katie cusumano
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k-e-c.bsky.social
katie cusumano
@k-e-c.bsky.social
160 followers 100 following 130 posts
writing about culture and the outdoors. words in nyt, outside, longreads & beyond. 2025 Oregon Literary Fellow. based in portland, now. katherinecusumano.com
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k-e-c.bsky.social
PBF!! attending this festival was one of the first things I did in portland after moving to oregon and it was an absolute dream to moderate this panel with aashna avachat and alex castellanos. already dreaming about next year 🧁📖
authors alex castellanos and aashna avachat sit on stage at the portland book festival during a panel moderated by ... me
November 10, 2025 at 7:59 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
what a move to drop this on the second-to-last page of your doorstop book about 20th-century whale science (compliment) (from D. Graham Burnett, The Sounding of the Whale)
photo of a page from “The Sounding of the Whale” by D. Graham Burnett. a sentence is underlined: “it is very hard to say anything that is actually right about anything at all.”
October 15, 2025 at 10:33 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
me trying to figure out why kids are filling up half the block outside my parents' apartment
screen shot of a text conversation: "i talked to some teens lol" "'i talk to some teens' could be a line in your reporting bio lol"
July 17, 2025 at 9:10 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
we spent a week in the enchantments in washington — a truly perfect place. we hiked 37 miles w/ about 13,000 ft of elevation gain and swam in every lake we could. at the beginning of the year, there were 14 federal forest service employees tending to this area; now, there is one.
horseshoe lake, washington colchuk lake, washington lake stuart, washington campsite at lake stuart, washington
July 6, 2025 at 5:38 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
write (revise) with me this summer! I'm teaching a monthlong workshop on taking your essays apart and putting them back together again. come hang 📝
literary-arts.org/event/the-ar...
June 26, 2025 at 8:45 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
in the scheme of news this essay is now ancient, but I just got around to it and it still hits -- especially as far as its discussion of art as an accretion of individual decisions

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
excerpt from Ted Chiang's New Yorker essay on generative AI: "It reduces the amount of intention in the world"
June 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
today in writing
randomly arranged notecards that I have to organize into a coherent story with a beginning middle and end
May 14, 2025 at 7:46 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
I am once again thinking about this line from @thecreativeindependent.com interview with perfume genius

thecreativeindependent.com/people/music...
May 12, 2025 at 11:53 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
roman reigns's PR freaking out right now
VF headline, from a story dated 4/17, declaring Roman Reigns "WWE's Next Great Crossover Star" NYT headline, from a story dated 4/18, declaring John Cena "the Last Great Crossover Wrestling Star"
April 21, 2025 at 1:14 AM
k-e-c.bsky.social
reporting this piece involved some unexpected, and very satisfying, sleuthing
email text from a source who seemed surprised that I had tracked him down...
April 17, 2025 at 4:19 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
amazing quote perfect quote
screen cap of an NYT article: "I'm not screaming, 'aliens!'" said Nikole Lewis, an exoplanetary scientist at Cornell University. "But I always reserve my right to scream 'aliens!'"
April 17, 2025 at 12:25 AM
k-e-c.bsky.social
today in "I love interviewing kids"
April 6, 2025 at 11:25 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
insulting
a pop-up on a Google form with the generative AI sparkle emoji that reads "Help me write," which I did not ask for
March 29, 2025 at 10:13 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
i think about this headline at least once a week … a combination of words so confounding it plays on a loop in my mind. i didn’t know the english language could be like this.
March 21, 2025 at 5:16 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
“and did not apologize” i’m sorry but apologize for what
March 1, 2025 at 3:22 AM
k-e-c.bsky.social
www.havehashad.com/hadposts/pro...
November 9, 2024 Prose Poem by Tom Snarsky: Another day in the ruinous world, eating peanut butter off a knife
February 20, 2025 at 10:27 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
revisiting twin peaks itself — some of which I hadn't watched since high school — and curating the quote interstitials for this essay was one of the great joys of the writing, too
February 3, 2025 at 7:25 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
I think cage is, in a certain way, the ideal david lynch actor; dreaming of the alternate reality in which they had worked together again after reading this sweet @zachschonfeld.bsky.social interview

www.vulture.com/article/a-lo...
February 2, 2025 at 12:24 AM
k-e-c.bsky.social
i spent the day yesterday in north bend & snoqualmie talking to people about twin peaks and david lynch for a story, and then the evening at a bar that was playing inland empire on a tv in the corner. 10/10 day.
david lynch shrine outside twede’s diner in north bend, washington plaque reading “where pies go when they die” at twede’s diner in north bend, washington snoqualmie falls
January 18, 2025 at 7:34 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
in 1980, while in edits on elephant man, lynch bought a mackerel at a london fish counter, cut it up, labeled the pieces, and photographed it. a guy who was always making something — even when making was actually taking apart. my guy forever.
david lynch's "fish kit" — an annotated dissected fish
January 16, 2025 at 8:45 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
finally home, finally get to see some recent print projects *in print*
a story on the back page of the new york times for kids december issue describing how to create your own card game using a traditional 52-card deck the cover of the Oregon Stater winter 2025 issue, featuring a photo of salmon with the coverline "REWILDING THE KLAMATH" a two-page infographic from the Oregon Stater showing the architectural features of an academic building designed to withstand the "Big One" — the Cascadia fault line rupture
January 14, 2025 at 10:42 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
(the haul, for my book-inclined followers. uncharacteristically, i didn’t bring enough reading materials on vacation.)
December 28, 2024 at 1:14 AM
k-e-c.bsky.social
comrade atwood 😭 www.oregonlive.com/books/2024/1...
excerpt from Margaret Atwood's statement about her 11/19 reading at Oregon State University: "It seems that there is a graduate student strike going on, for higher wages and a shorter contract that won't lock people in for 5 years. I am told that many items have been agreed upon and that a settlement is close. I wouldn't cross a picket line uninvited. The University gave me the option of cancelling. The strikers, on the other hand, said they didn’t want to cancel or disrupt the event – thereby p*ssing off 1200 people, which would not have helped their position. They only want to gain attention for their cause. As you can see, I am helping them do that. They have a website for donations of food etc. at; vp_solidarity@cge6069.org"
November 21, 2024 at 10:01 PM
k-e-c.bsky.social
the droves of salmon fighting upstream in washington 🐟
November 18, 2024 at 11:51 PM