Laura Nagle

📢 It's official: We're open for session proposals for our 49th annual conference, ALTA49: Give and Take, which will take place October 21-24 in Portland, OR!

The deadline to propose sessions is June 15. View the full conference theme, proposal guidelines, and more on this page: buff.ly/0BgEo3x

Freedom Through Structure: On Translating Vicente Luis Mora’s Centroeuropa When I first read Centroeuropa in Spanish, in late 2020, I came to it with no expectations. I had never heard of the author, Vicente Luis Mora, nor the Spanish literary prize his latest novel had j…

Enjoyed this reflection by Rahul Bery on a translation project with some unusually specific constraints:

Aw, thanks! 🥳 Welcome back to the office, and best of luck bringing your next intern up to speed!

Got a micro hanging about looking for a home?
Unpublished, 50-175 words, any genre?
Try lobbing it at us before 10pm (GMT) on Tuesday! Trash Cat loves great story and a compelling voice🦝

Details and submit link here:
trashcatlit.com/microfiction...

#submissioncalls
#litsubmissioncalls

I have AWP FOMO and am (again) admiring the voice of a precocious child narrator in @jekwriter.bsky.social’s story in @claudineliterary.bsky.social. Safe travels home, AWP attendees! www.claudineliterary.com/jessicaklimesh

Humans who are *not* at AWP:
Is your AWP FOMO set to legendary? So many freebies and fun times! 🫠

We feel you.

Post a favorite Claudine story by Sat midnight EST-and tag us-to be entered in a drawing for a complete set of Claudine swag, mailed to wherever you live! 💚🐈‍⬛💚

Ooh 👀

Have a wonderful time at AWP, writer friends! I’d say I have FOMO, but I know exactly what I’m missing, so I guess that makes it KOMO…

A screenshot of an email from an ad agency to Evil Hat Marketing: Hey Evil Hat team, Promised this is the last time you’ll hear from me. We are wrapping up generating content on the house. The AI studio is starting to get fully booked with our paying clients, and I have strict orders to stop promoting this come the weekend. I figured Evil Hat might as well get some work out of us at no cost while you can. Want in before we close it up? Best, [redacted] And then our reply: Hi [redacted], We will never use AI for our games or for our marketing. It's toxic to our customer audience and it's an ethical violation of the hard work put in by the human artists we hire to illustrate our books and the human writers who design our games. In short, it's not "free work" it's theft. Feel free to take me off your mailing list. Hope you turn around your business model because frankly, your current approach sucks shit. -Tom

sometimes you have to be clear about your values

Being a Luddite Is Cool and All, but Have You Seen the Hilarious Tapestries These New Looms Are Making? Don’t get me wrong, I’m as invested in keeping my job as the next weaver. When the boss brought in that big new power loom, I was pretty skeptical....

"I’m pretty sure technological progress is a law of nature, like gravity or death. The power loom, as we know, is inevitable, preordained by God, who works His miracles through the hands of rich and wise inventors. It’s foolish to resist it."

Foreground: a tuxedo cat sleeping on his side. His face is smooshed against his sister, a dilute tortie, also sleeping. Her paws are curled up in her human’s hand.

Evening snuggles 😻

Letter to the editor about the dangers of gen AI. (Bluesky says it's too long for alt text)

Well now I’m making my town’s usage of AI slop images, and the library holding a session on how to use a technology that has stolen all my books, everyone’s problem. This will be in print in The Retrospect tomorrow (and I’ll post photos then too).

Anthropic ditches its core safety promise in the middle of an AI red line fight with the Pentagon | CNN Business Anthropic, a company founded by OpenAI exiles worried about the dangers of AI, is loosening its core safety principle in response to competition.

The AI critics have, once again, been right about everything www.cnn.com/2026/02/25/t...

A dilute tortoiseshell cat is sitting on a desk with her hind paws poised just beside a computer keyboard. She is looking over her shoulder as if displeased by the choices her human is making.

“That’s the word choice you’re going with, is it?”

Much of the photo is taken up by the black-and-white neck of a tuxedo cat. On the right, a human face is partially visible, getting smooshed by that cat’s face.

I feel like this captures the force and velocity of a welcome-home head bonk from David Rose Nagle.

Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization

Order your Faves on my Digital Cookie Site Today That's right! You can order your favorite Girl Scout Cookies from me online, all while helping my troop and I do great things in our community and beyond! Check it out.

So there's a black girl scout troop trying to raise money to to to Europe but they aren't close to their goal as of yet. Please share this and buy some cookies if you can

digitalcookie.girlscouts.org/scout/reagan...

REMEMBER: All the "Don't use em-dashes" "don't use rule of three" advice because it makes your writing "look like AI" is because they stole actual writers work, and their "predict the next thing" stuff just simulates what WE FUCKING DO. Keep writing well. Use every style and trick you have. Fuck AI.

A tuxedo cat sleeps on his back, belly exposed, on a light blue blanket.

The same cat wakes up and raises his head to look at the photographer.

David doesn’t even pretend to be miffed at the paparazzi. He wouldn’t be able to resist photographing someone this handsome, either.

LOVE YOUR WRITING this weekend! 😍

Today is the last day to get 10 percent off any creative writing class with the code VALENTINES10.

Check the class list here and sign up now!

buff.ly/6GYxtgj

#writingcommunity

The March Micro Marathon 2026 - SmokeLong Quarterly Please book by February 20th! In its third year, The March Micro Marathon will be, as usual, a prompt-a-day whirlwind for 24 days. You’ll exchange drafts of micro fiction, non-fiction, and prose poetr...

Five more days to register for SmokeLong March Micro Marathon! www.smokelong.com/the-march-mi...

The way my cat meows at me through a closed door and the tone of voice I use when yelling SPEAK TO A HUMAN at an automated phone system are the same. Which makes sense, because he is, in fact, demanding to speak to a human.

Strongly recommend 😃

I’m home sick, watching old episodes of Schitt’s Creek while snuggling with Alexis (cat), and I’m on an episode where Alexis (fictional human) has a bad cold. The only thing that offends my girl kitty more than my sneezing is her namesake’s sniffling. (She also despises “A Little Bit Alexis.”)

Such elegant paws!

halftime show

what a shot

Benito is a threat b/c he makes art so alluring and enjoyable you want to understand everything about it and then you end up learning about sugar and slavery and colonialism and the Taínos and Hawaii and then you probably have some thoughts of your own, and that's why art is powerful and dangerous

I was reading a story to my niece (age 5—AND A HALF, she would want me to specify), and I stumbled over some words, so “took” came out as “tooked.”

Me: I’m not speaking English very well today, am I?

Her: You are very not.

Smart people have already written about the many problems of generative AI better than I could, but I’ll tell you this about the thing I know: writing is about writing. It’s an action. A verb. It’s what we do. I write, you write, they write. Skip that and you’re not a writer.

When you come across racists complaining about Bad Bunny today, don’t forget to hit them with this: Puerto Rican literature about Puerto Rico written by a boricua. Yo sería borincano aunque naciera en la luna. Thanks and hope you have a great Sunday!

www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316...