Ellen Rhudy

Brought home one more priceless gift from AWP (am so sick)

The Split Lip Magazine Fiction Team sits at the Split Lip booth. Tote backs, stickers, and pins sit on the table, including a Library Kids Club tote bag.

The fiction team is here! 🤩 Have you stopped by for a tote bag yet?? @whatll-i-do.bsky.social @tinazhu.bsky.social @ellenrhudy.bsky.social

My AWP adventure is that my hotel has been without hot water or a working shower (of any temperature) since I arrived yesterday afternoon, and I am a person who cannot move an inch without sweating 🙃

It's been so bad lately. I feel like wherever I go online, I'm trailed by photos of women who are honestly so thin they are on the verge of death :(

Seriously considering buying an aquarium membership instead of a single pass so I can just spend all of AWP, every day, in the jellyfish room

Our fancy new Library Kids Club tote bag and an assortment of postcards and books, including TINY VESSELS, BLOB, DECOMPOSE and TERMINAL SURREAL. Not featured: Monica Brashear’s novel.

Exciting news, FAM ✨ At our reading next Thursday, we'll be raffling 2 LIBRARY KIDS tote bags with goodies inside, including postcards, pens, & books from contributors @sfeycreates.bsky.social, @litmagreject.bsky.social, @jrfenn.bsky.social, Monica Brashears & the late Martha Silano 😘

Voiding documents that make it legal for people to move through the world normally—especially but not exclusively when you give them no practical opportunity to get new ones even if they wanted to—is (still) not about bathrooms or sports. It’s about erasure.

I’ve had this on my shelf for months! Thanks for the nudge to get to reading it :)

hrm

A Philadelphia fire hydrant topped with snow

My new measurement system is “how big is fire hydrant’s hat” (big!)

his form on the rowing machine is also incredible (shit). the man has no bodily awareness

My current AWP plan is one volunteer shift, visit the aquarium, visit the Visionary Art Museum, panel on university presses, Laura Lippman interview, a daily run around the harbor...so basically pretend I am not at AWP for 90% of my time in Baltimore. Am I doing this right?

Writer Robert Olen Butler described his rejection from AWP’s writer-to-agent program

YES. My friend shared with me so I wouldn’t feel so bad. He posted about it on Facebook

(I recognize that I’m doing a lot of extrapolation here, but come on. just bonkers that he couldn’t get a meeting either.)

Got zero bites on my AWP writer-to-agent query, then saw that Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler also got rejected. So at least it’s not just me who’s fucked, but the whole literary ecosystem!

Today’s a great day to start masking again

But with the help of A.I., Ms. Hart can publish books at an astonishing rate. Last year, she produced more than 200 romance novels in a range of subgenres, from dark mafia romances to sweet teen stories, and self-published them on Amazon.

I don't see how self-publishing world survives GenAI. It's going to be an absurd increase in slop books with no reason to expect any increase in paying readers.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...

FEBRUARY 2026 DOUBLE A SIDE, by Ted Leo & The Pharmacists 2 track album

🚨BREAKING: Late night decision leads to late night posting of new double A-side single for #bandcampfriday!

tedleo.bandcamp.com/album/februa...

Yup. If you’re going to have little kids at a press conference, you have to welcome the fact that they act like little kids. What’s creepy is when people line up a bunch of silent children who behave like Act 1 Von Trapps.

Great post that kinda makes me want to reclaim my younger self who did things like make zines, make my own band T-shirts for my favorite band that didn’t have them, draw postcards and comics just for the fun of it...

Ugh yes. We had a little collection of squashed bugs taped to index cards to help us identify anything we found in a returned book. I never encountered a bed bug thank god!

thank you for the words of comfort! Wild for me to think of Portis not having any fiction there. (I am a little amused at my dream self’s concern with TNY, since I tend to skip over their fiction 😬😬)

Had a dream that to comfort myself over my sense of failure as a writer, I opened up the NEW YORKER issue with my story in it. Then I woke up to a world where I feel like a failure as a writer and no important people at the New Yorker have published me. Man…

Donate to We Lost Everything to a Fire. Help My Family Rebuild., organized by Chloe Clark On January 24th, our childhood home burned down. Our parents lost 50… Chloe Clark needs your support for We Lost Everything to a Fire. Help My Family Rebuild.

On January 24th, my parents home burned down. They and my disabled brother escaped with only minor burns but they lost everything they've ever had.

I'm running a GoFundMe to help them recover and rebuild. I would be deeply grateful for any donations but also for any shares!

Oh god, Chloe. I’m so sorry. ♥️

from Jonathan Franzen's 2013 By the Book interview in the New York Times: Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). The book creates the experience. If I’m loving something, I suddenly discover large chunks of reading time that I wasn’t aware of having.

This is one of those quotes I think about more than any other.

one of my friends won an O. Henry Prize for a story that was rejected over 70 times. So if you believe in it, I say persist...I think sometimes the best work takes longest to place (although I have such a hard time taking that advice myself!)

SO STOKED

Yeah, this is bonkers. I’m in Port Richmond and hardly anything‘s been plowed, where plows have come through you have to climb over intersection snow mountains, most of the buses still weren’t running today and even if they WERE, at most stops I wouldn’t be able to clamber over the snow to get on

hahaha ok buddy. these always bring me a little joy. God forbid a writer also READ!!!