Patrick Whitmarsh
@whitmarshphd.bsky.social
Teaching and writing about environmental narratives, ecocriticism, modern fiction. Sci-fi, horror, heavy metal. Author of Writing Our Extinction https://www.sup.org/books/literary-studies-and-literature/writing-our-extinction?tab=1
Enjoying a chilled stout and listening to Mark Knopfler’s “The Ragpicker’s Dream” is one of my favorite holiday traditions.
Wishing you all peace this season.
Wishing you all peace this season.
December 26, 2025 at 1:33 AM
Enjoying a chilled stout and listening to Mark Knopfler’s “The Ragpicker’s Dream” is one of my favorite holiday traditions.
Wishing you all peace this season.
Wishing you all peace this season.
I didn’t think the first AI paper I’d find during grading period would be… from a respected, peer-reviewed journal asking me to review a submission.
Fucking bleak.
Fucking bleak.
December 10, 2025 at 4:58 PM
I didn’t think the first AI paper I’d find during grading period would be… from a respected, peer-reviewed journal asking me to review a submission.
Fucking bleak.
Fucking bleak.
how is Rose Betts the most majestic combo of Imogen Heap and the Decemberists? And how am I only learning about her now? I’m obsessed.
November 8, 2025 at 12:51 AM
how is Rose Betts the most majestic combo of Imogen Heap and the Decemberists? And how am I only learning about her now? I’m obsessed.
Like my man Zevon says, “If I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for a while.”
We’ll miss you Bon. You were the best cat anyone could ask for.
We’ll miss you Bon. You were the best cat anyone could ask for.
October 11, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Like my man Zevon says, “If I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less. Keep me in your heart for a while.”
We’ll miss you Bon. You were the best cat anyone could ask for.
We’ll miss you Bon. You were the best cat anyone could ask for.
Colleagues and fellow scholars, here’s info on a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies that I’m coediting with Matthew Gannon and @katemarshall.bsky.social: “Long Modernism, Altered Natures,” cfp below—send us your abstracts!
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/09/...
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/09/...
cfp | call for papers
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu
September 25, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Colleagues and fellow scholars, here’s info on a special issue of Modern Fiction Studies that I’m coediting with Matthew Gannon and @katemarshall.bsky.social: “Long Modernism, Altered Natures,” cfp below—send us your abstracts!
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/09/...
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/09/...
I love Watertown
August 16, 2025 at 10:41 PM
I love Watertown
My newest piece on Peele’s NOPE and the McManus bros’ THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND is out in SFF&TV, along with several other banger essays. Check it out here (if you don’t have access, dm me)
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18...
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18...
Contents | Science Fiction Film & Television 18, 2
This paper focuses on the TRON duology – Steven Lisberger’s TRON (1982) and Joseph Kosinki’s TRON: Legacy (2010) – ahead of the release of Joachim Rønning’s TRON: Ares (2025) to situate the series in relation to the social dreaming of utopianism. As I’ll ...
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
July 24, 2025 at 1:04 AM
My newest piece on Peele’s NOPE and the McManus bros’ THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND is out in SFF&TV, along with several other banger essays. Check it out here (if you don’t have access, dm me)
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18...
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18...
Let’s be real, LLM is just way too similar to MLM.
July 6, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Let’s be real, LLM is just way too similar to MLM.
Sometimes, the way a draft of something gets written is 37 false starts and aborted efforts and then BAM. 7500 words in two days.
May 28, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Sometimes, the way a draft of something gets written is 37 false starts and aborted efforts and then BAM. 7500 words in two days.
The upshot of extractive capitalism is a house of mirrors where what’s below is above, as we’re crushed within centuries by what was buried over epochs.
The plan is to blast a 600-foot deep chasm in the earth, inside the floodplain of the San Joaquin River, and to do it without running a single study on what would happen when water inevitably pours into the pit
Arambula’s bill protect San Joaquin River dies in committee
Arambula’s bill protecting the San Joaquin River from damage caused by blast mining gravel was killed in committee this week.
fresnoland.org
May 5, 2025 at 10:57 PM
The upshot of extractive capitalism is a house of mirrors where what’s below is above, as we’re crushed within centuries by what was buried over epochs.
The frontier is alive and well in the world-ecology.
Just another extractive project, at another frontier where cheap nature interfaces w the profit motive against the backdrop of a deliberately hollowed-out & (in this case) fully coopted regulatory apparatus.
@nytimes.com @washingtonpost.com, does anybody want to shine a national light on this
@nytimes.com @washingtonpost.com, does anybody want to shine a national light on this
May 5, 2025 at 10:49 PM
The frontier is alive and well in the world-ecology.
My review of Sarah Dimick’s tremendous new book, UNSEASONABLE, is out at ISLE. Academic friends and fellow environmentalists, check out Sarah’s awesome work!
academic.oup.com/isle/advance...
academic.oup.com/isle/advance...
Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures. By Sarah Dimick
A deceptively simple question animates Sarah Dimick’s Unseasonable: what do literary and cultural depictions of seasonal regularity (or irregularity) revea
academic.oup.com
April 25, 2025 at 7:22 PM
My review of Sarah Dimick’s tremendous new book, UNSEASONABLE, is out at ISLE. Academic friends and fellow environmentalists, check out Sarah’s awesome work!
academic.oup.com/isle/advance...
academic.oup.com/isle/advance...
Stoked and stacked for IMAGINING CRISIS IN 21C AMERICAN LITERATURE in the fall!
April 23, 2025 at 11:02 PM
Stoked and stacked for IMAGINING CRISIS IN 21C AMERICAN LITERATURE in the fall!
“Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Great Depression, Shadow Ticket follows Hicks McTaggart, a detective who is tasked with finding the heiress of a cheese fortune.”
I mean, that tracks.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
I mean, that tracks.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
Thomas Pynchon announces Shadow Ticket, his first novel in more than a decade
The elusive 87-year-old author’s new book is a noir caper set during the big band era following a detective in search of a cheese heiress
www.theguardian.com
April 9, 2025 at 11:13 PM
“Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the Great Depression, Shadow Ticket follows Hicks McTaggart, a detective who is tasked with finding the heiress of a cheese fortune.”
I mean, that tracks.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
I mean, that tracks.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
ngl it ain’t easy reading Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE when I feel the urge to write down notes about every. single. page.
March 27, 2025 at 8:27 PM
ngl it ain’t easy reading Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE when I feel the urge to write down notes about every. single. page.
I can vouch, this book is 🔥
In Cartographies of Empire, Myka Tucker-Abramson draws from an archive of more than 140 global road novels from over twenty countries, challenging dominant conceptions of the road novel as primarily concerned with American experiences and subjectivities. #ReadUP
www.sup.org/books/cartog...
www.sup.org/books/cartog...
March 20, 2025 at 7:47 PM
I can vouch, this book is 🔥
ummmmm clipping. dropping a Neuromancer concept album? I will inhale this shit
www.clashmusic.com/reviews/clip...
www.clashmusic.com/reviews/clip...
clipping. - Dead Channel Sky | Reviews | Clash Magazine Music News, Reviews & Interviews
Cyberpunk currently stands as the last great popular vision of the future. Since its emergence in the early 1980s, via novels by the likes of William
www.clashmusic.com
March 14, 2025 at 12:50 PM
ummmmm clipping. dropping a Neuromancer concept album? I will inhale this shit
www.clashmusic.com/reviews/clip...
www.clashmusic.com/reviews/clip...
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 20: Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Book 20: Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
February 1, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 20: Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Book 20: Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 19: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (Karen Tei Yamashita)
Book 19: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (Karen Tei Yamashita)
January 28, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 19: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (Karen Tei Yamashita)
Book 19: Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (Karen Tei Yamashita)
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 18: Blindsight (Peter Watts)
Book 18: Blindsight (Peter Watts)
January 26, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 18: Blindsight (Peter Watts)
Book 18: Blindsight (Peter Watts)
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 17: Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward)
Book 17: Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward)
January 25, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 17: Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward)
Book 17: Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward)
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 16: Eleutheria (Allegra Hyde)
Book 16: Eleutheria (Allegra Hyde)
January 24, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 16: Eleutheria (Allegra Hyde)
Book 16: Eleutheria (Allegra Hyde)
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 15: Gravity’s Rainbow
Book 15: Gravity’s Rainbow
January 22, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 15: Gravity’s Rainbow
Book 15: Gravity’s Rainbow
This. Sucks.
C’mon Lions.
C’mon Lions.
January 19, 2025 at 3:49 AM
This. Sucks.
C’mon Lions.
C’mon Lions.
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 14: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)
Book 14: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)
January 18, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
Book 14: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)
Book 14: The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin)