Emily Choate
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emilychoate.bsky.social
Emily Choate
@emilychoate.bsky.social
A Writer from Tennessee
If you can get to a theater playing the new Jeff Buckley doc, for god's sake do it.
August 11, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Pleased to share my latest poetry roundup for Chapter 16! In Stephanie Niu’s I Would Define the Sun, Richard Tillinghast’s Night Train to Memphis, & Abby N. Lewis’s Aquakineticist, the nonhuman world offers potent spaces which alchemize human memory and reflection chapter16.org/the-sanctuar...
The Sanctuary of Becoming
Stephanie Niu’s I Would Define the Sun The poems in Stephanie Niu’s debut collection, I Would Define the Sun, revel in expansive spaces of mystery: the …
chapter16.org
June 27, 2025 at 5:26 PM
On Stevie Wonder’s birthday, here's a piece of mine that dives into his joyful idiosyncratic "Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants." We NEED non-apocalyptic art centering nature!

(For some reason, essay runs twice, back to back. Feel free to read it once)
peauxdunquereview.com/2021/01/stev...
Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants: Issue 4 - Peauxdunque Review
Peauxdunque Album Highlight In this recurring feature, Emily Choate considers the life of an album that’s gone overlooked. Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants By Emily Choate, Pe...
peauxdunquereview.com
May 13, 2025 at 7:46 PM
I reviewed Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness at Chapter16.org. I want to plug their invaluable work across TN's literary ecosystem, sending book coverage to places it may not otherwise reach. Thru Humanities TN, this program's now threatened, b/c of DOGE. Advocate! chapter16.org/from-the-out...
From the Outskirts
In the opening chapter of Ocean Vuong’s new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, we are led deep into the mysterious landscapes of East Gladness, Connecticut. Her…
chapter16.org
May 12, 2025 at 7:48 PM
Thank you to these organizations for fighting for the National Endowment for the Humanities in court! nhalliance.org/nha-statemen...
NHA Statement on NEH Lawsuit – National Humanities Alliance
nhalliance.org
May 1, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by Emily Choate
With Humanities Tennessee under the DOGE knife, I want to call on everyone who has valued the Southern Festival of Books or Chapter16.org, or any other Humanities TN program to help keep this org alive. This page is a great starting place to help: www.humanitiestennessee.org/support_advo...
Advocate - Humanities Tennessee
Save Our Humanities Councils: DOGE Cuts to NEH will Damage Cultural Organizations in Every State, including Tennessee On Monday, March 31, the Federation of State Humanities Councils learned that…
www.humanitiestennessee.org
April 11, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Emily Choate
strange women lying in ponds distributing swords starting to look like a reasonable basis for a system of government
April 11, 2025 at 3:59 AM
Reposted by Emily Choate
Surround yourself with the kind of people who support their local library.
April 11, 2025 at 10:43 AM
With Humanities Tennessee under the DOGE knife, I want to call on everyone who has valued the Southern Festival of Books or Chapter16.org, or any other Humanities TN program to help keep this org alive. This page is a great starting place to help: www.humanitiestennessee.org/support_advo...
Advocate - Humanities Tennessee
Save Our Humanities Councils: DOGE Cuts to NEH will Damage Cultural Organizations in Every State, including Tennessee On Monday, March 31, the Federation of State Humanities Councils learned that…
www.humanitiestennessee.org
April 11, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Great piece about the fallout of the gutting of NEH. Our beloved Humanities TN & Chapter 16 are in imminent danger. www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithint...
The Book Ecosystem in Tennessee Is Under Serious Threat
Trump's cuts could kill off the ecosystem of writers, historians, museums and libraries that sustains us
www.nashvillescene.com
April 9, 2025 at 2:30 AM
DOGE rescinding existing NEH grants guts so many programs that help so many communities for SO LITTLE money. This is a battle worth fighting.
April 3, 2025 at 7:57 PM
Really glad my review of Tiana Clark's new book got picked up by @nashvillescene.com! You can also read an uncut version at chapter16.org www.nashvillescene.com/arts_culture...
Poet Tiana Clark Takes Risks in ‘Scorched Earth’
From collisions of art, desire, religion, racism and moments of “transgressive joy, queer joy, and Black joy,” Clark locates the searing heart of her work.
www.nashvillescene.com
March 11, 2025 at 1:45 AM
Reposted by Emily Choate
you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.
March 5, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Thrilled share my latest piece for Chapter16.org : “Through smoldering honesty and formal inventiveness, the poems in Tiana Clark’s Scorched Earth insist on foregrounding the rough truths that shake loose during times of upheaval.” chapter16.org/what-the-lon...
What the Long Poem Says About Me
A mysterious poem appearing midway through Tiana Clark’s new collection, Scorched Earth, details an ambiguous imagined encounter in a Nashville bar. A father…
chapter16.org
March 3, 2025 at 5:34 PM
Dear Internet, you once showed me useful things but now you won’t stop feeding me vids of people hugging grizzly bears and offering their bare hands to tigers’ mouths. Or showing me two objects and asking which one of them is cake. Why do I offer you my bare hand? We both know you are not the cake
February 20, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Emily Choate
Please stop with the generative AI. It's garbage, theft, making us less capable. Image by www.nobodyssweetheart.com
February 12, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Emily Choate
I choose to believe they solved crimes. Photo from my collection - no documented date/info.
February 12, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Emily Choate
Breaking: For the second day in a row, the AP reporter on pool duty who tried to attend a POTUS event was blocked from entering the Oval Office. The reporter was there to cover the swearing-in ceremony for Tulsi Gabbard.
February 12, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Excited to share my review of novelist Geraldine Brooks’ new book Memorial Days, which follows Brooks’ decision to unleash the grief she suppressed after the sudden loss of her husband, writer Tony Horowitz. Moving & tough to put down. Review’s up at Chapter16.org chapter16.org/a-deep-enoug...
A Deep Enough Grief
When novelist Geraldine Brooks received the devastating phone call informing her that her husband of more than 30 years, celebrated nonfiction writer Tony Horw…
chapter16.org
February 12, 2025 at 5:53 PM
“Therefore I shall get on with the daily business of revelation.”

--Theodore Roethke, in a notebook.
February 3, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Emily Choate
With the newest article about Gaiman, I’ll just point out that crowing about having never liked his books is NOT an appropriate reaction.
January 14, 2025 at 3:49 AM
Echoing calls for folks to take care when it comes to the Neil Gaiman article. Details are harrowing, and they linger. Listened to the podcast back in the summer, and it took ages for me to shake it off.
If you need to brace yourself to read it, there's no reason to delve in. It is horrible. Find one of the synopsis articles and you will more than get the gist without having to put yourself through trauma.
January 14, 2025 at 2:32 AM
Spotted this in an obscure corner of an East TN parking lot a month ago. Been considering what the image means to me. Now I know. It’s to do with authenticity of form—in spite of extreme pressure, in spite of mortality, ephemerality. So there’s my project 2025. A refusal of oblivion.
January 10, 2025 at 8:29 PM