Danny Vazquez
@vazquezwithaz
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editor | educator | arts administrator
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Joined November 2013
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I teach a class at City College where I'm meant to train students into editors. I graduated from that program. And I'm struggling with the realization that entering book publishing was, for me, a massive mistake. I cannot support sending working class students into this industry.
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There are no ethics in publishing, I won't pretend there are. But
@simonschuster
is really pushing the limits of odious shit publishers will do for money. Fuck that whole company now and forever.
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Some of you come from families that respond to common sense and reason and it shows.
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Everyone in publishing is either 23 or 47. I can't explain it, it's just true.
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I understand ya'll are doing a Latinx discourse again. Most Latinos apparently reject the term. You know what else a lot of Latinos reject? Blackness.
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So, yeah, we all deserve more. And the whole rotten thing has to come down if we are to get more. But I like these people and the work I get to do with them and they seem to value having me around well enough. And the rest of you people suck. So, it's
@astrahousebooks
forever. 💫
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Jay Z invited a roomful of journalists including *checks notes* Charlamagne tha God (???) to talk about his NFL “social justice initiative.”
What episode of Random Acts of Flyness are living in right now?
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Your value in this business is measured by your willingness to be exploited. That is, of course, not unique to this business. What is unique is the ways in which your labor is invisiblized.
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Not really news to anyone who works closely with me (or has paid attention to my Twitter bio) but, ah... some news:
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When you have concerns over "Hollywood acquiescing to Beijing" in reference to a Marvel movie, but have nothing to say about Marvel collaborating the U.S. Department of Defense. 🤔
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Imagine having an editorial meeting with Mike Pence, but you're a woman so his wife has to be there?
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Pay more people more money to do less work. That's how you solve burnout. Not free yoga Wednesdays or whatever the fuck. The Bloomsbury people are responding to material conditions here. Hope other publishers are taking note.
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I have acquired, edited, and published books the authors of which wouldn't even name me at their book launch. As much as that stings, it's nothing in comparison to being rejected for jobs I'd be plainly competent at because my experience doesn't align with the employer's needs.
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There's a very diverse working class in this city that doesn't have access to jobs in book publishing. Yet, there's a constant call for "moving publishing out of NYC." As if most of these jobs aren't already being filled by people from elsewhere. Make it make sense.
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Meeting with authors is sick. Like, these people are so cool and smart and talented and I get to go, "good shit, carry on. Looking forward to reading the rest of your new book!" And like, that's my whole job. What the fuck.
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I'm proud of the work I've done and grateful for some of the people with whom I've had a chance to do that work. But if I could do it again, I'd have pursued a different path. And I refuse to continue sending this industry more Black and brown working bodies to grind into chaff.
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In all seriousness, why don't we enlist the cops to do this? They literally don't do anything else but terrorize people. Imagine doing this work for free while whole ass civil servants roam the city being useless.
In the fall, catch basins grates can get clogged w/ leaves & debris. With heavy rain expected tonight, if you can, check nearby catch basins & clear the grates (wear gloves & watch for traffic!). Clearing the grates will help them take in as much rain as possible. Stay safe NYC!
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Hands down coolest thing that has ever happened at Washington Square Park.
Please share widely to show the insanity of the moment we’re in.This is Washington Square Park, NYC.
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Book publishing, of course, does not need me. Book publishing, in fact, cannot afford me—neither financially nor ideologically. There isn't space for me and I can't imagine there is space for any of the brilliant minds I've dedicated years to training into this profession.
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I am going to spend the next several years making books with this brilliant poet/novelist/screenwriter (calling it early, you heard it here first). There really isn't anything Melissa can't do and I'm just so happy to be along for the ride. 💫
BIG NEWS!! DREAMING OF YOU's
@ellomelissa
has two more books coming our way! 😍 Look for CANDELARIA and BEYOND ALL REASONABLE DOUBT, JESUS IS ALIVE, out fall 2023 and 2024, respectively. Congrats to Melissa, editor
@vazquezwithaz
, and Rachel Kim at 3 Arts Entertainment ✨
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Potential employers outside of book publishing don't see how widely encompassing are the responsibilities of a book editor. I don't blame them. But I've watched people fail upwards while my best efforts yield nothing but pats on the back and comments about how much I am needed.
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A GOTH. LATINX. FEVER DREAM. 🖤
WOW my goth latinx fever dream is coming to life with
@mcdbooks
!!!! I love telling stories thru POEMS call me OVID, BITCH!!!!
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Gaslighting is the baseline behavior in book publishing. These people will have you second guessing your own good sense. That's what happens when you have an industry composed of like 90% white people—this is how power entrenches itself.
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What if I die of SIDS and everyone finds out I'm actually just a baby?
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Molly is so wickedly smart and simmering with class rage and this book is just as bizarre and unsettling as life in this crumbling empire. It's also really funny. Excited to introduce you people to Jonathan Abernathy and his woes.
Did I hear that right? Y'all want to read darkly comic novels about work and debt?
I sold my debut novel, JONATHAN ABERNATHY YOU ARE KIND to
@astrahousebooks
. Read it fall of 2023.
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I was a TSA agent and a music store clerk. And I was a barista and dispatch at a car service. And I worked at Levi's and Duane Reade. I wanted to be a doorman—good union job, tips. Now I acquire, edit, and publish literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, biographies, and poetry.
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@fakeshoredrive
Wow, never thought I'd feel nostalgic over a Riff Raff record, but here we are. This was a fun moment.
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Imagine who we'd be left to our own devices, freed from the yoke of colonialism and neocolonialism.
Okezie Nwoka has done just that, and I'm happy to announce we'll be telling the story at
@AstraPublishing
.
Thank you,
@rossharris1
for making the connection. 💫💫💫
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@lostblackboy
I had to have a conversation about tweeting a gif of George Bush getting a shoe thrown at him with the caption “me at the townhall,” about a certain publishing town hall
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Shouts out to the good people at
@hcpunion
and
@prismreports
, phenomenal work, all around. 🙌🏽
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If you care about the future of book publishing, you should read this, internalize it, and operate on it. Molly is a brilliant editor. What a loss (for them).
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A Brooklyn book store called "Booklyn." Is that a thing? Should be a thing, no?
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Another moment for an earnest tweet—my brother, who works at a car service, the very job I held for years before coming to book publishing, is leading a serious act of collective power and worker solidarity at his job and I'm so fucking proud of him. This shit runs in our blood.
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Today, THE PEOPLE WHO REPORT MORE STRESS, a book I've been reading since 2018, is published. I could be done with this job now, having accomplished this.
Congrats,
@drovarela
. You deserve all the love this book and the last and the next receive. 💫
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Maybe it's profitable to publish more diversely. Maybe it's not. Is this really the argument you want to make, though? Do you really want to measure the value of communities of underserved readers according to profitability?
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Lol, "woke hysteria," followed by "My friend, a POC," is just too funny.
Another highlight: "as close as it gets to a guaranteed success for debut literary fiction." Lol.
The "anti-woke" moral panic crowd really won't rest until... they all get book deals?
On woke hysteria in New York publishing:
My friend, a POC, was told by his high-powered agent that NY won’t touch his novel—a gritty, urban coming-of-age story informed by personal experience—unless he rewrites the protagonist to match his own ethnicity. 1/
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I once read an essay comparing politicians to the cast of HBO’s The Wire and reached out to the writer
@Russian_Starr
about writing a book.
His memoir, a sort of travelogue of oppressed people, will now be published at
@astrahousebooks
.💫
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Is it possible to have a crush on a book cover?😍
From poet, writer, and performer
@ellomelissa
comes DREAMING OF YOU, a macabre novel in verse about a lonely Latinx poet named Melissa, who resurrects Tejano pop star Selena from the dead.
W/ beautiful cover illustration from
@pollynor
!
Out this October:
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Two months since my first time being laid off from my job as a book editor and finding myself wild grateful and happy to not be working for people with good taste and the best intentions but a wildly inflated sense of their business acumen, book publishing writ large.
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Standing in solidarity today with the Amazon workers down in Bessemer. All workers deserve basic dignity and the right to negotiate the terms of their working conditions.
#BAmazonUnion
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Going super earnest here, but Julian—and the work he is doing in Indigenous rights and climate justice and the gift that is his writing—is truly a beacon of hope in what is otherwise a really grim existence. Love that I get to publish him and for several years to come. 🌊💫
Please welcome
@julian_aguon
to the Astra House family! Look for his books NO COUNTRY FOR EIGHT-SPOTTED BUTTERFLIES and TO HELL WITH DROWNING coming fall 2023 and fall 2024, respectively. Congrats to Aguon,
@vazquezwithaz
, and Duvall Osteen at
@aragiauthors
on the two-book deal!
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“No more imaginary ancestral, postmortem pleas on who died so that we can vote today. People fought and died for lots of reasons alongside voting, but most importantly, for the right of self-determination, which moderates defend for the right and dismiss for the left. No more.”
hi, I wrote about why progressive Black women and women of color might feel torn about Kamala Harris. Truth is, we are tired. We are gonna have to play defense because of racism and offense because she's moderate dem.
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This is the story of undocumented street vendors in L.A., how they're criminalized and made susceptible to violence by the state; and of one man's desperate search for redemption.
Keep an eye out for
@byjessekatz
's
#TheRentCollectors
at
@astrahousebooks
in fall 2024.
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Every gripe publishing workers have—from wages, to diversity, to the precarity of our jobs—can only be resolved by caring more about our conditions than we do about our employers' bottom line. Your value is not determined by your dedication to keeping a dying industry afloat.
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I don't even hold publishers to this because I know courage isn't really a job qualification. I just wish they'd stop trying to argue that bullshit "diversity of ideas" line. It's demoralizing how intellectually disingenuous some of the most powerful people can afford to be.
What I'd really love to see is Big Publishing band together to not publish a single one of these fucking clowns in the Trump caravan. Have some fucking integrity for once. Don't cut a seven-figure chance and have the gall to claim you aren't somehow propping up white supremacy.
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Not gonna hold you, HarperCollins was a terrible place to work—but this is so much worse than anything I experienced there. As Jenn notes, a terrible way to treat editors—par for the course. But to leave authors hanging like this? Wild.
Hey everyone! I’m back online from hiatus and it's been an interesting few weeks. As I'm sure some have been wondering (and asking), I wanted to make sure to set the record straight on why I am no longer at Amistad. Buckle up for a thread…
#ICYMI
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1998 was such a wild year in music in this city. I was 12 and DMX was the soundtrack to my walks to school, blaring out of every car and apartment window. His music made everything feel alive and kinda bleak but it belonged to us and that was a comfort. I miss that feeling.
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Every middle class white woman from the midwest in book publishing: "You know what book publishing needs? More people like ME."
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My new year's resolution is to not be in a pandemic anymore.
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Black independent media outlet
@HoodCommunist
is still suspended 2 days later.
@TwitterSupport
, we need an explanation and an immediate re-activation of the account!
#FreeHoodCommunist
#BlackLivesMatter
#BlackTwitter
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Reading something someone spent years writing and deciding in one week's time how much it's worth in dollars is not something I'm sure I want to continue doing.
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I met
@jzfalero
about a week ago and we spoke through a translator. It was a better conversation than 90% of what I experience at publishing functions.
These books are smart, funny, pulpy, and take class analysis seriously. Now we just need English titles.
@astrahousebooks
🇧🇷💫
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I've not met a writer who cares more about his characters than
@drovarela
. He has such a sharp eye for the nuances of human behavior that often go unnoticed. He's brilliant at showing how the ways we treat each other can say so much about our condition. Can't for you to read him.
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My neighbors accidentally ordered too many pizzas. So, they offered us a pie. Is this what is meant by a utopian society?
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Diversity & inclusion won't stop the police from killing Black people. What makes you think it will stop publishers from rewarding cops for killing Black people?
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I have frankly had a terrible year. We all have. But if there's a silver lining here, it's that my boundaries have been clarified. And I am resolute in maintaining them. You should be too.
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Starting 2022 off strong with a new edition of
@julian_aguon
's tender and inspiring collection of essays, NO COUNTRY FOR EIGHT-SPOT BUTTERFLIES! Introduction by Arundhati Roy and a second book, TO HELL WITH DROWNING, in development.🦋🌊💫
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“I think a lot of Black publishing professionals are becoming exhausted from being heard only when it benefits the company’s bottom line.” — Ebony LaDelle (
@Coloringbooks
)
A lot of gems here from some people I deeply admire and respect.
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Simon & Schuster is a white supremacist money laundering operation. But, then again, so are all corporate publishers. What a dilemma!
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Job: “Would you be interested in performing more labor at your underpaid job?”
Underpaid worker: “What’s in it for me?”
Job: “A chance to talk about why more folks who identify the way you do don’t take on the same kind of underpaid labor.”
Welcome to every D&I initiative ever
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I've been chronically outside for the past couple of weeks and you know what? It's not good. Going back to quarantine.
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@CAMONGHNE
Omg, that is absolutely at the root of this. Abolish RICH DAD, POOR DAD while we're at it, too.
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My job is to argue for the commercial viability of books I believe in. But we sell books to a mostly racist, tasteless, anti-intellectual, and xenophobic readership. I can't afford to care if the books succeed. I can only care about championing them to the best of my ability.
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If we're not having at least three separate conversations across three separate platforms at any given time, are we even friends?
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Big day at
@astrahousebooks
, not least of which is because we just announced this brilliant, heartbreaking, and lyrical ode to the outer-boroughs by Tyriek White. Several years worth of heat in the pipeline, but this one hits so close to home.
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People who read endlessly and come away from every text unchanged, whose sole motivation for reading is to extract craft notes or to catalog writers into little "best of" lists in their own head are kinda useless, yeah?
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✨ ✨ ✨
Welcome to Astra House!
Astra House is a mission-driven imprint dedicated to publishing authors across genres and from around the world.
#AstraHouse
#AstraPublishingHouse
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@vlakverdeling
@headfallsoff
"A smart person written by a dumb person to whom smart people are indistinguishable from wizards" is the best line of any review ever written about anything, lol.
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In which my brilliant assistant
@rolaharb98
is introduced to the world as an acquiring editor. A fascinating proposal, an amazing team. Astra House forever. 💫
Debuting Spring 2024: A WOMAN IS A SCHOOL by designer, writer, advocate, and public speaker
@celinecelines
. A singular combination of memoir and advocacy, A WOMAN IS A SCHOOL argues that we need to decolonize education and empower young people to forge their own paths to success.
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@prisonculture
@KeeangaYamahtta
Do people really not understand this? Or are these reactions based on proportionality? I mean, I agree that we have a long way to go. But I don’t think the problem is that people don’t understand how long 10 years is. It’s that we’ve seen POC get more time for lesser crimes.
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Our first book is out in the world. Go cop that.💫
Happy Pub Day to Li Juan's WINTER PASTURE 🎉
"Deeply moving", lyrical in its prose and filled with humor, WINTER PASTURE shatters the boundaries between nature writing and personal memoir.
Pick up a copy everywhere books are sold ⬇️
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We’re looking for a Publicity Director at
@AstraPublishing
! Must have a deep appreciation of the rogue state as expressed in 90s-era rap music and an understanding of pizza as a vessel to spiritual enlightenment. OR, all of these qualifications:
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Oh, look at this. Spotify announces an audiobooks program on the same day that
@lizpelly
announces the forthcoming publication of her damning investigation into the streaming platform economy? Coincidence??? Yeah, sure.
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Let's talk about what really needs overthrowing: exploitation and entitlement. Editors don't owe you a damn thing—that relationship is reserved for writers we actually work with.
@sarahgcantin
Are you not an editor on Fridays? As new writer I find all the rigamarole of "what to do and not to do" of Agent Rules like a bad dictatorship that needs a top down and bottom up overthrow. This attitude is why people started self publishing.
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@TheRaDR
This man really said people in the midwest might be afraid to see Prince on their TV screens. He should consider it a blessing that Bowie didn’t kick his teeth in that very second.
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Me and my friends have been working on this for a while and we have a way to go, but here's this.
@DepresssionGym
@LZoells
@carriehsieh
@allen_anaka
#pubworkers4justice
#pw4j
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Lmfao, big boss moves. Money-making Simon & Schuster. Everyone deserves a voice! And we deserve to profit off it!
Dana Canedy at Simon & Schuster has acquired former Vice President Mike Pence’s autobiography, due out in 2023; our story to follow.
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Some people misunderstand "Friday" or "the weekend" to mean the part of the week dedicated to doing unpaid labor. As in, you spend the week exchanging your labor for exploitative wages, then the weekend continuing in that work for free. Funny, I thought it meant something else.
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It's never inappropriate to acknowledge your own exploitation. Solidarity is not a zero-sum game. If you work for a living under capitalism, you are being exploited and you should know the contours of your own exploitation.
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"The crisis is here. It's not only at our doorstep, but it's banging down the door." —
@julian_aguon
There really are just so few people with this level of clarity about our material conditions who also maintain hope for a better future. Thank you for writing this book, Jules.💫
"We have to be really honest about the U.S. war machine," says writer Julian Aguon, whose book "No Country for the Eight-Spot Butterflies" is out today and explores the impact of U.S. militarism in Guam.
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I'm an adjunct, I love students. And I'm an editor and I love authors. But students, like authors, are not so precious that workers should cede any chance of a decent living to continue providing them services at the behest of wildly exploitative employers. It's simple as that.
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Publish more conservative authors—yes, a brilliant strategy for *checks notes* bringing greater diversity to publishing.
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When
@rachelkiim
sent me
#DreamingofYou
, I thought "Great, more Latinx poetry." Then, I read it and realized
@ellomelissa
wasn't trafficking in tired Latinx tropes, but pushing against them. And that's a project I can get behind. Happy pub day, Meli.
#RepresentationMatters
💫
The wait is finally over! Happy
#bookbirthday
to
@ellomelissa
's DREAMING YOU! 🎉✨ Available now wherever books are sold, this absurd yet heartfelt examination of celebrity worship is just in time for
#SpookySzn
. 👻
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@royal_holimess
Absolutely. I hold grudges for other people longer than I do for myself, lol.
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The only worthwhile words in this NYT opinion essay are the ones linking to this incredibly useful spreadsheet of zionists in publishing. You people are monsters and idiots. I hope to see your homes collapse under the weight of your hatred and stupidity.
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"What does it take for any of us to change our core beliefs? I’ve come to find that sometimes it takes the entire world being turned on its head for that to happen." —
@okezienwoka
in
@poetswritersinc
To changing worlds and shifting beliefs. Happy pub day, Okezie!
#GodofMercy
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I get two, maybe three important things done each day. It's not enough, of course. But, well, it's all I can do. Some tell me they're proud of me.
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Pamela, "meritocratic" is always pejorative, you dumb fuck. The term was coined to describe a kind of dystopia. This is what an arbiter of taste looks like in a crumbling empire.
In which the former editor of The NY Times Book Review argues that meritocracy is real.
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Here's me having a Latin-ex-istential crisis with friends.
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