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George Oliver Kowalik

@kowalikgeorge.bsky.social
256 followers 351 following 50 posts

Writer & researcher. Author of 'Hybrid Novels: Post-postmodernism, Sincerity, and Race at the Turn of the 21st Century' (Routledge). Currently teaching at Glasgow Caledonian University London.

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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Conferencing/Berlining
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Sam Thomas @literarymetal.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Please check out and share the CFP for the collection I'm co-editing on Faith No More. Oct 31st deadline. Neatly coinciding with their imminent return, this will be the first scholarly work of any kind on a really remarkable and important band... call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/05/...
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Book manuscript submitted! Our essay collection with Manchester UP has a heck of a lineup!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Excited to sign a contract with @manchesterup.bsky.social for my next academic book project - a co-edited collection (with Keith Mitchell) on the work of Percival Everett!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Print version of Peruse Zine arrived! Link to read online/buy: www.peruselit.com/peruse-zine
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Finally got my hands on a print copy of my essay for the Journal of American Studies on ‘Erasure,’ career paths, and doing a PhD!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
My flash fiction “Libra” appears in the latest issue of Freshwater Literary Journal. It’s the second story in my Work Trilogy published, after “Influence.” It’s set on a hot day, told from the perspective of a university library assistant. amzn.eu/d/05MONRlt
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Excited to have “Draft Two” - the longest short story I’ve written so far - appear in grist. It’s about a band on tour, toxic masculinity, cancel culture, and Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Something I wrote a while ago on Aftersun - a film I think is a stone cold masterpiece - has been published by Offscreen. Link below to some thoughts on memory, depression, and what I call the film's "struggle aesthetics": offscreen.com/view/struggl...
offscreen.com
Struggle Aesthetics: Memory and Depression in Aftersun
George Kowalik analyzes the debut film of Charlotte Web, Aftersun, as an exemplary case of form being content.
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
My metafictional short story about a fraught mother-in-law and son-in-law relationship - "M.I.L." - has been published in the inaugural issue of Peruse Lit!
peruselit.com
PeruseLit
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
My flash fiction about a recently divorced influencer - "Influence" - has been published at @litromagazine.bsky.social as part of their Future Archives project. Link below! www.litromagazine.com/editors-pick...
litromagazine.com
Influence | George Oliver | Litro Magazine
George Oliver’s sharp flash follows a divorced woman split from her online persona, until social media becomes the site of a possible emergency.
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James Baxter @jamesbaxter1991.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Thrilled to have my new short story 'Appear Missing' out with @ergot.bsky.social www.ergot.press/authors/J.B....
ergot.press
ergot.
innovative + experimental horror
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Dr. Melissa Schuh @melissaschuh.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, because my book is out now, fresh off the press! Happy book birthday to “Literary Autobiography: Contemporary Novelists and their Self-Representations” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) 📕🎉! doi.org/10.1007/978-... @hss.springernature.com
Book cover: Melissa Schuh, Literary Autobiography: Contemporary No Elises and their Self-Representations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)Flyer: Melissa Schuh
Literary Autobiography
Contemporary Novelists and their Self-Representations
-Explores the narrative strategies developed by novelists as they cross generic boundaries of �ction and non-fiction
-Presents case studies of works by canonical contemporary authors
-Develops de�nitions and concepts to analyse forms of autobiographical writing that �flaunt their �fictionality

Part of the book series:
Palgrave Studies in Life Writing

Get 20% off with this code: PALAUTPALGRAVE STUDIES IN LIFE WRITING
Series Editors: Clare Brant • Max Saunders

"Melissa Schuh's Literary Autobiography offers a theoretically elegant and literarily sensitive rethinking of the fraught relationship between the novel and autobiography. Central to the book is the concept of performative contradiction, which Schuh develops as the defining aesthetic strategy of literary autobiography—a strategy that embraces fictionality not to undermine life writing, but to open it toward deeper questions of truth, identity, and narrative ethics. Schuh's analyses of Roth, Coetzee, and Grass persuasively show how these works form an aesthetic lineage that contemporary autofiction continues to draw from. This book will be indispensable for scholars across life writing studies, narratology, and literary ethics."
—Stefan Kjerkegaard, Aarhus University, Denmark
Why do novelists write about themselves? What modes do novelists use to manipulate representations of their personality? Why is it often late in their career that novelists write about their own lives? This book develops the concept of literary autobiography as a genre responding to a profound uncertainty about the knowability of the self, often negotiated through a particular concern with the writing life. Comprising a particular sub-genre and style of contemporary life writing, the autobiographies examined in this book foreground their formal
'literariness' through the explicit use of fictionality, disrupting established (auto) biographical tropes by employing narrative innovations associated with postmodern fiction and prefigured by modernist experimentation. Taken together, they exemplify an aesthetics of performative contradiction, in which novelistic strategies cast doubt on the veracity of the life represented. Exploring works by canonical and popular novelists - J.M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, Günter Grass, Elena Ferrante, and Karl Ove Knausgard - this book addresses the increasing novelisation of contemporary life w…
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C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings @c21literature.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Thrilled to announce our new issue, Novel Media/Media Novel, edited by Dong Xia and Sandro Eich: c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1286/i...
c21.openlibhums.org
C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings | Issue: Issue: 2(12) Novel Media / Media Novel (Autumn 2025) (2025)
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ASAP/Review @asapjournal.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
George Kowalik writes of Percival Everett's The Trees and the haunting of "Till’s body [as] an amalgamation of undead zombie, ghost, alien, and theistic possibility" as "Everett’s large cast of characters describes it as each of these..." asapjournal.com/node/past-an...
asapjournal.com
Past and Potential in Percival Everett’s The Trees - ASAP/Review
The opening page of Percival Everett’s landmark 2021 novel The Trees includes the following line: “the word between usually suggested something at either end, two somethings, or destinations.” This di...
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ASAP/Review @asapjournal.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Our newest cluster is here... and it's (a-)LIVE!!! HAUNTINGS Edited by Emmy Waldman (@emmywaldman.bsky.social) & David Hering Feat: Nicole Dib Arin Keeble Jay Shelat Irina Troconis Dorinne Kondo George Kowalik A. Banerjee M. Stang Christine Prevas asapjournal.com/cluster/haun...
asapjournal.com
Hauntings - ASAP/Review
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
I have an essay on Percival Everett's 'The Trees' in a fantastic new cluster of research on Hauntings up at ASAP/Review! asapjournal.com/node/past-an...
asapjournal.com
Past and Potential in Percival Everett’s The Trees - ASAP/Review
The opening page of Percival Everett’s landmark 2021 novel The Trees includes the following line: “the word between usually suggested something at either end, two somethings, or destinations.” This di...
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
a couple of big ones bought in Tokyo before they’re out in the UK 😍
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
A short piece I wrote last year - “Just in Time: Percival Everett’s ‘Erasure’” - has been published by the Journal of American Studies. In it, I discuss my PhD research, Everett’s work, careers, and cultural moments. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
JUST IN TIME: PERCIVAL EVERETT’S ERASURE | Journal of American Studies | Cambridge Core
JUST IN TIME: PERCIVAL EVERETT’S ERASURE - Volume 58 Issue 4
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
My book came out on Friday! Hybrid Novels has chapters on Percival Everett, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith & David Foster Wallace, before turning to Sheila Heti, Ben Lerner, Teju Cole & Tao Lin. c20/c21 scholars/students… order in to your libraries! www.routledge.com/Hybrid-Novel...
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
“Impeded” - feat. junior football firms, British pub culture, organised fights, directionless male youth ✍️ shop.thebrusselsreview.com/products/tbr...
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
My book is out a week today! Amazon: www.amazon.co.uk/Hybrid-Novel... Bookshop: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/hybr... Waterstones: www.waterstones.com/book/hybrid-...
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IndieWire @indiewire.com · 16/09/2025
Redford's golden boy aura made him perfect for roles like "The Great Gatsby" and "The Way We Were," but cost him others like "The Graduate."
bit.ly
Robert Redford, Activist, Actor, Director, and Sundance Leader, Dead at 89
Redford's golden boy aura made him perfect for roles like "The Great Gatsby" and "The Way We Were," but cost him others like "The Graduate."
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IndieWire @indiewire.com · 16/09/2025
Robert Redford's 15 Best Movies: His greatest performances from Butch Cassidy, The Sting, and Jeremiah Johnson to All Is Lost.
bit.ly
The 15 Greatest Robert Redford Performances
Robert Redford's 15 Best Movies: His greatest performances from Butch Cassidy, The Sting, and Jeremiah Johnson to All Is Lost.
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Penstricken @penstricken.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Did you know all our magazines are free to read online? Because they are. 👉🏻 penstricken.com/issues #fiction #poetry #writing
penstricken.com
Issues
Issues Current Issue Title: Love and HateIssue no.: 3 (Summer 2025) Love and hate: commonplace words that encompass an almost endless array of interweaving feelings and actions. From the true story…
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
I have a short story in The Brussels Review’s new “Blanc” anthology, which is available now: shop.thebrusselsreview.com A couple of big influences on ‘Impeded’ were Melville’s “Billy Budd” and Bill Buford’s ‘Among the Thugs’
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
‘The Peel’ was included in this anthology after being shortlisted for the MTP 2025 Short Story Competition. It was originally published last year: www.sanspress.com/the-archive-...
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
My book has a pre-order date! www.routledge.com/Hybrid-Novel...
routledge.com
Hybrid Novels: Post-postmodernism, Sincerity, and Race at the Turn of the 21st Century
The phrase “post-postmodernism” has appeared in Contemporary Literary Studies since the 20th century, but what does it mean? Scholars have defined the term in various, often contradictory ways. Existi...
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
My 2023 journal article on post-postmodernism (part of my PhD research, now part of my forthcoming first book) won an award! My thanks to ‘Humanities’ 🙏
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Excited to have my story ‘The Peel’ shortlisted for the MTP 2025 Short Story Competition. It’ll be appearing in a print anthology next month!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
At the British Library this evening!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
Thanks to @librelit.bsky.social for publishing my story ‘Car Drives Away.’ Link below!
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Libre @librelit.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
We’re taking a break from publications until Friday. We’ll be publishing Nicole Brogdon, M. Klein, & George Oliver that day. Fabulous writers with loads to say. Thank you for understanding!
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Querencia Press @querenciapress.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
Our 2025 Spring anthology is out now! As always these are unthemed & touch on some triggering subjects so read with care ✨ link in bio *Small reminder, Spring issue was very behind schedule so we are already starting to read through the Summer subs which close tonight 🥰
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
My story ‘Hinterland’ appears in the Spring Quarterly Anthology of @querenciapress.bsky.social! Available to buy here: www.querenciapress.com/querencia-sp...
querenciapress.com
Querencia Spring 2025 Anthology — Querencia Press
Querencia Press's Spring 2025 anthology features 53 contributors of Poetry, Fiction, & Non-fiction work. The themes of the collection vary widely. Get your copy today!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
I have a new story about Polishness and the Life in the UK Test in the new issue of Reverie Magazine. I wrote it before this week’s government White Paper. I for one might fuck off outta this country if we keep pretending that our economy and society doesn’t/hasn’t ALWAYS relied on immigrants.
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
My story ‘Hinterland’ will also appear in this! 🥝🥝🥝
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
My story ‘Hinterland’ - a speculative fiction about dreams, coffee shops, and city life - is in the new issue of The Interpreter’s House. theinterpretershouse.org/current-issue
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
I have a new story in the latest issue of Freshwater Literary Journal! Available online here: issuu.com/freshwaterli....
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Book = done ✅
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
I have a book review in the new issue of The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
My story ‘The Peel’ was republished in @eunoiareview.bsky.social!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Gonna make a more concerted effort to use this platform! I have a couple more stories coming out in print in 🇺🇸 in the next few months. A long one about a band on tour hit by scandal… and a flash fiction about grief, football, VAR, and playing with a high press.
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 24/02/2024
A new story of mine will appear in Twenty-two Twenty-eight a week on Weds!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 14/01/2024
Looking forward to my story ‘My Unimaginary Friend’ - pubbed last year in print - being republished by Literally Stories (online) in March!
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 08/01/2024
Was glad to have some writing published last year… Links to everything: georgeoliverkowalik.wordpress.com
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 08/01/2024
Seeing as we’re doing 2024 now…
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 05/01/2024
Looking forward to presenting at #BAAS2024 in April. I’ll be talking about Percival Everett, Sidney Poitier, the novel ‘I Am Not Sidney Poitier’, trickery, and the past.
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George Oliver Kowalik @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social · 14/12/2023
I wrote a festive-themed short story, which has been published by Litro. Link below to ‘Match Cut’! www.litromagazine.com/litro-magazi...
litromagazine.com
Match Cut
Experience the cinematic magic of Christmastime. This flash fiction captures the interplay of festive pasts and presents in a timeless film reel.
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Roi Fainéant Press SUBS ARE OPEN, BAYBEE! @rfpress.bsky.social · 12/12/2023
Nothing better than a little flash on a Tuesday morning, is there? Well, maybe popcorn and a movie, but what do I know? I'll tell you what, I do know that you should check out "Selling" by @kowalikgeorge.bsky.social Don't forget your popcorn! www.roifaineantpress.com/post/selling...
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