Wyatt Bonikowski

Why Criticism Continues to Matter: Book Reviews and Our Literary Community - Chicago Review of Books My neighborhood in Chicago has a delightfully high density of Little Free Libraries. Inside one of these late last year, I stumbled upon a reissue of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence P...

good morning to @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social in @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social on the art & science of criticism!

"Paying attention to something is a form of love... Criticism makes you slow down and stay and reflect, just like art does."
chireviewofbooks.com/2026/03/11/w...

Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI ‘Expert Review’ Feature The feature, which Grammarly shut down Wednesday, presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—without their consent.

I'm suing Grammarly over its paid AI feature that presented editing suggestions as if they came from me - and many other writers and journalists - without consent.

State law requires consent before someone's name can be used for commercial purposes.

www.wired.com/story/gramma...

“We fell short on this” means they want to keep doing it.

crucial coverage from The Guardian that features our collaborative, movement-building website
against-a-i.com

‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI As AI has upended the way students learn, academics worry about the future of the humanities - and society at large

I'm one of many professors quoted in this report from Alice Speri. I really appreciate The Guardian taking an angle which has basically eluded every other major outlet.

Ah yes, “fluid” without “nonstandard syntax” is my favorite kind of writing.

NYT article “How ICE Plans to Put 8,500 Immigrants in This Warehouse,” with the comment “Experts say the initial designs raise health, safety and security concerns.” The image is a vertical floorplan with pods tightly packed that resembles diagrams of slave ships in abolitionist literature from the 18th century

The person who made this image is well versed in the iconography of the transatlantic slave trade.

Such a great organization! I’ve been working with them since 2016

Beyond Good Intentions: Community-Engaged Teaching & Learning Friday, Mar 06, 2026 3:20 PM - 4:35 PM EST Location: Room 318-319, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center Description Community-engaged and service-learning writing courses promise meaningful impact—but do they deliver? This panel of five writer-educators explores the tensions, responsibilities, limitations, and transformative possibilities of community engagement–based writing classes and workshops. They discuss issues of mutuality, hierarchy, and diversity and share insights from collaborations with community partners ranging from literacy nonprofits to correctional facilities.

Currently on the train to Baltimore for AWP 2026. I haven’t been to AWP in years, and this is the first time I’m presenting. The panel is Beyond Good Intentions: Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning. I’ll be talking about the work my students and I do with 826 Boston in Roxbury.

Questions 27 & 28 In February 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the secretary of war to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and corral them into inland concentration camps. To be considered for release, they were required to answer the so-called loyalty questionnaire. Question 27 asked the inmates—who had been imprisoned without cause by the US military—whether they were willing to serve in combat for the US military. Question 28 asked them—many of whom American citizens who had never visited Japan—to renounce allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Answering these questions caused volatile divisions within the camps, tore families and friends apart, and had lasting repercussions in the decades postwar.Questions 27 & 28 reaches backward and forward from the time of the questionnaire, chronicling the individuals who arrived in the US from Japan at the turn of the century, their children who came of age during war and incarceration, and their descendants who lived in its aftermath. Yamashita mixes fact with fiction and layers genres from James Bond movies to haiku to oral history, transfiguring an enormity of archival research into a chorus of stories. With her signature wit and aplomb, she gives voice to laborers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined an immigrant community.

Hey #BookSky Karen Tei Yamashita is one of our greatest living authors & her forthcoming novel Questions 27 & 28 grapples with the Japanese American concentration camps during WWII. Yamashita is an instant buy no matter what she writes about when, but sadly, this is a vitally relevant topic.

Please share and support.

After my ICE arrest, I learned one crucial way to respond to trauma. We can all take part | Rümeysa Öztürk I was detained for co-writing a op-ed about Gaza as a student at Tufts. My experience has only made me feel more connected to others facing oppression

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

And the second:

www.kcrw.com/shows/bookwo...

Teaching Diane Williams this week in my fiction class so I’m revisiting Michael Silverblatt’s wonderful interviews with her. There are two. Here’s the first:

www.kcrw.com/shows/bookwo...

Magic and Beauty and Wonder: a Conversation with Aaron Burch - The Rumpus “The real magic of a piece comes out when you let a work become what it needs to become, and when you let go of original intent. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately: a lot of short stories, I t...

Gang! Last month, @therumpus.net was awesome enough to let me cuss & discuss with @aaronburch.bsky.social about his new novel, TACOMA (out next week from @autofocusbooks.bsky.social). The interview’s gone live today, and I’d wet my pants with joy if you’d check it out

therumpus.net/2026/02/03/m...

For those outside the Twin Cities, the person posting this GoFundMe is a member of Minneapolis city council (and among the many locals doing absolutely heroic resistance to ICE), so it's legit.

Just saw her with Jesca Hoop last night in Boston and she was awesome. An incredible show all around.

Pow Wow Grounds

My friends local to Minnesota, whom I trust a great deal, would like to share the following resources that could use support.

PowWowGrounds - Native American Coffee Shop doing direct food and supply aid to their communities-

Venmo @powwowgrounds

www.powwowgrounds.com

Just read this today in my fiction workshop and we were all very moved by it.

Illustration like that from a Richard Scarry kids' book, but about ICE terror raids. One of the captions says "Kavanaugh stop," for the cruel and discriminatory practice that Brett K. authorized.

From ever-brilliant @rubenbolling.bsky.social another great cartoon. See original here bsky.app/profile/rube...

And reminder that a certain SCOTUS member will be immortalized for something other than "I like beer!"

We should use his name in every account of these skin-color-based roundups.

Congratulations!

The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says A new report warns that AI poses a serious threat to children's cognitive development and emotional well-being.

It is time to eradicate AI from all educational environments. Find another way. Maybe teach kids about AI like when we learned about drugs in middle school.

“The risks of AI outweigh the benefits” - new report about AI in elementary schools.

I love Varo, too!

Carrington is one of my absolute favorites! Currently working on an academic paper on The Hearing Trumpet.

Love this cover!

"obey the state and you get to keep your life" is probably the shortest possible description of fascism you can put together

❤️

We're crossing all our appendages for Wyatt Bonikowski's "Conflagration Kills Five" for the Shirley Jackson Award!

Donate to Support for Renee Good’s wife and son, organized by Mattie Weiss Please support the wife and son of Renee Good as they grapple with the devastating … Mattie Weiss needs your support for Support for Renee Good’s wife and son

This is a vetted fundraiser for the family of Renee Good, the woman who was killed by ICE in Minneapolis.

www.gofundme.com/f/support-fo...

Thank you @smokelong.bsky.social for this nomination for the Shirley Jackson Award! I’m very honored. Read it here (warning: it’s dark)

www.smokelong.com/stories/conf...