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Chris Fischbach

@fishmpls.bsky.social
353 followers 160 following 237 posts

Literary agent @ Fischbach Creative; former publisher at Coffee House Press (25 year tenure); board member, MN Prison Writing Workshop, etc. Mr. Nobody from Nowhere.

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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
"Maggie's Farm" would make an excellent rallying song for the movement.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I am once again bummed that I was talked out of publishing Gwendoline Riley.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
How does AI understand time? How can it understand time if we don’t?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Stop with the dystopian novels please.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Currently advocating for the emergence of worker- and author- owned publishing collectives. No corporations, no private equity.
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Reposted by Chris Fischbach
David Naimon @davidnaimon.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Very excited to share today's conversation with Lisa Robertson. We look back across her writing life—in poetry, fiction & nonfiction—using her latest novel RIVERWORK as the frame & portal for it all. Audio🔉🔥: milkweed.org/between-the-... @coachhousebooks.bsky.social
milkweed.org
Lisa Robertson : Riverwork | Milkweed Editions
Lisa Robertson’s Riverwork twins the mysterious disappearance of the great aunt of our protagonist, Lucy Frost, and that same aunt’s interest in a long-disappeared river, buried under the streets of P...
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
B & N carrying AI books seemed inevitable. Publishers with profit-driven owners, especially private equity will undoubtedly be next, or are already there. But Olga? That's depressing.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Re the state of publishing, reviews, and so on. How about fewer complaints and more solutions? We all know there are problems, so what are we / you going to do about it?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Well, I certainly regret letting myself to be dissuaded from publishing Gwendoline Riley years ago.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Don't think about books as objects or as units, or as products or by-products or results. Start by thinking about creation as performance and reading as experience.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
I absolutely did not see Sean McDonald getting let go coming.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Btw if you’re angry and want to let off steam, I recommend writing and sending an angry letter to Target corp.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
If I had my druthers, every arts org would have a vip position where someone acts as a AI skeptic whenever it comes up.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
As corporate publishing embraces AI …
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
How about just let people enjoy Geese if they want to. Why crap on something someone else enjoys?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Coffee House Press’s founder, Allan Kornblum, before he died, was writing a book about how, contrary to popular belief, and with only a few exceptions, the publishing industry is almost always aligned with power and capital.
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Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl @deardara.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
This is really getting on my nerves. THERE WAS NO PROTEST. Pretti was hanging out on a street corner watching over the neighborhood, where muggers could come pick him off or go after the women he was with. Then ICE showed up and things went nuts. There was no protest. Just none.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Tell Me How It Ends
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
This is a new sale!
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Efficiency is the enemy of art.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Thinking that to me, literature is much more akin to prayer than it is to the NYT best-seller list.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
People who make fun of "lit bros" are really only talking about like 25 people. Also, you're making fun of anyone who decides to read literary fiction? Of whatever gender?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
This is a great post. I like to think that I ticked all these boxes during my time at Coffee House Press: substack.com/@blakebutler...
substack.com
What I Want In an Ideal Publisher
What traits make a book publisher an ally of the artist rather than a corporate warden holding you back?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
From a review of Murderland: "Her fury blazes beyond balance sheets and into curated spaces of elites. She singles out Roger W. Straus Jr., tony Manhattan publisher, patron of the arts and grandson of Daniel Guggenheim, whose Tacoma smelter may have scrambled Bundy’s brain. 1/4
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
People complaining that literary criticism and serious book reviews are dying and then . . .do absolutely nothing about it.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
It can happen to you: I just found my airpods, which I lost TWO YEARS AGO.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
I'd love to know who the actual people are who own the Big Five publishers. Not the corporate entities, but the actual people in charge, the hidden people, the majority shareholders who call the shots. They have names. Can someone please write this article?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
James Daunt of B&N says: "it is more likely that the Big Five and other publishers of comparative size will have “better books” than their smaller competitors." This is such a terrible and untrue thing to say! It's laughable, if it weren't such a terrible thing for every indie publisher to read.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Why not ask the Big 5 Publishers to replace the lost NEA literature money?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
God I love the Minneapolis Mayday parade.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
I wish I were seeing more people from corporate publishing also decrying the defunding of the NEA.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
For those on here and elsewhere who say that empathy in the context of art is bad, you have some great company! apple.news/AUVIOa6ujQrK...
apple.news
The Christians Who Believe Empathy Is a Sin — New York Magazine
When suffering is irrelevant, anything can be justified.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
“American publishing is not in a healthy state; the more directly its judgments are determined by the market and the mass media—the more sources of funding, like the NEA, disappear—the sicker it will become: homogenous, inert, inexpert, cheap.” —Merve Emre, re the Pulitzer in Fiction this year.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Why aren't there more U.S. publishers like this Swedish one?: chrisfischbach.substack.com/p/why-arent-...
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
I didn't realize that Joan Didion had such sketchy politics. That explains some things.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
I would like to read a piece about Jon Fosse's fiction and quantum mechanics. Especially for Septology, but for a few others as well. Throw mysticism in there and I'll be all over it.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Please tell me what you think fiction should be doing now. Please tell me what you think poetry should be doing now. Please tell me what you think publishing should be doing right now (And please please tell me what you think publishing should NOT being doing right now).
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Little Free Libraries as samizdat distribution vehicles.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I just signed up for a $ subscription to Patrick Nathan's Substack after having been a regular reader for a while now. He has very smart posts re books & lit mostly, but never just that. He's writing about how to be a human, or how not to be a human? patricknathan.substack.com/p/april-hate...
patricknathan.substack.com
April Hates U
Eliot and I have at least one thing in common: Some people never get over being raised in the Midwest.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
@joshthelibromancer.bsky.social Love the new Lithub piece!
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Instead of learning about what kind of fancy suit a publisher wears, I'd like to hear more about how they will use their role to combat tyranny.
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Ashton Politanoff @ashtonpolitanoff.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Thrilled to share that my novel DAD HAD A BAD DAY will be published by Astra House! I’m excited to work with Emily Bell & the team at Astra House. Thank you to my wonderful agent Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social for making this happen!
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
I wonder, what will corporate publishing do?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
I wish I remembered the person who wrote this but I don’t: Did you all know that sometimes it depends
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Reposted by Chris Fischbach
The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 19/12/2024
"The repressive effect of political correctness may spring from ideological soil, but it requires other elements to grow and spread. And the political atmosphere that fostered the conditions of 2014–2024 has grown chilly," Jonathan Chait writes:
theatlantic.com
How Liberal America Came to Its Senses
The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
“What an astonishing thing a book is,” said Carl Sagan. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Why does it bother some people so much if a reader finds literature helpful or useful? A reader can think and "use" lit for whatever they want! Lit doesn't automatically make someone a "good person," whatever that means, but if some good comes from reading something, why poo poo it?
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
What if there were no more hot takes
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Re art/fiction having a possible purpose: Sure, it doesn’t have to have a purpose. But I work with prison writing org & the artistic director once said to me, “I’m absolutely not going to tell you that reading or writing can change a person, or turn their life around, but I’ve seen it happen.”
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Chris Fischbach @fishmpls.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
Will someone explain to me why empathy is bad?
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