iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

So excited to be in conversation this weekend with Ariel Lawhon and Lisa See at Aspen Literary Festival! Also so, so excited to meet the great @katekilla.bsky.social. Join us! Visit aspenliteraryfestival.org for more details.

Flyer for an event at the Aspen Literary Festival: “Against the Tide / Ariel Lawhon & Shannon Sanders & Lisa See / Moderated by Kate Tuttle / September 27 at 11 AM / Wheeler Opera House / Tickets: $45”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Got this today. What do you think the grift is here? I’m fascinated.

Email that reads:

Hi Shannon,

My name is XXXX and I am the Lead Organizer of the Düsseldorf Book Club in Germany, a community of over 2,400 passionate readers who meet every month to discover and discuss books they love.

I came across Company and I have not stopped thinking about it since.

The way you examine what it means to keep company with others, the obligations, the performances, and the quiet longing underneath social life, is something our readers find both uncomfortably familiar and deeply illuminating. The social precision in your writing is the kind that makes people put the book down and look at the people around them differently.

We are finalizing our April event this Saturday and we are selecting only five authors, each featured in their own dedicated section of the event hall. Company is one of the titles we are seriously considering for this month. That said, if there is another book of yours you feel better represents your work right now, we are completely open to featuring that instead.

Featuring Company this April – Düsseldorf Book Club, would you be open to it?

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Finally, after years of it never working out for one reason or another, I’m headed to AWP next month and will be on this panel with @sophiestern.bsky.social and @danhoyt.bsky.social 🎉🎉

Flyer for an AWP panel called “What Would Really Happen? Crafting Scenes Your Readers Believe,” scheduled for 3/7 at 10:35 AM in Room 329 of the Baltimore Convention Center

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

My favorite jeweler came out with a new line of charms. I showed it to Wes and suggested maybe the boys could help him choose one for me. They EACH picked one! It was so fun to see what they picked. They got to have the fun of choosing and I got something I wanted—it worked (sorry) like a charm.

A gold chain with three oval gold charms: a heart with the word LOVE, an eye with the word PROTECTION, and a honeybee with the word WISDOM

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

So so so thrilled to be on this list (even though my book doesn’t come out until the second half of the year)!!

Image of the cover of THE GREAT WHEREVER by Shannon Sanders, to be published on 7/7/26, over a Debutiful background with title “Most anticipated debut books of 2026”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I will be thrilled when AI ends poverty or cures cancer. But meanwhile, among the many, many things to hate about it, one is that it has turned emails like this into an irritating plague

Beginning of an AI-generated scam/spam email:

“Message: Hi Shannon,

I just finished Company, and I can’t get over how effortlessly the Collins family comes alive on the page. Only Amazon could bury a collection that moves from Atlantic City to New York to DC across decades, blending the joys, sorrows, competitions, and secrets of a Black family with such wit, precision, and emotional resonance. Each story lands like a perfectly timed guest arriving at a house unexpected, illuminating, and impossible to forget.”

“P.S. The way you weave intimacy, societal obligations, and multigenerational perspective into each story is exactly why readers will champion Company. With Q4 being the loudest season for book discovery, authors who act now often own the moment. Ready to lock in Q4? Reply “Yes.””

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

In 20 years they are going to be researching why middle-class suburban Millennial moms’ life expectancies have been inexplicably cut short, but no one will think to look at things like this as the culprit

Virtual waiting room to log onto the county’s activity registration site. Registration opens at 6:30 am and one false move and you lose your place in line

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Nor would it feel anything when it finally succeeded

Homemade Spin suit top made of a black pajama shirt, red felt, and silver fabric paint

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

AI could never fail at this this many times

Homemade costume in progress surrounded by dogshit attempts at drawing a symmetrical freehand spider

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Where once you would collaborate with a creative partner, or hire (AND PAY) a ghost writer, or plagiarize but feel due shame about it, now you can not participate to the same degree but still tell yourself and others you are the sole author of your work

“AI gets them going and writes the first paragraph, or first chapter, and gets them back in the zone,” he said. “And it can do similar things with painting and music composition and with almost all of the creative arts.”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

They do begin to resemble a swarm

Spotted lanternflies made of felt and marker

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Adding the scariest thing I can think of to the trunk for Trunk or Treat

Handmade cardboard cutout of a spotted lanternfly

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

So, we’re in the middle of a four-day weekend for the kids. There are no corresponding days off of work, and at the block party I went to yesterday one of the most common chitchat topics was how people are handling childcare. The highest amount I heard was $650 being spent to cover 1 long weekend 😃

Meme of Dr. Oz saying “Turns out that about one-third of families don’t have the number of babies they desire. They’re under-babied.”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

So I ended up bringing the knitting because the consensus was it wasn’t weird, but acoustically that room did not allow for metal needle knitting so it just sat in my lap!

Interior of Politics & Prose set up for Brandon Taylor’s book event; photographer has a knitting project in her lap

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

I find it so interesting that they decided to model the AI-generated picture for this AI-generated profile that does nothing but evangelize about AI after a woman of color. There is something deeply sinister about that

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

I posted about this on Instagram but almost forgot to do so here. Today is my first book’s birthday!! (As Wes calls it, my first daughter. 🥰) There was so much joy and fun in writing this book, and even more in sending it out into the world. I hear from lots of readers and I’m so grateful!!

Cover of Company, a collection of short stories by Shannon Sanders

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Wes brought me to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra playing Beyoncé hits. Of course the night happened to fall on a day when I successfully drank 96 oz of water, and I wore a cute jumpsuit. So here’s a selfie. IYKYK

Birds Eye selfie from the bathroom of the Strathmore music venue in Rockville, MD

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

As RFK spews bullshit and the world loses its mind, shoutout to my aesthetician, which (in Sept 2025) quietly continues requiring masks. 3 notes: (1) The staff is all Black women; (2) the clientele is (almost) all Black women; and (3) no one throws even a tiny bitch baby tantrum about the masks.

Storefront with stickers: “Mask Required,” “Best of D.C.,” and “Black Owned Business”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

I love seeing the style sheets for other people’s books in progress because they’re like a little peek at the feel of the book itself, but absurdly devoid of context. You feel like you’re smelling the book but can’t see it, or something. Anyway, here’s mine

List of terms used in Shannon Sanders’s forthcoming novel THE GREAT WHEREVER

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

I taught logical reasoning for years, and in every class there were students who would never grasp the concept of sufficient vs. necessary. They would get that “All apples are fruits” does not mean “ONLY apples are fruits,” but not be able to apply that to *anything* else. They just couldn’t. (More)

Screenshot of a Threads post where some dude is celebrating that Florida erased a beautiful mural of the words “Black History Matters” (which he seems to think says Black Lives Matter).

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

I do have one tiny piece of good news today, which is that my second book is one step closer to becoming a book. Here’s a peek at the uncorrected bound proof 👀

Uncorrected bound manuscript of Shannon Sanders’s THE GREAT WHEREVER, a novel coming out in July 2026

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Our friends (childfree and childful alike) just give plenty of notice and bake it into the invitation: “Can you guys get childcare for some Saturday in mid-September so we can xyz?” It’s direct and we always WANT to say yes and no feelings are hurt.

Hi, Carolyn: My partner and I are part of a broad community of friends and acquaintances in our 30s and 40s who live in the same part of the city. I feel very fortunate to have such a big social world. I try to entertain often, either for dinner or TV or board games.

Many of my friends have kids. My partner and I don’t have or want kids, and frankly I find it to be a huge challenge to host kids, especially ones old enough to walk but not old enough not to whine or make a mess if left unsupervised. Sometimes this just means I invite some families much less often — and certainly never more than one family at a time. But sometimes, especially for board games, I’d like to be able to issue broad invitations to a bunch of adults but exclude younger kids.

Is there a polite way I can manage to do this, short of never planning things earlier than 8:30 p.m.? The alternative is seeing some adults I’m quite fond of a lot less often, which isn’t my favorite outcome.

— Host

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Trader Joe’s shelf stocker: “You are like the fifth person to ask me about this in the last hour. This stuff has been flying off the shelf this week! Is it really good?” Lol Happy back to school weekend!

Empty grocery store shelf where sunbutter belongs

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

I remain incapable of hearing the name Sean Patrick Thomas without picturing each of these people so I am grateful we are now in the era of Zendayas

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Mine just came in. Reminder not to mistake *prioritizing HBCUs* for something other than explicit racism. All that means to them is further whitening public spaces. Anyway, guess we can look forward to an influx of antivax art. Great, love it here

Email from NEA indicating that the Creative Writing Fellowships program has been canceled and my application won’t be reviewed

Info indicating that the NEA will now be focusing grants on areas prioritized by the current administration

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

I’ll be talking to Mark Doten about this book tomorrow at Politics and Prose on Connecticut Ave! Come and get the book, and then you too can walk around town with this conversation-starting cover politics-prose.com/mark-doten

Cover of Mark Doten’s short story collection Whites

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Anyway, I found it on the carpet at home after the kids dumped their towels and goggles everywhere. Hallelujah.

A hand handing a gold choker with elongated 70s-style links and three small hammered gold charms over a bedspread

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

This is so tragic. A portfolio like the one required takes years to build, a process that involves so much experimentation, rejection, and learning. They want to pay someone $12k to help destroy that process so that brands can more easily pump out chummy-sounding stolen copy.

Screenshot of a Mercor job posting for a fiction writer to help train AI content. Qualifications listed include 2+ years’ experience and a portfolio of published work.

Screenshot of the details of the posting. Max hours offered for the short-term project are 30/week over 8 weeks (240 total).

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

I googled “currant” earlier today to show a child a picture of the fruit (as part of an explanation of the color name), and this ominous nightmare arrived in my inbox a few hours later. Full dystopia

Email from Etsy with subject line “Remember me?” in large letters, over a photo of a pile of currants

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Every time I start to think Threads is showing promise, I suddenly come across, e.g., a yarn company accusing 40-year-olds of all sharing the same (regional) dialect

Screenshot of a Threads post by squidgeyyarnco asking why millennials don’t post the T in certain words

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Guys I think it’s safe to say we have a Style for fall 2025

Cover of Erin Somers’s THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

This is from an article about AI in publishing. Authors, are we planning to do this? Also, it’s wild that the copyright-holders of AI-generated works don’t want to disclose that fact on their book covers. Isn’t the tool incredible and “enhancing” your creativity? Shout it from the rooftops.

Excerpt from a Financial Times article on AI in publishing: “For Hall, frustration at the UK government’s approach to AI has led to her own innovation. “The Society of Authors campaigned for AI-generated work to be labelled, but now it’s not going to be.” Earlier this year its US counterpart, the Authors Guild launched a “human authorship mark”. So, Hall says, “Now it’s on us to assert our humanity.” Helm will be published with what she calls a “maker’s mark” on the cover: a small circle containing the words “HUMAN WRITTEN”. “It will assert the craftwork that’s gone into it, the human quality — provenance, authenticity, integrity.”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

The average person fretting about the birth rate doesn’t actually care about the distant future of any bloodline other than his own. He doesn’t (generally) even support, like, free school lunch. So when you hear him fretting about it, it’s actually just about this, the supposed “fix.”

Screenshot of a tweet by Bizlet saying the only way to fix fertility rates is to make women economically dependent on their husbands

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

*first whispering, then grabbing you by the collar and yelling* This book is THE REAL DEAL

The cover of a galley of Erin Somers’s novel The Ten Year Affair (cover depicts two pairs of hands flirting with each other)

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

We aren’t safe here. I personally don’t have anyplace else to go, but this place—my homeland of at least seven generations—is a grave and dangerous disappointment.

“Justice Dept. Asks for 1-Day Sentence for Ex-Officer Convicted in the Killing of Breonna Taylor

The move was a stunning reversal of Biden-era efforts to address racial disparities in law enforcement. Brett Hankison had discharged several shots through Taylor’s window during a drug raid gone awry.”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

I made a tiny sweater for my coworker’s baby and used the @amycolleen.bsky.social method of attaching the yarn label as a care tag

Handknit baby sweater in a yellow-to-blue fade. Elbow-length sleeves and very stretchy hems

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

I did it! It was @clhubes.bsky.social. A thunderstorm started right when we got there, so the restaurant let us have the gazebo. Just out of frame are the millions of kids we brought with us, who had the time of their lives

Lucy and Shannon sitting at a table crowded with takeaway boxes, kids’ water bottles, crayons, and empty wineglasses

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Behold the bounty from our garden (my hand for scale). Dinner tonight is tiny eggplant parm

6 itty-bitty finger eggplants next to a hand for scale

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Huh. Are you really being “strong-armed” if politely declining has worked? This feels like projection to me—granted, pushy people who have kids become pushy parents, but an ask is not the same as a demand.

Dear Carolyn: My husband and I are in our early 40s and are happily child-free. We are both professionally successful; we have a large, meticulously appointed home and backyard with a pool; and we have two large dogs, whom we love dearly.

The problem is that our adult siblings and friends believe their children are entitled to our time and the amenities that our home offers.

We’re consistently asked — strong-armed — to babysit their children, who range in age from 2 to 14, while they go on vacation, dates, appointments and so on. We have always politely declined, mostly due to work obligations, but also because we just don’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s kid and don’t feel like crating our dogs.

We have even offered to help one sibling find — and pay for — a responsible babysitter but were met with, “We’d prefer family.”

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

If this describes you—if you, an adult, have lost the ability to make a turkey melt or think of a song that reminds you of your spouse, in like ~2 years’ time because of AI—then sure maybe AI should replace you in every life function but I don’t think we are all willing to go down with you

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Happy Father’s Day to @therealwessywes.bsky.social, an awesome dad who will do anything to make his kids smile, even walk through the nabe with Easter eggs velcroed to his shirt. He is the best and we 💙 him

Father of three young kids (smiling, wearing glasses, hair cut short) taking an outdoor selfie in a T-shirt covered with Easter eggs

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

The thing about the cocktail stand at the zoo is that how much you need a cocktail at the zoo is inversely proportionate to how able you are to enjoy a cocktail at the zoo

Stand at the zoo advertising cocktails, craft beer, lemonade, and coffee

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

At the very tightest setting the belt hangs like this, which can’t be right? It’s not long enough to go around twice. What do I do? I really want to wear it

Black shirtdress on a mannequin with an extremely long belt

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I have to ask this again. If your entire marketing campaign for your product is “This tool will help you get away with cheating,” why would you expect anything other than for users to slide into lazy, careless, lying, substandard behavior?

“The article is not bylined but was written by Marco Buscaglia, whose name is on most of the other articles in the 64-page section. Buscaglia told 404 Media via email and on the phone that the list was AI-generated. “I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses,” he said. “On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed.””

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

I finished all of them. Here are the last two, drying in the sun. (They look just like the others, but in a different size.) Don’t let anyone tell you what you can’t do.

Two handknit toddler sweaters on a blocking mat, drying in the sun on a porch

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Shannon Sanders @shanders.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

When people say this, I think what it often means is that ideas they might once have encountered in the wild and attributed to other artists, they now feel free to take credit for as their own because AI is not a person. “Someone I know had a great idea!” vs. “I miraculously have a great idea!”

“My creative processes have exploded with new ideas and storylines. The AI tools have helped me harness and bring to fruition what I see in my head but need a little help bringing fully to life.”

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