Lo 🔖
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flip-book.bsky.social
Lo 🔖
@flip-book.bsky.social
I'm a Philly artist with a rare book library day job; a teacher and trapeze performer; a many-projects pollinator; and a queer married parent. I love metaphor, systems, and emojis. 💐🔹 https://rilesmith.neocities.org
I'm so very very thrilled that my first demon story has found a home in print!

I can't wait to share more about this - it's a journal I'm so honored to appear in, and this story was a delight (and fever dream 😈🍗🍅💥) to create
December 8, 2025 at 2:40 PM
My series of circus watercolor portraits have been a big part of my year - really stoked to offer holiday commission opportunities to aerialists and other movers who want to collaborate! 🤸‍♀️🎨💝

(Not truly a sales post bc I have 3 followers here 😌 but it's nice to mark the occasion in my diary!)
November 13, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Oh life! I'm hanging on! Moments pile upon each other, meaningless each by each, together resplendent and ephemeral. 🍁 Yesterday I pushed up into a bridge for the first time in 100 years, painted it, had a sweet call with my babe, then said goodbye to this foster cat who taught me what love could be
October 30, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Witnessing cat family dynamics up close makes me see how much their emotions/relationships are completely not like humans' - yet my human projections are the inescapable framework I bring to living with them. 🤷 Splitting up this family feels so morally wrong, even though I know it's right for them!
October 16, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Fostering kittens is a fascinating way to experience linear time - this terrified handful of fluff transformed into an confident, elegant teenager in just a few weeks. 🩶
October 16, 2025 at 12:30 PM
I'm setting off emoji fireworks 🎇🎆🎇 to celebrate an encouraging short-story rejection (with actionable feedback!) from a magazine I'd love to appear in 🎆🎇🎆
September 25, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Recent #sketchbook pages! Thank you to the babies, bicycles, and vintage telephones of the world for stretching my 🖌️🎨
September 22, 2025 at 10:13 PM
I am having the exact right amount of fun making zines for my friend's show - this weekend! - combining my illustrator, circus artist, and paper-folding self 🥰🤸‍♀️✂️
September 19, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Revisiting Aimee Bender's book of stories The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, which imprinted me deeply in 2000.

Allegorical, weird, sexy, like Barthelme for teen girls which at that point I was! 💅🔥 "The Healer" is so short & perfect, read the whole thing: www.scribd.com/doc/13733072...
September 14, 2025 at 3:40 PM
No one is stopping you from simply #embroidering random ⛈️🌸☀️🫧 on your work clothes (important caveat: must be a technical services library employee, whimsical art teacher, etc)
August 22, 2025 at 5:04 PM
I love saving a list of the Google searches I make while writing a short story - this one's theme is "can someone come here and explain animals to me" #amwriting #sff 🦌🦅🐊🐚
August 5, 2025 at 3:45 PM
It's been a good month for repetitive tasks accompanied by audiobook! Of course Miranda July is a skilled performer who makes her own novel even more enjoyable. By contrast I gotta confess both the prose and narration of "Bury Our Bones" feel stuck on a "my first adult novel" setting 🎭📈
August 4, 2025 at 11:20 PM
My BFF has been practicing her own 🪡, more precise and traditional. She mended and decorated my beloved GAMES GAMES GAMES art supplies tote bag for me, I'm so in love with the results! (Washed before she got it, all stains are permanent!)
July 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Freehand #sashiko -ish embroidery is my new crafting obsession! Several long conference calls in the past week were sweetened by repetitive running stitches. Many crossovers with watercolor - from subtle color blends to iterative lines creating meaning. 🖌️🪡
July 28, 2025 at 2:28 PM
I made a digital collection of my circus trapeze lesson plans for a #libraryschool assignment. Feeling pleased as PUNCH to have completed this in a way that was personally interesting and even a tiny bit useful for me 😎🤸‍♀️ trapeze.omeka.net
July 25, 2025 at 3:30 PM
I've been on a swift and delightful tear of writing short stories this summer, what a pleasure to have that bottle uncorked! 🍾

Google searches I made while writing my last story - a short and sexy horror tale about why you must resist texting your ex. #amwriting
July 21, 2025 at 9:59 PM
I was powerfully affected by Narnia as a kid, and read more of CS Lewis's works for adults trying to scrape my way the deeper meaning of its mythology: Aslan is a Jesus analog, etc. Sweet to see my kid fold into awe alongside the child characters - all feeling, no reason needed. 💟 Also, lol:
July 18, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reading aloud to my baby the exact physical copy of the Chronicles of Narnia I had in elementary school - my mom wrote my name in the front in pin-neat cursive - is a stone skipped across time I treasure beyond belief. 🪨🦁🏰
July 18, 2025 at 1:51 PM
library school update: my data model is a toxic polycule
July 8, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Such a good start to our 2025 season! Please witness my current favorite flip ✨
May 1, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Lotta recent homemade bread! This is no-knead whole wheat plus a few T of milled flax seed for extra protein/fiber ✨ and generous "everything bagel" seasoning. Extra long rise plus a couple stretch & folds. My prior experience is all sourdough so I am loving the pick-up-game ease of commerical yeast
April 19, 2025 at 3:01 PM
The Enchanted Forest series unfolded like an unthreatening game of Candyland punctuated by bickering so lengthy characters often scolded each other for standing around talking! Now we are in the more serious medieval world of Monica Furlong's Juniper, whose sentences I don't want to speed through 🦉🤍
March 24, 2025 at 7:11 PM
More bedtime reads: Now I am in the world of video game novelizations. "The Island" takes seriously the horror/freedom of a naïve human thrust suddenly into 🟩⛏️, in a format so equally naïve its high emotions wear out quick. By contrast the Woodsword Chronicles is lite juvenile fiction chopped salad.
March 24, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Library school class required me to create a trifold brochure about anything at all (!) so I chose artists' books, my favorite collection! To be clear, these texts are all real but the events are all fake - enjoying my brief stint as director of imaginary programming at the #kislakcenter
March 1, 2025 at 1:14 AM
I'm having a good curl day and an even better social one - E and I visited a friend from school, I got to paint for two hours and hang out with cool adults in their color-filled Victorian while the kids did messy creative play. 💯 Sunday
February 24, 2025 at 1:03 AM