iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 31/08/2026

Writers of literature for children, teens, and young adults: Interested in learning about a low-residency MFA program that can help you build a sustainable life of creation in community? Check out @unrlowresmfacw.bsky.social! Now accepting applications for Spring 2027 🙏🏽

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 16/06/2026

Whether we’re talking about references to Michelle Obama or Dr. King, there are some lines of discourse that don’t merit engagement. Instead, I turn my attention to Juneteenth, the first and only federal holiday that specifically commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. 1/

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 15/06/2026

I can’t believe a sharpie didn’t fix the weather forecast and save the UFC event!

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 10/06/2026

As a Black woman from the South and former Assistant Federal Public Defender As a Black woman and former Assistant Federal Public Defender As a Black woman As a woman As a human being My heart breaks for Karmelo Anthony and rages against a system that wrought this

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 06/06/2026

I have so much security and required authentication on my apps that my accounts can be reliably accessed by hackers ONLY

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 05/06/2026

The only thing Idiocracy got completely wrong is that it would take 500 years

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 04/06/2026

I’m deeply honored to join the Black Staff and Faculty Organization of @uofcalifornia.bsky.social Office of the President for their Juneteenth 2026 Celebration Series on June 16 at 12:00 pm PT. I hope you can take part in this special event!

BLACK STAFF & FACULTY ORGANIZATION PRESENTS
JUNETEENTH 2026 CELEBRATION SERIES
FROM SOIL TO SOUL
RECLAIMING OUR ROOTS!
JUNE 16, 2026
AUTHOR SPEAKER EVENT
Featured speaker: Leta McCollough Seletzky
12:00-1:00 pm (PT)
Zoom Details: https://UCOP.zoom.us/j/98997737960

THE
KNEELING MAN

Leta McCollough Seletzky is Director of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. A 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, she is the author of The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., an award-winning memoir. She holds degrees from Northwestern University and The George Washington University Law School.
of Martie Luther King Je.
LETA MCCOLLOUGH SELETZKY
B S
F
Black Staff & Faculty Organization
0
Please reach out to Joyce.Price@cop.edu, Roni.Wilson@ucop.edu, or BSFO-UCOP@ucop.edu for questions.

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 02/06/2026

Not above throwing a blazer on this and calling it business extremely casual

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 02/06/2026

Was hanging up laundry to dry after airing out the house when it occurred to me that pretty much every household in generations past regularly used solar and wind power

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 27/05/2026

America prepares to go FULLY under the big top. “So it would seem that a robust and nuanced understanding of human nature, especially in times like these, requires an understanding of the clown.” -Seletzky, “The Clownishness of Evil”

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 22/05/2026

Friends, the time has come to share a piece on a topic I’ve been thinking about for some time—since at least 2016, at any rate—THE CLOWNISHNESS OF EVIL. I won’t bore you with preliminaries. But this is only the beginning of a conversation that must be had. 1/ www.letaseletzky.com/post/the-clo...

letaseletzky.com

The Clownishness of Evil

Rosemary’s Baby as a Meditation on Aesthetics, Authoritarianism, and the False Selfby Leta McCollough SeletzkyPresented to the Chit Chat ClubSan Francisco, CaliforniaFebruary 10, 2026By Paramount Pict...

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 17/05/2026

That a Tennessee school district has banned ROOTS speaks to the book’s power. They can’t ban ideas, so they try this instead. I was a student in Tennessee when I first encountered ROOTS and the great Alex Haley. Like many others, I carry the power of this work with me. No book ban will stop us

School assembly featuring Alex Haley. A sign reads “The Family! The Roots of It All!” I’m standing at the microphone

School assembly. Haley is in the foreground and I’m in the background

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 13/05/2026

Quick question: how useful will data centers be once they’ve depleted our resources, human and otherwise?

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 11/05/2026

Once again, the people most likely to hide a zombie bite are guiding our infectious disease response

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 09/05/2026

It’s always sobering to share memories of growing up in Memphis in the ‘80s and ‘90s, because some of the things that were normalized for us sound bonkers when I tell people about them. Like how in high school in the 1990s, they did a race-based roll call in homeroom every year 1/

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 09/05/2026

Every now and then, I Google my name to see what’s out there, and you know what? This ”People also search for” box raises a very good question: WHERE IS MY WIKIPEDIA PAGE? 🗣️🔊

Google results:

People also search for
Leta mccollough seletzky wikipedia
Leta McCollough Seletzky husband
Leta McCollough Seletzky age
Leta mccollough seletzky mother
Leta McCollough Seletzky The Kneeling Man
Marrell McCollough Wikipedia

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 04/05/2026

After engaging with the news of Richard Dawkins’ interactions with Claude, I have concluded that Dawkins is not conscious

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 29/04/2026

We should make people confirm they are humans before they’re allowed to hold elected office or sit on the bench

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 29/04/2026

On voting rights: One of the little (yet big) things I’ll never forget is the time my little brother and I were rifling through our grandparents’ stuff one boring afternoon in Memphis when my brother found one of Granddaddy’s old voter registration cards. It had a space for the voter’s race. 1/

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 27/04/2026

Still wrestling with the fact that we have selfies from a purported episode of gun violence

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 27/04/2026

Even if you assume for the sake of argument that the attack at that dinner was authentic, that the reflexive response was to seek a ballroom rather than do something about gun violence speaks extremely loudly

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 25/04/2026

(I would add that I see Memphis as the US writ small.) Many thanks to @theintellectualist.bsky.social’s History of the Present and @lincolnsquare.media for this crucial conversation 🙏🏽

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Reposted by Leta McCollough Seletzky

Lincoln Square @lincolnsquare.media · 22/04/2026

Like MLK JR, patterns of surveillance & intimidation are being used against ordinary people today. www.lincolnsquare.media/p/the-mlk-a… Subscribe to watch @theintellectualist.bsky.social’s History of the Present with Author of The Kneeling Man, @letaseletzky.com!

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 24/04/2026

Satire is like a double espresso for the central nervous system

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 21/04/2026

I keep thinking about how, not too long ago, a lot of eggs were put in the basket of “learn how to code.” Now we see that humans are becoming progressively less central to that work. It’s one of many reasons why my eggs will always be in the basket of “learn how to do more human stuff”

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 21/04/2026

Palantir presents a great example of how corporations pose at least as much threat of tyranny as any government

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 17/04/2026

Me when I do something remotely challenging: I’M BABYSTEPPING!

What About Bob: Bill Murray has tied himself to a sailboat. He’s babystepping

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 17/04/2026

When the thing you make that matters the most is MONEY, I just don’t think it’s sustainable. (This is about Allbirds, but so much more)

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 14/04/2026

It’s one of those perennial problems: all too often, the people who seek the most power should least be entrusted with it

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 13/04/2026

I mean, he’s a little too ham-handed to pull off the whole Antichrist thing, but we do see how it COULD be done

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 13/04/2026

Overheard at the Mar-a-Lago soft-serve ice cream machine: “He’s not a hero because he was crucified. I like people who weren’t crucified, okay?”

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 13/04/2026

NEW: In blistering Truth Social post, Trump blasts Jesus as “WEAK on Crime”

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 13/04/2026

My conversation with Tavis Smiley needs a Part 2! Link to the full interview (which begins at 1:35:55): www.youtube.com/live/UyqjCO1...

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 12/04/2026

I need to get Vance out here in my yard where I don’t want plants to grow

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 12/04/2026

To my knowledge, Vance presents the first documented case of negative rizz with potentially serious geopolitical consequences

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 11/04/2026

I’m deeply grateful to Tavis Smiley for this soul-stirring conversation. Link to the full interview (which begins at 1:35:55): www.youtube.com/live/UyqjCO1...

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 10/04/2026

Now that Anthropic has reportedly created a new AI model “too dangerous for public release,” it should use that model to figure out how to become profitable

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 09/04/2026

NEW: Saruman calls surprise press conference denying relationship with Sauron

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Reposted by Leta McCollough Seletzky

Naseem Jamnia (they/them) THE GLADE IS AN IGNYTE FINALIST! @jamsternazzy.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Paperback of THE GLADE (MG horror) comes out in May, and even though Pina only grapples with her Iranian American identity a little bit, it's an important part of who she is. But if you don't mind a backlist, THE BRUISING OF QILWA is a secondary world fantasy drawn from Iranian culture and history.

simonandschuster.com

The Glade

Ellen Oh’s Spirit Hunters meets Katherine Arden’s Small Spaces in this “scary good time” (Kirkus Reviews) middle grade supernatural mystery followi...

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 09/04/2026

YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE FOR THIS SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: I’m scheduled to join the one and only Tavis Smiley in conversation live tomorrow morning on @kbla at 10:30 am PT, and you can tune in there, on KBLA1580.com, the KBLA app, and YouTube.com/@KBLA1580

kbla1580.com

KBLA | KBLA TALK 1580

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 08/04/2026

The discourse on the right about our president right now reminds me of what I heard about another figure whose atrocities stunned the world: People abandoned him not because his actions were monstrous but because he lost

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 08/04/2026

Iran just won sht that wasn’t even on the table at first, didn’t they? 🥴

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 08/04/2026

Raking ChatGPT over the coals has become one of my favorite pastimes. Here’s where things stand at the moment:

ChatGPT
• •
Shouldn't you have known that? It sounds like you're trying to diminish an enormous mistake
You're right to call that out-and I want to be very clear:
& Yes, I should have gotten that right.
Saying "there is no Pope Leo XIV" was a mistake, not a judgment call or interpretation issue.
And I understand why it sounded like I was minimizing it afterward. I wasn't trying to, but I didn't acknowledge the error strongly enough at first, which can come across as deflecting.

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 06/04/2026

Sheesh, my own quote has left me speechless

SIERRA NEVADA
REVIEW
Apr 5 - Written By Beau Noeske
SNR INTERVIEWS:
LETA MCCOLLOUGH
SELETZKY

1 hesitated to speak about it strictly ir ne past tense, because it had not disappeared. I had always navigated institutions that required very careful movement as a Black woman. It meant I could not always speak my nina without jeopardizing things I had vorked hard to achieve."

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 04/04/2026

For many reasons, Easter weekend feels especially heavy this year. One of those reasons, for me, is that it includes today, April 4–the anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In this time of war and troubles of all kinds, let us remember 1/

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 01/04/2026

April 1–the day I have to preface 90% of my remarks with “This is not a joke”

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 28/03/2026

I continue to find it deeply ironic that despite all the undue attention given to civil rights and new left activists over the years regarding their alleged susceptibility to foreign influence, it has actually been the far right that has opened the floodgates

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Leta McCollough Seletzky @letaseletzky.com · 24/03/2026

So according to Treasury, the US insolvent, but I prefer the old-fashioned term “financially embarrassed”

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