iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 1h

The miracle of touching grass.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

In the most recent issue of our newsletter, Charlotte Donlon shared three books that have influenced her work as a writer, spiritual director, and spiritual director for writers. Click here to subscribe and read more. ✍️ loom.ly/Cp9JNCc #HereBelowBooks

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Join us on Substack at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, September 29, for a conversation with Cait West and Lourdes Torres celebrating the paperback release of Cait’s memoir Rift. 💫 open.substack.com/live-stream/379867 #HereBelowBooks

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

John West at Printer Row Lit Fest, tinkering with time machines, and more. Check out the latest #HereBelowBooks Supplement on Substack: loom.ly/-BTphaI

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The first edition of the Here Below Supplement just dropped with an essay from Emily Bernard. 👀 Check it out on Substack! loom.ly/K8CxtJw #HereBelowBooks

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Pausing the countdown to sweater season for a sneak peek at what's coming this spring from #HereBelowBooks 💫

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

A week at home in Oklahoma City with Kathleen Kilcup, author of the forthcoming book Between the Light and Me: On Beauty and Violence. Preorder Kilcup’s debut memoir here: loom.ly/02yt8PA

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Launching in September: #HereBelow Substack. 💫 First up: Emily Bernard’s gorgeous essay on one of her personal sacred texts—tarot's The Fool. Subscribe and get it delivered straight to your inbox: loom.ly/F7OHWcs

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

In Orbital, her Booker Prize–winning novel, Samantha Harvey imagines what Earth looks like to astronauts gazing down from space. #whatwearereading

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

A week at home in the Hudson Valley with John West, author of the forthcoming book The Internet Will Die, and So Will You: On Learning to Live in Our Digital Age. “A book about loss that’s somehow a pleasure.” ―PJ Vogt, host of Search Engine Preorder here: loom.ly/7gfqhFc

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Charlotte Donlon: “And here’s one thing that’s true for all writers: moving toward more freedom in your writing practice and your creative identity is always a good idea. Always.” Read more and preorder Spiritual Direction for Writers by Charlotte Donlon here: loom.ly/9vc74rA

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Books are our favorite social media. Check us out in the July issue of Harper’s Magazine!

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Heartbreaking, hopeful, and blazingly honest, Rift: A Daughter’s Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Cait West is both exposé and invitation—a reminder that freedom is possible for those determined to claim a different life for themselves. Preorder here: loom.ly/zn6ilSY

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Digital platforms sell the illusion of infinite feeds, perfect memory, and frictionless abundance. But the “cloud” shrouds the messy reality of our digital lives: We will die, and so will everything we make. Preorder The Internet Will Die and So Will You: loom.ly/7gfqhFc

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

“A powerful meditation on what it means to be trapped and what it takes to break free.”  —Publishers Weekly (starred review) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

“Written with unusual sensitivity and unflinching honesty, [this] is a story of aching loss and gritty resilience, of brokenness, beauty, and hope.”  —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne Cover reveal coming next week. #HereBelowBooks

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

“A Place of Encounter is the testimonial of a great thinker who for decades seems to have thought by teaching, as poets think by writing. —Shane McCrae, author of The Many Hundreds of the Scent #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Quoted from "A Devotional Temperament," a conversation between Garth Greenwell and James K. A. Smith held at Seattle's Hugo House, published in Image Journal, volume 106.

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

“This memoir is both devastating and gorgeous. Kilcup tells an unflinching story of longing, both for God and for human connection, and the human frailty—what the author calls sin—that gets in the way. —Joanna Eleftheriou, author of This Way Back

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Between the Light and Me “is a propulsive, harrowing, and ultimately ennobling book. Kathleen Kilcup has been to the abyss and back.” —Christian Wiman, author of Zero at the Bone Cover reveal coming next week.

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Attention is precious. The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (by John West) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

is official with Publishers Weekly

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Look closely. Spiritual Direction for Writers (by Charlotte Donlon) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

#HereBelowBooks champions books for readers whose journeys don’t map neatly onto well-worn paths. We curate beautiful, ambitious writing and foster good-faith conversations about the subversive work of being human. Curious. Restless. Paying attention.

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

When plans make it out of the group chat. 🪩 #HereBelowBooks

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Reposted by Here Below Books

John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Presenting THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, out in September from @herebelow.bsky.social, a new imprint doing awesome things. Here's the cover, a lil' excerpt, and the tagline of the press: "Books for the subversive work of being human." herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

The cover of a book (my book): THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU.

Just one more byte

It’s possible that to store is entirely the wrong verb. Maybe it ought
to be to attend, to give our digital lives the same attention we are
called to give our physical ones. Attention, as a noun, comes to
us through Latin and French, and, from those languages, carries
the sense of to stretch toward, as though my brain, pinned behind
my skull, might reach out, feel the tight restriction of muscle as
it grasps at the world. But, by and large, attention words point in-
ward, not out. We attract it and call it. We can gather it like wheat
in a field or draw it up like water from a well. Always, though,
attention moves from the world into us—except when it’s to be
minted and spent. “Pay attention,” we say, as though it is a com-
modity, bought, sold, and traded by brokers.

The digital world both beleaguers and demands our attention.
The quality of our focus and the metaphors we surround it with
have diminished even as we’re asked to spend more of it. I’ve felt
it, lately, in the very medium of the book, which rests ever more
uneasily in my hands, though I’ve published two, including this
one. I’ve read, I would guess, a couple thousand books in my life.
It’s harder now, harder than ever. And as it’s grown harder, it’s
grown more meaningful, those acts of attentional resistance, as
straightforward as reading a book for pleasure—a refutation of
market logic, a proletarian revolution in even the word attention,
not something I pay for and sell on an open market but, instead,
something I stretch toward.

“Whole strata of reality are lost to us at the speed at which
we live, our ability to perceive them is lost,” Garth Greenwell
writes in his novel Small Rain, “and maybe that’s the value of
poetry, there are aspects of the world that are only visible at the
frequency of certain poems.” Greenwell advances an argument
best advanced in literature, in fiction or poetry, buttressed as it is
by the logic of allusion. This logic stands in stark contrast to the
totalizing, seductive logic of instrumentalism, which would have
us see everything, every act and artifact, as for something else.
Reading under instrumentalism is pointless at worst and a form
of self- betterment at best—merely a way to refill the coffers of
attention before spending it again. Greenwell argues for poetry,
for reading, for all those many varied noninstrumental activities
that demand this “unmixed attention,” to use the philosopher
Simone Weil’s language, which are a species of prayer. I mean
this in the same way Weil does—in the best and truest sense of
the word: prayer not as an attempt to change the world, but as a
chance to attune ourselves to a greater will, one that asks of us,
Be more human.

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Q: What does “Here Below” mean? A: Our name was inspired by a line from Marilynne Robinson’s The Death of Adam where she writes, “With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.” [Continued in the comments] #HereBelowBooks

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

We’ve been busy assembling something worth your attention. 👀 First titles coming soon. #HereBelowBooks

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Our logo comes from a simple practice: learning how to look. Artist Corita Kent once sent students into the world with empty slides—small frames meant to help them notice what usually goes unseen. The lesson: attention makes the ordinary extraordinary. #HereBelowBooks begins there.

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Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Pay attention. Something beautiful is taking shape. #HereBelowBooks

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