Ellen Kirkpatrick

Bugonia: An Odd Exploration of What We Make From Ruin A myth‑infused critique of how communities create their own monsters and miracles, revealing collapse as the point where new solidarities might begin.

A myth‑infused critique of how communities create their own monsters and miracles, revealing collapse as the point where new solidarities might begin.
New post up today!

#Bugonia

Welcome to The Break A space for radical dreaming, cultural critique, and stories from below.

My work has been changing shape these last few months, so I’ve refreshed this space. It’s now a home for radical dreaming, cultural critique, and stories from below. The welcome page sets the tone. New essays & short pieces are on the way from this radical reading room, and I’d love you to join me.

Another brilliant issue! So much amazing-ness in EVERY one!! Love it ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

Huge appreciation to the creators behind it... and if you haven’t subscribed to @flaminghydra.com yet, you really should!

The Lifeline and the Trap: Super-Frog, Anna Karenina, and the Thresholds of Imagination A reflection on the double edge of imagination and how it can close a life down or open it up.

What happens when the life you’re living no longer matches the life you imagined? This new essay follows Murakami’s giant frog and Tolstoy’s doomed heroine to explore how imagination can collapse a world or crack it open just enough to step back into life.

Eyre Apparent a fiery writer-owned cooperative

For @flaminghydra.com, I used the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights to write about Jane Eyre instead, which I have read, idk, 100 times? I am normal flaminghydra.com/eyre-apparent/

The Log Lady from Twin Peaks, seated in front of a fireplace as she caresses her log addressing the camera directly saying ‘One day, the sadness will end.’

It seems I’ve decided to start watching Twin Peaks again

Firebug's Passin' A brief, fictional remembrance of David Lynch

Happy #TwinPeaks Day☕🌲

Letting this piece I wrote for the blue-rose dreamer drift out into the world again today.

Here’s to the stories that haunt us in the best possible way 💙

Ripley: The Grey Perspective, in Notes A brief exploration of the greyscale world of Netflix’s Ripley, where identity blurs, class shapes perception, and ambiguity offers a form of freedom.

A brief look at the greyscale world of Netflix’s Ripley, where identity blurs, class shapes what we see, and ambiguity becomes its own kind of freedom.
New piece up now.

"Tom moves in shadow because shadow is where people without power are expected to remain."

As book banning sweeps across the U.S. at an unprecedented rate, brave librarians emerge as first responders in the fight for democracy. A film by Kim A. Snyder.

Opens UK 9/26 @berthadochouse.bsky.social, US 10/03 @filmforumnyc.bsky.social, rollout to follow.

Tix: TheLibrariansFilm.com/screenings

Library Allsorts A brief layered reimagining of the library as a living, shifting archive carried through bodies, landscapes, and time.

A brief, layered reimagining of the library as a living, shifting archive carried through bodies, landscapes, and time.

My new piece moves from griots to galaxies, from bark‑books to mycelial networks, mapping how knowledge lives beyond shelves and binds us together.

#Libraries #libsky #booksky

Imagining Irish Unity: The Slow Burn, Not the Blaze

Thanks so much for your interest, and thanks for the heads up about the link. I’ve reported it, but in the meantime you can read the piece over on my Substack here.

cc @newireland.bsky.social @arinsproject.bsky.social @pbp.ie @president.ie @civicimaginaries.bsky.social @citizenstate.bsky.social -- thought this might be of interest

I’ve a new short essay out today in The Honest Ulsterman, looking at the surge in talk about Irish unity and the imagination that hasn’t quite kept pace.

"That’s what this moment demands: not just a conversation about unity, but a bold, public reckoning with what we want to unite for."

#IrishUnity

Joseph Beuys: The Only Oak in Düsseldorf - ChannelDraw Memory and social sculpture in the urban heart

I have been to #Düsseldorf many times, a city deeply connected to the life and work of #JosephBeuys. It is where he lived, worked, and taught, and traces of his presence can still be found throughout the urban landscape.

Read more 👇

And now we are two Celebrating Flaming Hydra’s second birthday

TODAY: celebrate our second birthday with us with some free selections from the archive! 🎈🎂 www.google.com/url?q=https:...

Solitary Pursuits, or Frankenstein and the Toll of Creation On ambition, isolation, and why the way we make things matters just as much as what we make.

A brief look at what it means to create in solitude, how process shapes outcome, and why making things alone carries its own toll. Frankenstein, tech ambition, creative solitude, and the cost of disappearing into the work.

#WritingLife #WritingCommunity

Woodpig Press is a new micro-press based in Wales. We're a loose collection of publishing freelancers who oppose AI and think books should be more about art than money. We want to publish the unusual fiction and non-fiction that mainstream publishers ignore.

(Thread, 1/2)

#booksky

cc @davidlynchsworlds.bsky.social -- thought this might interest you 👀🙂

Firebug's Passin' A brief, fictional remembrance of David Lynch

A small-town remembrance for David Lynch, or a version of him imagined through memory, myth, and the strange glow someone can leave behind.
New piece up now.

#DavidLynch

ellenkirkpatrick.substack.com/p/firebugs-p...

Loved this! I had no idea about the 1939 NYC guide, and now I’m completely obsessed. Clearly I need to track down a copy… my reading list just got a lot more interesting.

The Ending That Changed Stranger Things Forever… Stranger Things wrapped on 31 January 2025, a day that shows how endings and beginnings are only what we choose to see in a moment — New Year’s Eve or Old Year’s Night, depending on the angle.

Been thinking about how a single shift in perspective can completely rewrite a story.

My latest piece digs into #StrangerThings and the ending that reframed the entire series for me.

'What’s missing isn’t nostalgia, it’s the nerve to deliver on the story’s own radical promise.'

#TVThoughts

The Bulb Region The Bulb Region is an online literary journal dedicated to short form. Prose, poetry, comics, essays, humor, hybrid, and anything in-between.

LAUNCHING SOON 🌷 THE BULB REGION!

Fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, prose poetry, hybrid, comics, cultural criticism, personal essays, and everything that falls in-between!

Save the date: January 13, 2026.

bulbregion.com

𝘊𝘖𝘖𝘗 by Nida Sajid is officially out tomorrow! There is so much buzz around this book — MULTIPLE people who stopped by the Tower Hamlets Book Sale said they’d come specifically for this!!! — and we can’t wait for it to finally hit the shelves 😌

www.hajarpress.com/books/coop

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Once again: @sirosenbaum.bsky.social with the most poignant and memorable comic you'll read this year. No kidding.

It's all here on @flaminghydra.com, so subscribe today.

Libraries are transformative. In fact, Farnham Library saved me. Kept me afloat when I was being bullied at South Farnham Middle School in the 1980s.

This poem from Whatever You Do, Just Don't is my homage to it...

Children Deserve Better Survivors of child abuse have been having a rough time recently, with the late child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes in the news nearly every day. Even though nearly all are united in denouncing h...

TODAY: @modernistwitch.myatproto.social on the rights of the child. “The first essay I ever wrote was a plea to adults to take children seriously. Forty or so years down the line, I find I am writing the same essay.” flaminghydra.com/children-des...

"Themes Around Human Connection and Loneliness Are a Constant Throughline in All of My Works" - Rein Lee on Exploring Identity and Queerness in Comics, and Finding Your Way in the Small Press Communit... Rein Lee is one of Broken Frontier's 2025 'Six Small Press Creators to Watch' and they talk to us about their comics and practice.

Last week at Broken Frontier..THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH! “Themes Around Human Connection & Loneliness Are a Constant Throughline in All of My Works” – @rein-lee.bsky.social on Exploring Identity & Queerness in Comics, & Finding Your Way in the Small Press Community. www.brokenfrontier.com/rein-lee-int...

A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness - Pluto Press A devastating indictment against international complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine

Honoured to endorse Francesca Albanese's book, out now with @plutopress.bsky.social

A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness: Reports on Israel’s Genocide in Palestine.

Free to download, with the option to donate to @unrwa.org.
.

@franceskalbs.bsky.social

www.plutobooks.com/product/a-mo...

“Think Like a Commoner" Author David Bollier on the Commons & Why Open Platforms Aren't Enough YouTube video by revolution.social with @rabble

A great conversation on @Revolution.social podcast with host @rabble.nz Henshaw-Plath. We discussed the power of network protocols, the dynamics of commoning in digital spaces, and Big Tech failures to understand their dependence on trust and sharing. Refreshing! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5nZ...

Captain Nemo: A Swap Story, or Why We Can’t Barter Our Way to a Better World — Pop Junctions Ellen Kirkpatrick dives into the character of Captain Nemo, particularly Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s gender-swapped version. She argues that story is the beating heart of social action, helpin...

✨I have a new essay at @popjunctions.bsky.social on swap storytelling, radical imagining, and why swapping approaches often fall short—not just in fiction, but in social and political realms too.
Oh, and Captain Nemo 🦑
Big thanks to the Pop Junctions team for the space and support💖
bit.ly/nemo-swap