Brian Halley

Well, I've slowly started a new blog (!) focusing on some recent history of leftist #Boston #publishers, specifically those in or connected to my own South End neighborhood. I've like to get into their founding and the context for it. Check it out and provide any leads, please. #publishing #books

Saw the new movie A Talent for Murder tonight which once again had a main character who is a book editor who holds the keys to success and riches, whose seniority (as an editor in publishing) and manhood is challenged. This trope continues unabated! #publishing #books

This is beyond contemptible, truly a new low in sadistic, cruel, inhumane behavior, coming just days after Tennessee failed in their attempt to execute someone, leaving her in critical care. I am nearly speechless, and deeply heartbroken for what we’ve become, with this news.

Anyone attending the upcoming American Studies Association meeting in Chicago who wants to meet, be in touch and we can set up a meeting, to see if your project may be a fit with @umasspress.bsky.social. Setting up meetings now! Feel free to forward/share.

I only knew Sandy a little bit, from the @aseh.bsky.social meeting, but I was a huge fan, of her lists at @upittpress.bsky.social and her commitment to university press #publishing and her stories about her pugs. She was a character. Another RIP here.

I famously don’t care much about space but I do care about science. 🤷🏻 Huge respect for Margaret Hamilton, RIP.

New (to me) author scam. Using the identity of a legit literary translator to express their interest in translating my book (More Than Words) into French. So depressing.

Obsessed: At 194, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise Knows About Aging www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/s...

Great post at Feeding the Elephant on #BannedBookWeek, by @catherinefte.bsky.social @hnetbookchannel.bsky.social #books #publishing

This will be a thread of essays I recommend to students in my creative nonfiction workshop:

TAKE NOTE; THIS IS DELIBERATE

Come see me at the @umasspress.bsky.social table here at @asalh-bhm.bsky.social meeting - always a great conference! Exhibit hall opens tomorrow (Thursday) at 9am.

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

The Republicans are trying to tell Americans who they are. I’ll give them that. We Americans need to remember that corporations, when expected to “self-regulate,” choose profit over people. The R’s are publicly choosing their side.

This is my personality now and I have @smallbutfighty.bsky.social to blame for the opening of her book Why Sinead O’Connor Matters, with @utexaspress.bsky.social. And yes I know it’s Fiona Apple, read the book and it’ll make sense! 💔

It frustrates me that today's email from @publisherswkly.bsky.social includes a link to a Substack (already kinda sad) about McMurtry's Lonesome Dove in which the writer narrates his convo with an AI bot as he tries to figure out why people like this novel. This isn't news, but it is depressing.

Watch Trump falsely suggest he was pulled from Ground Zero on 9/11

“he had the rare vision to see a thing, any thing, not just at the moment of acquisition but through its whole passage from mineral extraction, the mess of manufacture and transport to the consumer and beyond, to the desecration we call ‘landfill.’ He nudged us to do the same…” -Barbara Kingsolver

Scholars and non-fiction writers: please read @lportwoodstacer.bsky.social on this point! #publishing #writing #scholarship

Remember the Epstein Files? So far, only about half the files have been released — and a potential cover-up by the Trump regime continues to generate bipartisan political action. Here's what you should know. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-epstein-files

Do you ever worry, when it rains, that your houseplants are jealous?

Worth a read even if it gives you nightmares bc many people are deep in this nightmare for real and it’s only spreading, and this series of troubling and astute observations does result in a plan.

We all have blood on our hands. It’s shameful what our government is doing.

In fairness, it was the fault of the particular era’s fashion that made it “aesthetically terrifying.” I mean a few years earlier, Joe looked completely badass. But always “very woke.”

Just 10 billionaires have already poured nearly $670 MILLION into this year's midterms. In the entire 2008 presidential cycle, the last election before Citizens United, total billionaire spending was $16 million. If you're wondering what the real threat to "election integrity" is, it's Big Money.

"By writing, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts.“ LOVE this piece. www.historians.org/perspectives...

“He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven…” -“The Human Seasons,” John Keats Pretty solid tbh.

Tho I was there to bury my parents in the family plot, the Kilkenny Arts Festival in #Ireland is well worth a visit! They put on some fantastic shows, for the public and with ticketed events. A delightful surprise as part of the trip.

Starting a sentence casually this way isn’t great, @bostonglobe.com: “As small liberal arts colleges across the Northeast face a mass die-off…” it was a pretty sweet story about the Marlboro Music Festival in #Vermont, but this line jumped out in its flippancy, and hyperbole.

@altusaid.altgov.info @friendsofusaid.bsky.social #USAID