iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Devin Thomas O’Shea @devintoshea.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

TUESDAY NEXT WEEK — come to The Ethical Society at 9001 Clayton Road for a very special @leftbankbooks.bsky.social event. Kella Thornton (@kellathornton.bsky.social) and I will be talking all things The Veiled Prophet (@haymarketbooks.org) left-bank.com/event/2026-0...

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Thrilled & honored to have one of my essays in a 2026 Midwest Book Awards-winning anthology (Humanities' category, bb!), edited by @andyoler.bsky.social, published by the @uofillinois.bsky.social press & inspired by the "Literary Landscapes" series in The New Territory Magazine 🎉🪩🌌 Woohoo!

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Pretty rad that this anthology I'm in, along with so many other amazing writers, has been named as a finalist for the Midwest Book Awards in the Humanities category ... P.S. A half-off summer sale happening now on this book & others through June 16: share.google/2eFJZfkuE3xo...

share.google

2026 Summer Sale - Illinois Press Blog

Keep cool and read books! From June 1 until June 16, you will receive 50% off *ALL* UIP bookswhen you purchase from our website with code SUMMER26. Browse books here. [...]Read More

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Taco Bell Quarterly @tacobellquarterly.org · 02/06/2026

There could be a personal hole to scream into If you were writing a book you know

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

I am thrilled to support and celebrate @devintoshea.bsky.social's inaugural book launch tour this summer. Devin's fierce prose and reporting in the Veiled Prophet will be well worth the wait. It's a true honor to join you at Leftbank Books on July 7 📖🙌❣️

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Litbowl @litbowl.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

From Wendy Cope's book, If I Don't Know. #poem #booksky #writing

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

I'm exceedingly grateful to the incredible editorial team @trampset.bsky.social for a Best Microfiction nomination for "Green" 💚 thank you from the bottom of my heart for this incredible kindness 💚

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Lingering Inland Book Launch Party - The New Territory Magazine share.google/YFRZmrZAfs8k... Wanna party in St. Louis & celebrate the gorgeous, gritty beauty of Midwestern writers? Join me & a bunch of incredible writers, editors, & publishers who make the writing world a better place on 12/13

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Lingering Inland Book Launch Party - The New Territory Magazine

Join us to celebrate Lingering Inland, an expansive anthology edited by Andy Oler. 73 original short essays explore locales in Midwestern literature relevant to the life and work of literary […]

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trampset @trampset.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

"I am the cool fizz of prosecco sliding down one’s throat during the golden hour. The chartreuse velvet couch we make out on after eating Vietnamese take-out." @kellathornton.bsky.social's "Green" trampset.org/green-b178ab...

trampset.org

Green

by Michaella Thornton

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Baby's first published prose-poem in @trampset.bsky.social, just in time for Halloween: "Green" trampset.org/green-b178ab...

The Northern Lights in Laugarvatn, Iceland on Saturday, October 18, 2025.

The mossy green forest floor on a hike in Laugarvatn, Iceland on October 18, 2025.

The view outside the Héraðsskólinn Historic Guesthouse, October 2025.

Seventeenth century Italian Baroque painter, poet, and priest Francesco Furini's arresting painting of Santa Lucia, as seen in the Galleria Spada in Rome, Italy by the writer, Michaella Thornton, in September 2024.

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

So honored to be included in this dream publication. This Friday will mark my first-ever prose-poem publication 💚 a beautiful ode to the color green sparked by a writing prompt by the incredible writer and teacher @kathyfish.bsky.social in Casperia, Italy last fall (thank you, Kathy!)

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

Sending love from Iceland 💓🇮🇸🌌

In a field outside of Geysir Geothermal Area in Iceland

The interior of an A-frame of wood framing two sconces and a window looking outside to Laugarvatn, Iceland

Me, Michaella Thornton, wearing a black raincoat and wine-colored hat and black hood on a walk in Iceland

The road to Friðheimar, a beautiful windbreak of trees lining the road to the family restaurant and hothouse

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I'm super excited to be in this gorgeous anthology writing about one of my literary heroes, Kate Chopin, and about making art as a single parent when the world is falling apart

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

I'm teaching a five-week humor writing course beginning this week, and while there's an abundance of chaos and tragedy all around us, now, more than ever, we need to also employ humor to satirize, challenge, protest, ridicule, and illuminate what's happening in our country 💓

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

This weekend I helped a friend move some of their belongings out of their apartment in the Central West End. I won't share any of the photos I took, and I teared up driving to their apartment off Union. If you can, please help the St. Louis tornado relief efforts: www.stlmag.com/news/st-loui...

stlmag.com

St. Louis tornado relief and recovery: How to get and give help

In the face of devastating loss, the St. Louis community shows grit and support.

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Success sometimes looks like eating red beans & rice on the porch of my brick bungalow while pale pink peonies bloom, Ani singing through the window, & I just finished meeting with my childhood library system, where I will be facilitating a workshop with a publisher whose work elevates the Midwest 🩷

Lady Anna peonies in their springtime glory in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. May 6, 2025 🌸

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Wound by Larry Levis I've loved you as a man loves an old wound picked up in a razor fight on a street nobody remembers. Look at him: even in the dark he touches it gently.

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 16/04/2025

Human beings are not an “administrative error”

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Hey Kansas City writers! I'm facilitating a Micro Essay Writing in-person workshop in collaboration with The New Territory Magazine & The Story Center of Kansas City, Missouri on May 31, 2025 from 10 AM-4 PM Central. To register for this free workshop, please visit: www.mymcpl.org/events/10615...

mymcpl.org

Plein Air Micro Essay Writing | Mid-Continent Public Library

Join The New Territory magazine and The Story Center for a full-day intensive on the micro essay form.

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

How to be roasted by my 8yo right before bed this evening: read a graphic novel about dinosaurs, and she dead-eyed looked at me and smiled as she asked me: "So, these dinosaurs were around in the '80s right?" Sis, 65 million years ago dinosaurs died out. Not the '80s, not when I was a child 😭😂😉

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Split Lip Magazine @splitlipthemag.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

💖 While you are at #AWP25, please make sure to pick up a copy of SCREAM QUEEN by our own @cdeskilson.bsky.social from @acrebooks.bsky.social & THANKS FOR THIS RIOT by @janellebassett.bsky.social from @prairie-schooner.bsky.social 💖

CD Eskilson & Anna Cabe, holding SCREAM QUEEN after CD signed Anna's copy. At AWP

Janelle Bassett with Anna Cabe holding up THANKS FOR THIS RIOT after Janelle signed Anna's copy!

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Amy Stuber @amystuber.com · 27/03/2025

I could not be at AWP this year because of work. I'm sad to miss all the good talk about reading & writing. Also, as someone with a new-ish book out, I guess I'm missing the opportunity to spread the word - so here goes: I hope you'll consider ordering SAD GROWNUPS: bookshop.org/p/books/sad-...

bookshop.org

Sad Grownups

Check out Sad Grownups - For those who've been sad and tried not to be, seventeen stories about the absurdity of searching for joy in a dying world. A neighborhoo...

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Maureen Langloss @maureenlangloss.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

In a world full of cowards, I’m begging all of us to be fearless. To dig deep. To find someone or something to stand up for. To make things with our whole heart. To care about the most vulnerable. To write as if our lives depend on it. To do the right thing despite the cost. Now is the time.

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Who are the five writers that made you? Toni Morrison Dorothy Allison Mary Gaitskill Jo Ann Beard Sei Shōnagon ❤️

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Ever read a line in a book you want to commit to memory, it's so beautiful and true? I just began Raven Leilani's novel Luster, and swoon 💜

Highlighted purple text from the novel Luster by Raven Leilani: "It's that there are gray, anonymous hours like this. Hours when I am desperate, when I am ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void."

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Taco Bell Quarterly @tacobellquarterly.org · 10/03/2025

We're going to pay $150 for prose, poems, art, and beyond, for TBQ8, which will also be in print and released in the fall. We open 4/20. Official call and guidelines coming soon! Follow us, read all of our back issues online for free, and live más!

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Peak girlhood is eating Girl Scout Cookies (s'mores is auh-mazing) while watching Alive Australia (also peak disassociation with everything going on) 😜

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

I keep thinking about our public school system & how gutting the DOE, which is on Trump's agenda, is going to hurt so many children in so many long-lasting, irreparable ways As the mother to a child with a 504 plan, I'm furious & ready to fight so hard for basic human decency in our government

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

James Montgomery @jamesmontgomery.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

More magical micros of up to 100 words have been added to this thread over the last week, including stories from @jaredpovanda.bsky.social, @uksherka.bsky.social, @francesgapper.bsky.social, K. S. Dyal, @chriscottom.bsky.social, @kellathornton.bsky.social and @kazbarwrites.bsky.social ✨

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Pick a selfie. Turn it black and white. Still here, still present, still hopeful.

A black-and-white self portrait of writer Kella Thornton, a middle-aged woman, with wavy dark hair and a Mallen streak (silver hair framing her face).

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

One of my favorite micros I've written thus far 😍 thank you for sharing, James While this piece is fiction, I wrote this micro while making toast for my little girl several years ago 🍞

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

I really wish writers and artists had walk-up songs... Mine this month would be a classic, Wu-Tang's "Sound the Horns" 🎺😍🎺

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

There's something healing to this later-in-life Midwestern queer belting out Dar's "Iowa" in her Subaru with the windows down singing about people who "don't like to make our passions other people's concern / & we walk into the world of safe people / & at night, we walk into our houses and burn" ❤️

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

The poet Nikki Giovanni came to Mizzou in the late 1990s and blew my mind with her poetry, specifically about not bunting but aiming for the fences, even if it meant you struck out. Her legacy is a gift to American letters, and I'm heartbroken to learn of her passing yesterday at the age of 81

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Question for writerly friends: I'll be teaching a humor writing course this summer via a St. Louis-based university, and if I offered it fully online vs. hybrid, do you think folx would be more likely to register / attend?

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Reposted by Michaella Thornton

Andy Oler @andyoler.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Super excited that the #LiteraryLandscapes book has a title! Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest, forthcoming 2025 from @illinoispress.bsky.social

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

This was, gasp, my last column from last week (honestly, last week feels like a year ago, not gonna lie). I have *loved* my time writing columns @reckonreview.bsky.social and now I'm going to work hard to make this late-blooming novel happen 💗

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Hello, hello! I've deactivated my 15-year-old Twitter/X account tonight, and I hope to do a better job of being an active member of this community moving forward 💗

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 28/09/2023

Still here! Now, to actually write here... 🫣

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 30/08/2023

Giving fallow-fields energy at the moment, but thanks to new and familiar faces following me ❤️ I'll be back soon. Right now, I'm enjoying Loretta Lynn, homemade apple butter, playing tooth fairy replete with a hot pink glitter trail the 6yo knew was dubious, and throwing the windows wide open

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 13/08/2023

For the first time since early July, I have a day to care for myself. It is exquisite to light a candle, drink hot coffee, fill out back-to-school forms for the 6yo without interruption. I am going to make the most of these next eight to nine hours 💗

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 12/08/2023

Making chocolate chip banana pancakes whilst the Be Good Tanyas sing about something chasing you and talking to yourself, and this is unfiltered and sacred joy, especially as I see my 6yo enjoy that first, warm and happy bite

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 07/08/2023

Yesterday afternoon at the pool, my best friend told me a truth about myself that made me laugh, think, and feel grateful for her love and wit: "You're the most fun, overwhelmed person I know."

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Michaella Thornton @kellathornton.bsky.social · 30/07/2023

I just read @somers.bsky.social gorgeous short story in this month's Joyland on the train from Munich to Prague, and oh my goodness, run to read the "Ten Year Affair"! joylandmagazine.com/fiction/ten-yea…

joylandmagazine.com

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