Amber Sparks
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ambersparks.bsky.social
Amber Sparks
@ambersparks.bsky.social
22K followers 1.4K following 4.8K posts
Your garbage mom; writer; she/her; I ♥️ unions; essayist on film, books, fairy tales, and horror; wrote AND I DO NOT FORGIVE YOU; HAPPY PEOPLE DON’T LIVE HERE in October; rep’d by Kent Wolf; I just want you to be happy, honey

linktr.ee/ambernoellesparks
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ambersparks.bsky.social
Two images from The Simpsons: banners outside a convention hall. INSIDE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION WE WANT WHAT'S WORST FOR EVERYONE WERE JUST PLAIN EVIL INSIDE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION WE HATE LIFE AND OURSELVES WE CAN'T GOVERN!
November 10, 2025 at 12:49 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Happy fifth anniversary to all who celebrate
November 7, 2025 at 11:48 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
My girlfriend and I saw you from across the bar and we really dig your vibe. Can we b̶u̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶ drink f̶o̶r̶ you?
Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani in Herzog’s Nosferatu
October 25, 2025 at 1:16 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
DC folks! Will @shanders.bsky.social and I see you at Politics and Prose on Friday? politics-prose.com/amber-102425?
October 22, 2025 at 4:25 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
I mean
When asked whether the president had a comment on the demonstrations, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, gave a brief response in an email. "Who cares?" she said.
October 19, 2025 at 5:10 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Hey Baltimore friends! Hope to see you today! (And happy No Kings, too!)
October 18, 2025 at 1:32 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Boston/Cambridge friends! Come out tonight to Harvard Bookstore to see me and Steve in conversation! www.harvard.com/event/amber-...
October 16, 2025 at 2:39 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
My book comes out today! It’s sad and funny and a little spooky and a lot mysterious and very weird, and you can buy it wherever fine books are sold in indie stores bookshop.org/p/books/happ...
October 14, 2025 at 2:11 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
My mom, who died way too earlier, always loved Keaton. She would tell the story of going to see The Godfather as a very young woman and being blown away by how this pretty, delicate woman held her own against all these powerhouse male actors.
October 11, 2025 at 7:33 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
THAT director aside, Diane Keaton’s performance in Annie Hall opened spaces for women in film: what romantic leads could look like, dress like, sound like; that there could be a place for an oddball who wasn’t a screwball. That’s all her - Keaton was such a brilliant actress and icon, truly
October 11, 2025 at 7:26 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
And I’m still so glad Martin Landau won that Oscar, his Bela was just insanely good
October 10, 2025 at 2:50 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Introduced the 10 year old to one of our all-time faves tonight
Still from Tim Burton’s Ed Wood
October 10, 2025 at 2:42 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Going on tour next week! Come say hi please don’t make me read to myself and that one guy who’s actually got earbuds in
October 8, 2025 at 11:33 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
ONE WEEK! DC! Come to the launch party in Adams Morgan! @rvoronacote.bsky.social and me at Lost City Books and a few fun surprises, and a very spooky party www.eventbrite.com/e/happy-peop...
October 8, 2025 at 1:08 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Tonight’s family movie night pick is a classic (it’s all horror all October)
The 80s film Silver Bullet
October 4, 2025 at 1:55 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Thank you so much to @kurtbaumeister.bsky.social for this freewheeling, fun interview in The Brooklyn Rail, and his kind words about the book!
inspiring. Applying the same radical artistic individuality that defines her short work (I reviewed her last collection here), Sparks has written a debut novel, Happy People Don't Live Here, filled with deft, deadpan wit, unpredictable magicality, and so many stories (stories upon stories upon stories); a book I breezed through and was sorry to see end.
October 2, 2025 at 12:08 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
I mean
Old Games The search for the fantastic subject occurs in the games cultivated by the Dadaists and Surrealists, but such games are certainly older than those artistic movements. So we'll call these exercises Surrealist more out of convenience than to pay an overly belated homage to André Breton. 79 Stories at the Table The mother who pretended to put a spoonful of food into her ear used one of the essential principles of artistic creation without knowing it. She "estranged" the spoon from the world of the banal, thus giving it a new meaning. A child does the same thing when she uses a chair to make a train, or transforms a toy car into a ship in the bathtub because she lacks a boat, or when she turns her teddy bear into an airplane. This is exactly what Hans Christian Andersen does when he turns a needle and a thimble into characters ready for adventure. I 23- Fairy Tales in an "Obligatory Key" Out of respect for the "game of putting the cards on the fable," we put aside folk and fairy tales for a moment. We will now return to them to demonstrate one last technical application. Perhaps I should have talked about this before addressing Propp's "functions." It would have been the more normal thing to do. But introducing some irregularities into a grammar is almost de rigueur these days Moreover, the technique I will now discuss can be applied very well to Propp's playing cards, and the cards themselves contribute to elucidating the technique. As I have shown, within each fairy-tale "function," infinite variations are possible. But the technique of variation can also be applied to the entire fairy tale, where it's possible to imagine a modulation or transposition from one tone to another. The fantastic can be our theme: "Tell the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, but make it take place in the Rome of 1973." The introduction of this key (or, if you will, double key: of time 143
September 27, 2025 at 9:24 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
These books are probably going to change my life
THE GRAMMAR OF FANTASY GIANNI RODARI #lustrated by MATTHEW FORSYTHE Translated from Italian by JACK ZIPES LALLY * THE * LOST FOLK From the Forgotten Past to the Emerging Future of Folk
September 27, 2025 at 9:21 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Me: listen my apartment is gonna be classy no tacky shit please
Me during October: look what I found honey, he can go on the mantelpiece
September 26, 2025 at 11:09 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Does this mean that my Lyft is haunted or
September 26, 2025 at 7:19 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
When you publish your first book, everyone in your life is so excited for you, and then every book after that is like
i ain't reading all that i'm happy for u tho or sorry that happened
September 21, 2025 at 12:50 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
ICYMI: I wrote a story about nostalgia and parties and the gorgeous wild unseriousness of this life and how sad and good it all is, and it has (almost) nothing to do with politics at all and I do really hope you read it because I wrote it for you ashortstorylong.substack.com/p/your-life-...
The further back you go, the people are less people and more ghosts, just smudges of smoke in the corners. This is what it's like to be haunted, you think. This is what it's like: everyone you loved a long time ago, gathered in your childhood basement forever.
September 18, 2025 at 11:41 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
In case anybody needs it: my daughter wrote a book about a Russian girl and a Ukrainian girl and this is the cover she designed
Book cover (illustrated) of a book called “I Ran from My Country for You”
September 11, 2025 at 2:57 AM
ambersparks.bsky.social
Them: Is this book in the room with us
Me: actually yes
September 4, 2025 at 9:51 PM
ambersparks.bsky.social
This review in Reactor is so lovely 😭 reactormag.com/30-more-sff-...
Amber Sparks has gained a reputation as a brilliant short story writer, with the ability to blend speculative elements seamlessly into heartfelt, character-driven work. And her debut novel, Happy People Don't Live Here, is the same: equal parts ghost story, mystery, and family drama —a little Only Murders in the Building, a little Pushing Daisies. Fern and her mother Alice are moving into a new apartment, in a building that used to be a sanatorium, and Fern seems to be the only one who can see the ghosts. But she likes her neighbors, who include a professional mermaid, a veteran turned author, and a hot nonbinary handyperson, thankfully. Of course no one believes Fern when she says she saw a body in the dumpster, because adults are idiots, but Fern is determined to know more. What unfolds is a quirky, surrealist tale that has some of the most engaging character work I've seen in a long time. It is just a goddamn delight through and through. October 14, Liveright
August 30, 2025 at 5:00 PM