to back up. But one big difference is the narrator. If they are theatrical at all, I get annoyed. Just read it like a normal person! This isn’t drama club. Lately I’ve become more finicky about what 100
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 06/12/2024I have stacks of “real” books by the bed, two of which I’ve begun reading this week—and maybe only one that I will finish because I’m just not finding the first one compelling enough. Which brings me to audiobooks. These are obviously easier to consume because I can listen while driving or shopping 200
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 28/11/2024I was with you until the word “cunty”. There are lots of reasons, and if there weren’t, I wouldn’t call anyone in pain a cunt. 210
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 28/11/2024#BlueSky, we have pie. (Baked by one of my kids.) Also, I vacuumed the cat hair off the couch covers, finished @appletwigli.bsky.social’s Wednesday’s Child and started Crying in H Mart. And I submitted an essay to @longreads.com. 050
Reposted by Cati PorterBeing Reese @beingreese.bsky.social · 22/11/2024Audiobooks count as reading. Audiobooks count as reading. Audiobooks count as reading. Audiobooks count as reading. Audiobooks count as reading. Audiobooks count as reading. Audiobooks count as reading. 3774611866602
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 22/11/2024One of the books I picked up at a used bookstore last weekend. I hadn’t noticed until I started reading it that some passages are underlined. The book had a life before it was mine. Also: I silently apologized to the author when the booklight clamp covered her face, a little weird but fitting. 081
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 22/11/2024I think those two people are in the wrong auditorium. 120
Reposted by Cati PorterMillicent Borges Accardi @topangahippie.bsky.social · 22/11/2024go.bsky.app/9bMKcyw 0105
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 20/11/2024I usually steer clear of politics but with every new Trump administration cabinet pick it becomes clearer that we are all a part of his new reality show. His cabinet picks are the cast and we are the audience biting our nails. 030
Reposted by Cati PorterSheila Squillante @sheilasquill.bsky.social · 16/11/2024We are open for our next themed issue celebrating 20 years of The Fourth River! Submissions are free for BIPOC writers until 11/22. Send us your birds! 4thriver.submittable.com/submit 05011
Reposted by Cati PorterBrecht De Poortere @brechtdp.bsky.social · 16/11/2024My ranking of 1000+ literary magazines www.brechtdepoortere.com/rankingsbrechtdepoortere.comRankings | Brecht De PoortereRanking of the best literary magazines and journals 816460
Reposted by Cati PorterCollin Kelley @collinkelley.bsky.social · 17/11/2024Just a reminder — and to all the new followers — submissions are open for “White Winged Doves: A Stevie Nicks Poetry Anthology” coming in 2026! Guidelines/submit here: madvillepublishing.com/submission/ 098
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 17/11/2024I love working with teens and poetry. Last week we “revised” The Red Wheelbarrow by rearranging ourselves, resulting in “the glazed rain chickens”. SO MUCH BETTER, don’t you think? 030
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 16/11/2024Hello, BlueSky! Just a note to say that I'm hoping to curate this space to focus entirely on books and writers and writing--specifically, on my life as a writer. So, hello, prose writers and poets and people who read! 1201
Cati Porter @catiporter.bsky.social · 16/11/2024Hello #PoetsOfBlueSky and #Poets at large and #Writers in general! 020