Kathryn Nuernberger
@katnuernberger.bsky.social
I write about science, the history of science, witches, witch trials, feelings, secrets, plants historically used for birth control... Latest book is THE WITCH OF EYE.
Packing day still life. Alice and I leave for Japan tomorrow -- I'm working on poems about weapons, horror, complicity, empire. (Thanks Human Rights Initiative for the support!) Alice is working on Pokémon. :)
July 1, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Packing day still life. Alice and I leave for Japan tomorrow -- I'm working on poems about weapons, horror, complicity, empire. (Thanks Human Rights Initiative for the support!) Alice is working on Pokémon. :)
I am not as brave as a person needs to be to face the moment we're in. But look at this kid's moxie! I feel braver just looking at him.
At the ICE raid and subsequent community resistance in Paramount, California this morning, this skater kid ate dozens of munitions from Border Patrol agents, walked away slowly and flipped them off.
June 8, 2025 at 2:26 PM
I am not as brave as a person needs to be to face the moment we're in. But look at this kid's moxie! I feel braver just looking at him.
A little slap dash mending the night before a trip as evidence of a life well-lived.
May 28, 2025 at 2:01 AM
A little slap dash mending the night before a trip as evidence of a life well-lived.
My editor suggested a short notes section of sources for HELD. Twelve pages later and a week past due, I think it's done. This book should probably be dedicated to interlibrary loan and JSTOR.
May 20, 2025 at 9:58 PM
My editor suggested a short notes section of sources for HELD. Twelve pages later and a week past due, I think it's done. This book should probably be dedicated to interlibrary loan and JSTOR.
This book is a delight. And disturbing as hell. Like wonder and zoos and the world tend to be.
PHOENIX
This is the cage destined
for the resurrection of the Phoenix.
(It's ashes will arrive in December.)
-Nicolàs Guillén, translated by Aaron Coleman
from THE GREAT ZOO
PHOENIX
This is the cage destined
for the resurrection of the Phoenix.
(It's ashes will arrive in December.)
-Nicolàs Guillén, translated by Aaron Coleman
from THE GREAT ZOO
May 18, 2025 at 1:29 PM
This book is a delight. And disturbing as hell. Like wonder and zoos and the world tend to be.
PHOENIX
This is the cage destined
for the resurrection of the Phoenix.
(It's ashes will arrive in December.)
-Nicolàs Guillén, translated by Aaron Coleman
from THE GREAT ZOO
PHOENIX
This is the cage destined
for the resurrection of the Phoenix.
(It's ashes will arrive in December.)
-Nicolàs Guillén, translated by Aaron Coleman
from THE GREAT ZOO
"Was the command the first utterance in any language, or was it the narrative, the story? Or the declaration? Or the question? ... What was the first lie?"
-Vi Khi Nao & Sun Yung Shin, SIX TONES OF WATER
-Vi Khi Nao & Sun Yung Shin, SIX TONES OF WATER
May 14, 2025 at 12:44 PM
"Was the command the first utterance in any language, or was it the narrative, the story? Or the declaration? Or the question? ... What was the first lie?"
-Vi Khi Nao & Sun Yung Shin, SIX TONES OF WATER
-Vi Khi Nao & Sun Yung Shin, SIX TONES OF WATER
287 resolved comments later and I've learned I love a comma splice, hate hyphenated/open/closed adjectives, and have no idea what transitive and intransitive verbs even are, much less how to conjugate them. Which is to say, thank god for copy editors, especially my exceptionally good one!
May 9, 2025 at 9:23 PM
287 resolved comments later and I've learned I love a comma splice, hate hyphenated/open/closed adjectives, and have no idea what transitive and intransitive verbs even are, much less how to conjugate them. Which is to say, thank god for copy editors, especially my exceptionally good one!
Poems and a glass of wine on the patio -- just out here living the dream.
"How do you know?
I know because I speak a language too
a lung-language night can hear
in its big empty bald head"
-Eleni Sikelianos
YOUR KINGDOM
"How do you know?
I know because I speak a language too
a lung-language night can hear
in its big empty bald head"
-Eleni Sikelianos
YOUR KINGDOM
May 4, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Poems and a glass of wine on the patio -- just out here living the dream.
"How do you know?
I know because I speak a language too
a lung-language night can hear
in its big empty bald head"
-Eleni Sikelianos
YOUR KINGDOM
"How do you know?
I know because I speak a language too
a lung-language night can hear
in its big empty bald head"
-Eleni Sikelianos
YOUR KINGDOM
Was woken 7 times (!!!) last night by a constipated two-year-old weeping "want poooop." I'm about to get on a plane to LA with what is surely the least amount of mom guilt I have ever felt before a trip. AWP pals, see you soon!
March 26, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Was woken 7 times (!!!) last night by a constipated two-year-old weeping "want poooop." I'm about to get on a plane to LA with what is surely the least amount of mom guilt I have ever felt before a trip. AWP pals, see you soon!
On walks I let the two-year-olds pick a book out of the neighborhood little free library. And the way this guy leaped for the steamy romance novel!
March 17, 2025 at 9:44 PM
On walks I let the two-year-olds pick a book out of the neighborhood little free library. And the way this guy leaped for the steamy romance novel!
"When there is nothing, there is a piece of paper. It's the dawn of the world. There's nothing, it's blank. And then two hours later, it's full. You compete with God. You dare to create something. You write... You do your own thing. You. It's completely terrifying."
-Marguerite Duras
-Marguerite Duras
March 17, 2025 at 2:16 PM
"When there is nothing, there is a piece of paper. It's the dawn of the world. There's nothing, it's blank. And then two hours later, it's full. You compete with God. You dare to create something. You write... You do your own thing. You. It's completely terrifying."
-Marguerite Duras
-Marguerite Duras
When the student in the back seat of the 10 passenger van asked if we could pull off so she could hug a white pine, you better believe that van was tilting on two wheels as I took that hard right. Tree hugging emergency!
March 14, 2025 at 10:42 PM
When the student in the back seat of the 10 passenger van asked if we could pull off so she could hug a white pine, you better believe that van was tilting on two wheels as I took that hard right. Tree hugging emergency!
There's so much to love about teaching this science writing class at the headwaters of the Mississippi -- swans fishing, geese fighting, jack pines, fire ecology... And, when I ask if anyone wants to see the picture of zombie chipmunks I took up at the Biome Center, everybody says "Yes please!"
March 14, 2025 at 12:41 AM
There's so much to love about teaching this science writing class at the headwaters of the Mississippi -- swans fishing, geese fighting, jack pines, fire ecology... And, when I ask if anyone wants to see the picture of zombie chipmunks I took up at the Biome Center, everybody says "Yes please!"
Hello from Itasca Biological Research Station, where I'm spending spring break with 17 students in my Watershed Workshops class, writing about the headwaters to the Mississippi, birch-fir tree mutualisms, cool fungi, eagles doing it in mid-air (!!!), and, and, and...it was a good day.
March 13, 2025 at 12:57 AM
Hello from Itasca Biological Research Station, where I'm spending spring break with 17 students in my Watershed Workshops class, writing about the headwaters to the Mississippi, birch-fir tree mutualisms, cool fungi, eagles doing it in mid-air (!!!), and, and, and...it was a good day.
I'm not doing so well lately, because who could and how in a time like this? But also, it's spring and the world is full of puddles and acorn caps and very nice sticks. I feel like my heart breaks open a hundred times a day, often in the good way.
March 10, 2025 at 3:27 PM
I'm not doing so well lately, because who could and how in a time like this? But also, it's spring and the world is full of puddles and acorn caps and very nice sticks. I feel like my heart breaks open a hundred times a day, often in the good way.
I love new notebook day!
March 4, 2025 at 3:08 PM
I love new notebook day!
It takes some coming to terms with the simultaneous truths we are small amid the mighty forces of destruction and also capable of effecting change, that things are dire but not all hope is lost... It can be dizzying to hold all these things -- and the grief itself can get in the way.
-Lauren Markham
-Lauren Markham
February 19, 2025 at 3:48 PM
It takes some coming to terms with the simultaneous truths we are small amid the mighty forces of destruction and also capable of effecting change, that things are dire but not all hope is lost... It can be dizzying to hold all these things -- and the grief itself can get in the way.
-Lauren Markham
-Lauren Markham
Apropos of some bullshit at my work that is probably happening at your work too...
"Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given."
-Timothy Snyder in ON TYRANNY
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051...
"Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given."
-Timothy Snyder in ON TYRANNY
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051...
Excerpt from On Tyranny | Penguin Random House Canada
A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America's turn towards authoritarianism.
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
February 1, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Apropos of some bullshit at my work that is probably happening at your work too...
"Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given."
-Timothy Snyder in ON TYRANNY
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051...
"Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given."
-Timothy Snyder in ON TYRANNY
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051...
I love how Ayşegül Savaş captures the creative complexities of motherhood in THE WILDERNESS.
"I find, in this liminal experience, a site for multiplicity, for experiencing the world beyond ourselves...redefining how we relate to the flesh of the world, and how we allow the world to touch us back."
"I find, in this liminal experience, a site for multiplicity, for experiencing the world beyond ourselves...redefining how we relate to the flesh of the world, and how we allow the world to touch us back."
January 22, 2025 at 3:37 PM
I love how Ayşegül Savaş captures the creative complexities of motherhood in THE WILDERNESS.
"I find, in this liminal experience, a site for multiplicity, for experiencing the world beyond ourselves...redefining how we relate to the flesh of the world, and how we allow the world to touch us back."
"I find, in this liminal experience, a site for multiplicity, for experiencing the world beyond ourselves...redefining how we relate to the flesh of the world, and how we allow the world to touch us back."
"Why draw prison walls in the dirt
in the name of freedom
Could there be a sky beyond the sky"
-Bei Dao
in the name of freedom
Could there be a sky beyond the sky"
-Bei Dao
January 19, 2025 at 2:57 PM
"Why draw prison walls in the dirt
in the name of freedom
Could there be a sky beyond the sky"
-Bei Dao
in the name of freedom
Could there be a sky beyond the sky"
-Bei Dao
A couple little guys who LOVE mail are turning two tomorrow and I'm pretty excited for them to wake up and let me play with their presents. Maybe I'll teach them about SASEs and form vs. personalized rejection letters.
January 16, 2025 at 3:29 AM
A couple little guys who LOVE mail are turning two tomorrow and I'm pretty excited for them to wake up and let me play with their presents. Maybe I'll teach them about SASEs and form vs. personalized rejection letters.
My inbox! It will only be this way for 10 minutes max, but what a feeling. Like there's tiny emeritus professor in my heart who just fell asleep by a fire with an open book in her lap.
January 13, 2025 at 10:11 PM
My inbox! It will only be this way for 10 minutes max, but what a feeling. Like there's tiny emeritus professor in my heart who just fell asleep by a fire with an open book in her lap.
"...my site is wherever
a rose grows,
wherever clouds cast their shadows on
roofless houses,
wherever a bomb does not fall,
wherever a child does not confuse a cloud
for bomb smoke."
-Mosab Abu Toha, "To My Visa Interviewer"
a rose grows,
wherever clouds cast their shadows on
roofless houses,
wherever a bomb does not fall,
wherever a child does not confuse a cloud
for bomb smoke."
-Mosab Abu Toha, "To My Visa Interviewer"
January 3, 2025 at 2:49 PM
"...my site is wherever
a rose grows,
wherever clouds cast their shadows on
roofless houses,
wherever a bomb does not fall,
wherever a child does not confuse a cloud
for bomb smoke."
-Mosab Abu Toha, "To My Visa Interviewer"
a rose grows,
wherever clouds cast their shadows on
roofless houses,
wherever a bomb does not fall,
wherever a child does not confuse a cloud
for bomb smoke."
-Mosab Abu Toha, "To My Visa Interviewer"
Brian thought it would be super cute to teach this guy to sing "Mama, oooo oooo oooo" like a little Freddie Mercury every time I walk in the door. And it is super cute. And that song is a lot of feelings to have toddlers demanding on repeat at 5 o clock in the morning.
January 1, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Brian thought it would be super cute to teach this guy to sing "Mama, oooo oooo oooo" like a little Freddie Mercury every time I walk in the door. And it is super cute. And that song is a lot of feelings to have toddlers demanding on repeat at 5 o clock in the morning.
"A slug is not
As you might think
A snail without a shell
A slug lives its whole life
Without a shell
Like I do"
As you might think
A snail without a shell
A slug lives its whole life
Without a shell
Like I do"
December 31, 2024 at 2:33 PM
"A slug is not
As you might think
A snail without a shell
A slug lives its whole life
Without a shell
Like I do"
As you might think
A snail without a shell
A slug lives its whole life
Without a shell
Like I do"