iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Shoutout @smokelong.bsky.social for receiving an earlier draft of this essay, back when I brought it to the emerging writer's fellowship years ago. Bigly grateful to Christopher Allen for the kind editorial feedback on it. I'm glad I didn't lose hope in publishing this one. And? I'm so tired y'all.

210

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Fun fact, this also isn't a stock photo—it's an actual family photo I found that inspired this essay. It had fallen into such ruin that I couldn't scan it with a printer for fear of further damaging it. It's a photo of the actual photo. Big thanks to the lovely folks at swamp pink for publishing it.

111

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'm no stranger to having essays on trauma published, but it feels doubly painful to see this one come out now, as a survivor is being torn apart in the media for daring to say what happened to her. I'll get lost if I stay there, but: I'm so tired of men's violence. I'm so angry. It hurts so much.

100

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Friends, I've a photo essay out in swamp pink. It took me years to write. It's about the kind of trauma that comes so early in life it predates any ability to express it in anything but fragments. It's my oldest memory on Earth. cw for domestic violence swamp-pink.charleston.edu/featured/win...

A sepia-toned photo of a family, two children and a mother and father, seated at a table. Faces illegible, the photo is so ruined with time that portions of it are flaked away, leaving little gray-white splotches scattered all over. Above the family is a hanging white, ceramic glass light, and there are two pillars connected by a counter in the background, indicating some sort of separation between the seating area and some other part of the space; possibly a kitchen. Some roundish white object with pinkish splotches on one side of it sits in the center; perhaps a birthday cake. Photo belongs to Daniel Garcia, and accompanies the photo essay, "Winter Springs," also written by Daniel Garcia, first published in swamp pink, a literary magazine.

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

AAAAAAAA BABE WAKE UP NEW EPISODE OF @splitlipthemag.bsky.social IS OUT TODAY !!!! 🫦✨ I especially hope you check out the interview. One thing I love about editing is how much it stretches me to think about my own life & grief practice. “[T]he loss is also that: More than one world died with him.”

splitlipthemag.com

Descending for the Dead: leena aboutaleb on Elegy, Myth, and Writing the Afterlife — Split Lip Magazine

leena aboutaleb’s debut collection, THALASSA , follows a sister’s descent into the underworld in search for her brother. Grief moves across temporalities here, refusing to remain in place. The poems ...

063

Reposted by Daniel 🌷✨🌇

Split Lip Magazine @splitlipthemag.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"But the power of grief should not belittle the power of joy. And joy can exist not just as a sensation but as a force towards creation." Enjoy A.D. Lauren-Abunassar's review of Summer Farah's THE HUNGERING YEARS before it hits the archive💕: buff.ly/sBpAPSj

Book cover of The Hungering Years by Summer Farah. A collage of images: women, flowers, and animals.

073

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Yayoi Kusama has passed away. I wasn’t very familiar with her as a person, but her infinity rooms have been a great source of comfort and awe for me. I feel lucky to have experienced several while she was alive—one of them especially with my friend Aly, who died in June. This week has been so sad.

cnn.com

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who filled the world with polka dots, dead at 97 | CNN

Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s most celebrated and best-selling artists has died, according to a statement on the artist’s official website.

000

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I’m sorry, but losing Tim Curry AND Miss Dolly Parton on the same day feels queerphobic in a way I can’t explain

020

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I’d been saying this for years before she passed, but if there was ever a right way to be a wealthy person, Dolly Parton did it. She wasn’t a billionaire simply because she kept giving her money to others in need, simply because it was the right thing to do. Miss Dolly, you are forever that girl! ♥️

m.youtube.com

Dolly Parton - I Will Always Love You (Official Audio)

YouTube video by DollyPartonVEVO

000

Reposted by Daniel 🌷✨🌇

Workshops4Gaza @workshops4gaza.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

An emergency. Please donate chuffed.org/project/1132...

This week, The Sameer Project had to let go of 15 people, reduce most of the salaries of our team on the ground and switch some team members part-time. This is due to a HUGE drop in donations at a time where material support is extremely needed in Gaza. Urgent support is needed:

190149

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

It’s also really important to mention that this just didn’t appear out of nowhere—a lot of this began with SESTA/FOSTA. All of the places where ID verification has been soft launched (P-hub etc) is b/c of SESTA/FOSTA. They were warning us for years. They tested this on SWs first. As they always do.

000

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Being an editor is so important to me. It's so important to me to steward someone's creative work to fruition. It means so much to me to publish, pay, and platform writers; to push their work into the literary ecosystem as an offering. I'm lonely. I want my friend alive. I want my contributor back.

010

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

It's my brain. It won't make sense of crafting a bio for someone who isn't alive. ALT text is for accessibility, so why all this tenderness (affection; ache) in each keystroke? Building a webpage for a contributor isn't supposed to hurt this much. Ridiculous that it took days to upload a headshot.

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

But as an editor, I'm devastated. Editorially, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. My heart isn't the issue here; I've been here before and I'll be here again. I'm no stranger to this. Heartbreak is the proof I know how to love. My friend lives in that love. What need have I to turn from that?

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

As a friend, I want my friend back. I want them laughing on the phone with me. I want them here so I can visit them for AWP next year. I want them to see their work in a beautiful literary magazine that I'm so grateful to edit for. People die; I understand this. Part of me is okay with this.

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

There's so much else I want to say, but today, I just wish they were here. I'm angry: with Aly for leaving; with America's refusal to care about disabled people; with how I understand why Aly left; with love for putting itself across my nervous system and expecting me to go on after my friends die.

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Hi friends, earlier this month my friend Aly died. Aly was someone I'd solicited to send to me @theoffingmag.bsky.social, and they passed before we could finalize things. I hope you read their Micros and share. One's an essay; the other's a poem. I love and miss them a lot. Today is their birthday.

theoffingmag.com

"I wish I didn’t know after neonatal loss" and "The Truth Is..." - The Offing

Micro - The Offing Magazine

193

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

of course divaaaaa!!! so deserved ♥️ miss you, hope you’ve been doing well friend!

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

hi divas, I know things are tough right now for most of us, but @theoffingmag.bsky.social has hit an unexpected financial wall. the support so far has been amazing, but we need more to get through the year. if you can, please help us keep the lights on! share with your peeps, etc. thank you! 🙏🏼✨🌊

theoffingmag.kindful.com

Help support The Offing Emergency Fundraiser

Last week, we had a sudden and unexpected web hosting expense that put us in a cashflow bind. Now, we are looking to our community for help. $20,000 will get us to the end of the year, but we need jus...

041

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I can’t explain it, but I just feel like a fortnight of thunderstorms would fix me, were it I were unencumbered by the perils of capitalism—no job, no AI, no ads, no bills to pay, no bigotry, not even the pressure to make art for the sake of productivity Just think of all the naps I could take 😩😭

010

Reposted by Daniel 🌷✨🌇

Foglifter Press & Journal @foglifterpress.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

IT'S HERE!🌿Ecology of the Hood by Reggie Edmonds-Vásquez is now available in our shop! buff.ly/pZ2vF3V ECOLOGY OF THE HOOD is the 2025 winner of the Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize, a collaboration between Foglifter Press and Still Here San Francisco.

1. a green book on a neon green yellow paper background. ecology of the hood by Reggie Edmonds-Vásquez.

2. Foglifter, Start a Riot!, and Still Here SF Logos. Header: "Winner of the 2025 Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize." Body: "Ecology of the Hood is a love letter to streets. It asks the question; What if the hood was not a collection of problems, but a complex ecosystem of living organisms, all mirroring the same survival against an inherently hostile world? The politics of environmentalism and Black Liberation collide with each other in cycles of extraction, survival, decay, and regeneration. This collection seeks to refute the idea that the rose growing from concrete is misplaced or forgotten. The gardens we grow belong here. They are proof of life in a world obsessed with our deaths."

072

Reposted by Daniel 🌷✨🌇

Death @insatiableone.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Don't let my baby die in pain.He needs treatments and injections that cost £250 which we cannot afford I implore you with abroken heart and with all compassion tosend your mercy urgent Donate even if its just £25 Every bit of support means alot to us Verified Molly shah✅ tinyurl.com/Support-my-f...

Father bending tenderly over baby on hospital bed

35953

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

hi friends, just a heads up that the Micro department @theoffingmag.bsky.social will be open for submissions on May 1st! normally we’re open longer, but we received 1K+ (!!!) submissions in our last reading period, we’re closing on June 1st. be sure to submit early! can’t wait to see your work! 🌊✨

theoffingmag.submittable.com

The Offing Submission Manager

Thanks so much for your interest, and we look forward to reading your work. Please be familiar with the magazine and our mission before you submit.For 2026, there will be no submission fees thanks to ...

042

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

I definitely need to tease this out into a longer piece, but I think that’s why I mentioned in that thread about writing reviews that we can’t just praise everything we read. And we can’t just shit on it either—push back is necessary! Reading is a fundamentally embodied, transient, political act!!

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

It’s a pleasure to be in conversation with your work, Meg! The literary ecosystem is so much better with your writing in it. It’s also why I wrote that last line, you know? Instead of naming him and making sure he lives forever, why not dream of a world where I do? I didn’t survive; I outlasted. 💐🌙

210

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

She’s truly so, so smart! The literary landscape is better because of her contributions ✨👌🏼

010

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

...only sort of end up doing the very self-indulgent, very academic thing of being overly pedantic for the sake of being pedantic lol. To me. And like yeah not everything is for everyone and audiences and special focuses and yes/and, etc. etc. But we should all be looking at our bellybuttons more.

010

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Do you want people to read or not? I think the other thing is, and I'll stop here because this thread is getting too long, the very sort of argument that people use to shit on personal writing (i.e. navel-gazing) in favor of overly sophisticated, cerebral, academic syntax...

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Because sure, "This blew me away!" type praise isn't helpful to analyzing a text. But also do you think people want to read some overly academic, linguistically inaccessible thing? Part of addressing the literacy crisis means making books and individual texts fun and inviting for people to read.

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

It's also difficult for folks to write literary reviews b/c it just feels like you can't criticize (and I mean actually criticize, not tear down) or push back on a text. Boring. Very un-party. I need us to move past the belief that we can only praise a text. I need us to have fun with these things.

110

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

B/c yeah being overly personal can limit one's own understanding and it can come off as overly self-indulgent and I get that. But I think it's also really asinine (and likely ableist) to pretend reading a text isn't an embodied experience, that there's no room for creativity or play with language.

120

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

And I think more than that, I'm just really, really tired of the longstanding belief that review writing/literary criticism is just this sort of purely cerebral, academic thing. Reviews are so difficult for so many people to write for that reason: this shit's boring! There's so creativity behind it!

120

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

The other thing is, I also wrote this because I needed this to be as personal and, yes, navel-gazing as possible because I'm very frankly sick of the frankly rude way that writers shoot down more personal writing with words like navel-gazing. (Is that hyphenated? I don't give a damn.)

120

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

But also, while I was writing it, I wondered if it was too personal, too much in the spirit of navel-gazing. I wondered if it wasn't analytical enough and whatnot. Then it hit me: I didn't give a damn. lmao

120

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Also sidebar I feel kinda weird about telling y’all to read it, just because I’m the editor of this department at SLM (it’s not uncommon for review editors to do reviews, I know), but I wanted to write about Meg’s essay because I think it’s one people should be reading.

130

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

AAAAAAAA OMG DIVAS I JUST WOKE UP BUT NEW EPISODE OF @splitlipthemag.bsky.social IS OUT TODAY! 🫦✨ friends, this issue’s a stunner. I hope you peep it, especially the review of @megpillow.bsky.social’s gorgeous essay in @literaryhub.bsky.social. It wouldn’t leave me, so I figured I’d write about it.

295

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

unrelated reminder (because the government isn’t trying to legislate trans/nonbinary people out of existence or anything) that penile enlargement surgeries, BBLs, hair transplants, breast augmentations, etc. are, in fact, gender affirmation procedures—of which cis people are the biggest recipients

010

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

a bummer to not have gone to AWP for this last day and meet more people. but also, friends, when the body says sleep, says less noise, says lay down, I hope you do. we should all be getting more rest.

070

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

hi divas, there’s just three days left to send to the Micro department @theoffingmag.bsky.social before this reading period closes! we pay $25USD per micro. would love to see more Micro prose, but send send send! I would love to see your work in the queue, & please share with your friends! 🌊✨🌙

theoffingmag.submittable.com

The Offing Submission Manager

0115

Reposted by Daniel 🌷✨🌇

ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 31/01/2026

if you feel like passing around a link today and helping fundraise for rent that will actually get paid today (and in the next few days for families who have a grace period) you can send here. we will be going hard all day. i won’t be posting about it because I don’t want to flood your feeds.

11519583

Reposted by Daniel 🌷✨🌇

Kristen Arnett @kristenarnett.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

heated rivalry implies the existence of a chilled harmony

5457

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

It's truly such a gift to work with you! Always a pleasure to publish you, Rachel!! ✨

120

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

things have been dark lately but AAAAAA BABE WAKE UP NEW EPISODE/SEASON OF @splitlipthemag.bsky.social is out today !!!!! I so hope you peep the review by @rachellayown.bsky.social of @chriscampanioni.bsky.social’s book, & takes such a fun, meandering personal turn in this one. well done Rachel! 🫦✨

1113

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

hi divas, happy new year! just wanted to share that the Micro department over @theoffingmag.bsky.social is open for submissions! I love poems, but I’d also love to see more micro prose (fiction, essays) in the queue. we pay $25USD per micro. hope to see your work, please share with your friends! 🌊✨🌙

theoffingmag.submittable.com

The Offing Submission Manager

Thanks so much for your interest, and we look forward to reading your work. Please be familiar with the magazine and our mission before you submit.For 2025, there will be no submission fees thanks to ...

076

Daniel 🌷✨🌇 @iloveyoudaniel.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

this planet is so unserious. day after Christmas and it’s over 80 degrees where I live 😭 like wtf y’all, why does it feel like springtime !!!! (jk, don’t answer. climate change is real and everything is overwhelming and sliding into inevitable collapse lolsob)

010