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Seph Murtagh

@sephmurtagh.bsky.social
1.1K followers 580 following 250 posts

Writer. Fiction and essays in 3:AM Magazine, Minor Literature[s], & Socrates on the Beach.

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Minx Marple @minxmarple.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
“Saying I is also a form of experiment” The sublime Lisa Robertson talking about what’s my book of the year so far.
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David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
It’s 50 years since Renata Adler’s incomparable novel ‘Speedboat’ was published: illuminative and dangerous as a lightning strike, bitingly funny, caustically insightful and marvellously stylish. Pub in US @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social, just reissued @wnbooks.bsky.social with intro by Hilton Als.
My tatty 1976 hardcover of Renata Adler’s Speedboat.
2026 paperback reissue of Adler’s Speedboat.
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Jacob Wren @jacobwren.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
"Well, Genet had a phrase that I repeat often: ‘Difficulty is an author’s respect for the reader’, or rather, making him or her think, collaborate – the work is incomplete without the reader’s input…" - Juan Goytisolo
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
16, attempting to hitchhike to Maine, standing on the shoulder of a highway onramp near Albany, with night coming on and 3 dollars in my pocket, when a guy in a white Ford Pinto rolls up and hands me $60 and a King James Bible. "Thanks man you saved my ass" I said. "No, God saved your ass," he said.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Well this is pretty much as insane as I expected it to be.
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Greg Gerke / Socrates on the Beach @greggerkesocrates.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
5 years of Socrates on the Beach... McElroy, Gass, Tudor-Sideri, Musil, Grill, Ariel Porte, Moore, Ulven, Blackwell, Craig, Theroux, Sims, Valéry, Stefanescu, Wood, Cărtărescu, Lutz, Hall, Haskell, Nutt, Ryder, Cárdenas, Khi Nao, Olsen, Handke, DeForest... socratesonthebeach.com
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Dorothy, a publishing project @dorothyproject.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Our editor (in a silly hat) talks about her latest book (Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other from @coffeehousepress.bsky.social) and being a Dorothy fangirl at @cincinnatireview.bsky.social . . . www.cincinnatireview.com/interviews/a...
cincinnatireview.com
An Interview with Danielle Dutton - The Cincinnati Review
Danielle Dutton’s Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other is a collection of surreal stories full of haunted landscapes, literary experiments, and essays on the
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Renata Adler, bringing the goods in PITCH DARK. Extraordinary passage, extraordinary novel.
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Hyo Yoon Kang 강효윤 @hyoyoonkang.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates melancholy from happiness. -- Woolf, Orlando
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Post45 Data Collective @post45data.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
"Representing the canon that scholars of Asian American literature have built, it is the most expansive dataset to date on Asian American literature." Data and essay: doi.org/10.18737/092...
doi.org
The Canon of Asian American Literature – Post45 Data Collective
This dataset traces the Asian American literary canon through nearly 1,900 scholarly citations from 1971 to 2023, capturing which authors and texts have shaped the field over time.
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Amber Sparks @ambersparks.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
The thing people who are terrified don’t understand about cities is that all you need to know is what is your business and what is not your business
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Ah, the sour smell of fallen, trampled fruit fermenting on city sidewalks. It's one of my favorite smells of the year. Fills me with a great inner peace. We are nearing the end of the torrid heat.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Sitting in my office, starving, receiving updates from daycare that my daughter is being fed "sun butter and jelly sandwich, green beans and fruit cocktail"
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Martin Shaw @thebooksdesk.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Great new review of Jen Craig's Wall up over @greggerkesocrates.bsky.social's Socrates: "Her novels are at once obsessive attempts to give a full account of grief-laden lives, & a demonstration of the impossibility, the ridiculousness, even, of such a pursuit" socratesonthebeach.com/gus-oconnor-...
socratesonthebeach.com
Gus O'Connor on Jen Craig — Socrates on the Beach
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Found the hand-drawn cocktail book that my wife and I made during our drunken shut-in covid days.
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Addison Zeller @addisonzeller.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Got a lil bagatelle at beloved @hexliterary.bsky.social
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Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
Sunday morning writing mantra, via DeLillo, from inside my cocoon of dimmed lights, closed doors, and noise-cancelling headphones: "A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it."
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
say it again: 4 million people work in higher ed, the largest employer in 10 states, second largest employer in 10 more, and in 60 of the 100 biggest cities demolishing higher education is economic sabotage
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
I believe these are the first four academic books to cite an episode of American Vandal, which, like, there will be prizes.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
Wrote 1000 words on Gabriel Blackwell's DOOM TOWN, a strange and deeply affecting novel that I won't soon forget.
substack.com
On Gabriel Blackwell's Doom Town
I’m generally not a superstitious person, but there have been times in my life when catastrophes have piled up with such alarming speed and synchronicity, that I've been inclined to believe that the u...
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The Dodge @thedodgemag.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
We're excited to start off our featured author posts with Elvis Bego's work "A Part"! Check out the rest of his work on our website (link in bio) in our Summer 2025 Issue out now!
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Christopher Burlinson @cmburlinson.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
I've been reading Trieste by Dasa Drndic for the last few days and it has absolutely wiped me out. Reading it next to Celan, Pound, etc., and my head is spinning. What a work of fiction - as well as a historical and documentary indictment of the world that reads it.
Dasa Drndic, Trieste
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Chris de C B @panthropology.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Happy Bloomsday to all who celebrate
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Adam Shaw @adamshaw502.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
New work in @havehashad.com today! Another cheesy little dad piece that might be the cheesiest little dad piece I’ve written yet (while also maybe the one I had the most fun with?)
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
My 17 month old daughter has developed an allergy to mosquitos and I'm frankly annoyed that no one, from my wife to our pediatrician to her daycare providers, seems to want to use the official name for it.
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minor literature[s] @minorliteratures.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
“I don’t want to overstate the case, but what’s at stake is life and death”: An Interview with Ben Libman (@benlibman.bsky.social) —Cristina Politano (@monalisavitti.bsky.social) minorliteratures.com/2025/05/29/i...
minorliteratures.com
“I don’t want to overstate the case, but what’s at stake is life and death”: An Interview with Ben Libman — Cristina Politano
Ben Libman is a Paris-based Canadian writer who has mined the geographical specifics of his family’s history, from Nazi-occupied Austria to post-war Canada, in order to challenge the creation…
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Alvin Lu @alvinlu.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
This is my ego as a novice lit mag editor talking, but I imagine someone, somewhere will benefit from reading this entire issue whole, preferably in order of presentation. yourimpossiblevoice.com/issue32/
yourimpossiblevoice.com
Your Impossible Voice #32 | Spring 2025
Featuring new work from Vincenzo della Malva, Molara Wood, Khalil AbuSharekh, Ian MacClayn, Karen An-hwei Lee, Austin Adams, Eric T. Racher, Mary Burger, Jerry Thompson, Shawna Yang Ryan, Steve Barbar...
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Sinéad Gleeson @sineadgleeson.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Off here for now, but here’s a photo from today’s writing: Virginia Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House, from a 2023 visit. The fireplace features a painting by her sister Vanessa Bell of Godrevy Lighthouse in Cornwall, where they visited as children, and said to be an inspiration for To The Lighthouse.
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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Everything about this is a tragedy, every level, from cheated freelancers to authors obscured to readers who don’t get served either.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Took the Substack plunge (yes, sorry, I know) and wrote a little thing about Redbud trees.
substack.com
In Praise of the Redbud Tree
I have no name for them, the informal parks that sit in the middle of the residential blocks of my city.
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minor literature[s] @minorliteratures.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
"Despite the weakness of the light, the path ahead was still visible to everyone. Then Brother Kelpius answered [...] that if he could not find his way among lesser lights, then he would never find his way at all ..." — @unpaginated.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2025/05/15/b...
minorliteratures.com
Back Alley of the Universe: The Men of the Society of Women in the Wilderness — Matthew Spencer
Ancient Capital (1694-1695) Spring had come to the Wissahickon and Brother Kelpius was walking high along its banks when he chanced upon another hermit, an Englishman—their kind becoming common in …
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Addison Zeller @addisonzeller.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Still my favorite thing I’ve written, so I guess why the hell not share it again minorliteratures.com/2024/06/20/o...
minorliteratures.com
Old World, New World — Addison Zeller
“…it matters not if you elude my arms, my heart, when my thought alone can imprison you.” — Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (tr. Edith Grossman) I. Teotihuacan An empty grid with stone jaguars. Use…
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David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
hollowing Virginia Woolf, from ‘Mrs Dalloway’
She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields — where could it have been? —on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London, too, there they sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea, as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers over some tomb.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Wife is horrified than I’m still eating peeps from Easter.
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Minx Marple @minxmarple.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
"I would say my bottom line has always been language, form, and hallucination." I've been dying to read this interview with Diane Seuss, and it really does not disappoint. I love this bottom line.
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Addison Zeller @addisonzeller.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
"how did it get there, he wonders, do the deer travel in the wind like ghosts, like spirits, and he raises his rifle, he steadies it against the metal frame of the stand and he fixes the deer in the crosshairs of his scope" Don't miss this piece by the always excellent @sephmurtagh.bsky.social
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Caustic Cover Critic @causticcovercritic.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
'Divertimento' by Julio Cortázar is finally getting translated into English, published next January. Vintage UK also bringing a few of his books back into print with new covers:
'Divertimento' by Julio Cortázar4 books by Julio Cortázar: Final Exam, The Winners, A Manual for Manuel & 62: A Model Kit
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
Finally got around to watching A Complete Unknown, and while I don't think Timothée Chalamet made a very good Bob Dylan, I think Ed Norton made an astonishingly good Pete Seeger.
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Addison Zeller @addisonzeller.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
"They were told ‘this is a goddess,’ and they hated her, but for the most part, they just said ‘okay.’ And it isn’t as though this goddess appeared to them. No one had visions of her." If you haven't yet, or if you wish to again, read this masterful work from @adamsorardor.bsky.social
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Coffee House Press @coffeehousepress.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Yes, we received *that* email. Courage and strength to all our fellow small, independent presses doing the important work of celebrating diverse and original voices, whether its poetry or nonfiction, translated or not. Literature is not going anywhere.
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Seven Stories Press @sevenstories.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Some of our favorite May Day graphics from @tamimentlibrary.bsky.social 🧵
THE RICH HAVE A HOLIDAY EVERY DAY 
WORKING PEOPLE HAVE MAY DAY
LET'S CELEBRATE
MAY 1LABOR CREATES ALL WEALTH
National Lawyers Guild"Those whose lot it is to toil within the earth's recesses, surrounded by peculiar dangers and deprived of sunlight and pure air, producing the commodity which makes possible the world's progress, are entitled to protection and an equitable share of the fruits of their labor." -UMWA Constitution."WE ARE NOT AFRAID. IF THIS IS WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD A UNION, A FREE AND DEMOCRATIC UNION, AND A GOOD UNION FOR GOOD PEOPLE, WE'RE WILLING TO DO IT. AS LONG AS THERE'S ONE OUNCE OF STRENGTH IN OUR BODIES, THAT OUNCE OF STRENGTH WILL BE USED TO FIGHT FOR THIS GOOD CAUSE. AND IN THE END, WE WILL WIN."
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Man this novel floored me. Absolute gut wrench.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Wife is now using the verb “to “brodernize” to refer to the vilification of any hobby that is objectively harmless and fun.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Pleased to report that the redbud blossoms have arrived in Upstate NY.
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Loved this essay on Renata Adler, comma master: "Her punctuation jars, and turns abruptly, like a skater’s blade stopping and sending up shards of ice."
theamericanscholar.org
In the Matter of the Commas - The American Scholar
For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 20/04/2025
There are plenty of waterfalls in Central NY, lots of little lieutenants and capos, but this one here is the top don. Taughannock Falls, highest straight drop waterfall east of the Mississippi.
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The Dodge @thedodgemag.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Today we're featuring "Waiting in the Woods," a fiction piece written by @sephmurtagh.bsky.social and featured in our Spring 2025 Issue, OUT NOW!
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Addison Zeller @addisonzeller.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Micro up at @rejectionlit.bsky.social Hope you enjoy! rejection-letters.com/2025/04/16/b...
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Seph Murtagh @sephmurtagh.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
The first three chapters of my novel-in-progress are up at Terrazzo Mag. It’s about a city forester who is trying to write an urban forestry master plan while simultaneously taking care of her 3-month-old baby. It’s called THE TREE PLAN. Big thanks to Gina Nutt for publishing this excerpt!
terrazzoeditions.com
from The Tree Plan by Seph Murtagh — Terrazzo Editions
Seph Murtagh is a writer living in Ithaca, NY. His fiction and essays have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, minor literature[s], Socrates on the Beach, and the Missouri Review. He is a past winner of the Je...
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Tom Shiels @itstomshiels.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Well, I suppose mistakes are the portals of discovery.
A screenshot of a news site with the headline: “James Joyce sold heroin and cocaine outside Tesco Express in Stroud.”
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