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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 16h

Ayyy! Review buddies! Your story really is a great one, too.

Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Emily C. Hughes @emilyhughes.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

two things: first, I *love* this essay from @eqreader.bsky.social. second, it is the considered and official opinion of @darkertimes.bsky.social that Andy Serkis can get fucked

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Just now seeing this, and thank you so much for reading!

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

I'm here all weekend! (I have got to get better at this promotions thing.)

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

I keep forgetting to check this app. *waves* What's going on?

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

It's so strange, as a Black person, to go to events about our culture in non-Black spaces. I'm at this thing about Wu-Tang Clan and when the speaker(also Black) brought up the 36 Chambers not ONE person hollered "Wu-TANG!". I'm not sure if I'd be more offended if they had. 😂

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Esperance, Adam Oyebanji Oh this was GOOD good. Totally surprised me. Wrote it up for May Lightspeed, will say more then.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

And if you don't know how to be or make friends with IRL Black people, then the answer is always NO YOU CANNOT DO THE THING. Take them braids out. That ain't the Harlem Shake anyway. Our mac n cheese is not runny, IDC IDC just be you and your people and leave us alone unless we're friends.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

I will never enjoy those posts that are like "hi, I'm (xyz ethnicity), can I do this (Black cultural thing)?" OMG go make a friend.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

The Get-Together, by @ctaylorbutler.bsky.social, illustrated by Lonnie Ollivierre. Picture book about a multi-generational family gathering. So much fun, and beautifully illustrated. Got this for a kid I know, want to keep it for myself.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted A Love Potion At A Werewolf, by Kimberly Lemming. Lemming really doesn't miss with her Blackety-Black monster romances--they're always cute, hot, and laugh out loud funny. I will say I wasn't expecting the tentacles, though.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Southern Comfort, by Sandra Kitt Bougie beach romance by one of the Black romance OGs. So cute. Sooooo dated! (Although it was published in '04, not '94 as I'd assumed.) Scratched a good nostalgia itch.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A Palace Near The Wind, Ai Jiang Ecological science fantasy with a lot of interesting twists and a painfully naive main character. Wrote about it for April Lightspeed so won't say more here.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

The Coddling of the American Mind, by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff Oooooh, I hated this book. Great reference section tho.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Condomnauts by Yoss, translated by David Frye REALLY weird sci-fi about a class of intergalactic sex workers who are also first contact alien ambassadors. The main character is a queer Afro-Cubano but still a little heavy on the regressive machismo for me. Also--content warnings abound.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

The Very Fat Conker, Enid Blyton. Read this as a kid and it's been tickling the edges of my memory lately so tracked it down. Will refrain from making boredom in the pre-TV age jokes.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

I'm not a "putting this in the universe" kind of person but I would really love to write a limited streaming series about Bill Pickett sometime in the next 5 years.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

It tickles me that the village in Kimberly Lemming's Mead Mishaps series is called Boohail. They be hailing the hell out of some boos, for sure.

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Rebecca Caine @rebeccacaine.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Hero.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

SO MANY REJECTIONS LATELY. SO MANY FOLLOWUP SUBMISSIONS. And yet I continue to write. If this behavior were transported to any other part of my life, it would probably be considered a kink.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

"America likes its angry Black women best when we are poor and husband-less and mourning. I’m simply angry and Black. I apologize if that is not enough." Nicole Chulick WROTE this. Thank you for the words. www.midnightandindigo.com/police-offic...

midnightandindigo.com

There is a Police Officer in My Foyer | Nicole Chulick

This essay by Black woman writer Nicole Chulick is an apology, a lament, a plea for understanding as she grasps hold of the anger that always slips from her fingers. Exploring, in a whisper, the compu...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

I don't know how I stumbled on this essay, but I love it. "My dad hated work before hating work was cool. His first job in the United States was as a clerk at the San Jose Department of Motor Vehicles on Alma Street. It was 1975 and the position paid $6 an hour."

apogeejournal.org

Work Search Requirements – Apogee Journal

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

David Hogg @davidhogg.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

Here’s what we did today

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Leontyne Price is still living, and today is her 97th birthday. If you don't know the name, pause your day and look her up now.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

They're all in the voices of very different people--a s*x worker, a developmentally disabled factory worker, a renegade mayor, a repentant former megachurch pastor, etc. I haven't done much with them because I never felt confident about the voices. But maybe I should do something with them now.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

In 2002-ish, I started writing interconnected short stories about different ways of resistance in a future America that had become a fearful wasteland of company towns controlled by religious fascists.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

I just found out that Joseph Heller wrote a sequel to Catch-22. It's called Closing Time, and it's still in print. It's also set in the 90s, while Catch-22 takes place in WWII. Not really in the mood to read war satire right now but will keep an eye out for it.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

I love how these stories have similar pathways, but deeply different settings and resolutions.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

If I had a dollar for every time in the past 6 months I read a really good story in Lightspeed that explored the idea of being a temporary, uncomfortable vessel for the gods... I'd have two dollars, but it's cool that it's happened twice. The stories in question...

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

I've been telling other Americans for years that a country's government is not a business. Now we have a bad businessman running the US. I'd be frustrated if all my years of being Black and smart and qualified hadn't prepared me to deal with perpetual top down incompetence and fallout consequences.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Nigerian Men Will Stain Your White, by Alexandria Humphrey I wanted to love this, heard good things, but it doesn't feel finished? It's kind of a Lagos Waiting To Exhale vibe. Also(spoiler) promises homophobia in the sequel. Gross.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Rangikura, by Tayo Tibble. Gutsy, vulnerable poetry collection by a young Maori woman. Section 2, a long prose poem titled Little, is one of the most painful beating hearts I've read in a while.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Re:US politics at present-- I have cycled past horror, disbelief, rage, grief and an attempt at practical hope and am now at "Look I have too much shit to *do* for it to be a dystopia right now."

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Reposted by Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm)

Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

GEORGE LUCAS IN 1999: a trade embargo is going to spark the galactic reckoning and collapse ME IN 2025: ah, okay

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

It was 🔥 up until the first English-language scene--I actually watched the first 20 minutes twice--then took a sharp nosedive.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

I have been trying to get through Emilia Perez for like 36 hours and while it's not *bad* exactly, it feels like something that should be seen in a cramped basement room at the Edinburgh festival, not on a Netflix screen.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

@5calls.org is a GREAT app if you want a guide for contacting your local US legislators.

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Melissa, A Watkins(also a writer and a bookworm) @eqreader.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

1st--post in forums and personally annoy every British person you know trying to find a very old children's story *you* read as a kid. 2nd-- just frickin' Google "old kids story about conkers" and find out it's by Enid Blyton, it's very well known, and the internet isn't dead after all. *sheesh*

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