Stephanie Insley Hershinow
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sinsleyh.bsky.social
Stephanie Insley Hershinow
@sinsleyh.bsky.social
Quite good: cook, reader, procrastinator. Decent: mom, writer, teacher. Terribly bad: athlete, winker, cat trainer. Reposts are jokes I wish I'd made first.

Stephanieinsleyhershinow.com
“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

We just finished one of my favorites for bedtime reading. Any guesses?
November 13, 2025 at 1:14 AM
My kids came to a talk I gave for the first time. 5yo verdict: “I’m hungry.” 8yo verdict: “actually kinda interesting.”
November 11, 2025 at 12:27 PM
November 11, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Cleaned out her backpack from last week and learned that my daughter votes third party.
November 10, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Giving Seward a scrub in Mamdani’s NYC.
November 6, 2025 at 1:34 PM
My daughter just announced that she was going to ask Santa for a dollhouse. This is what she got for her birthday in June.
November 1, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
This is so good!
I got to do a lightning round about my devotion to Clarissa with @sinsleyh.bsky.social, and she has honored me beyond measure by pairing it with one by Frances Ferguson. Swoon!

open.substack.com/pub/clarissa...
Toward an Oral History of Clarissa
contributed by Stephanie Hershinow
open.substack.com
October 31, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
Pls note, #litcrit Bsky, the bolded statement here from Frances Ferguson: "I have increasingly come to think that Clarissa is the single most important literary work in the history of British literature—& that it keeps holding its own". This is gospel truth, guys. Why aren't you already reading it?
I got to do a lightning round about my devotion to Clarissa with @sinsleyh.bsky.social, and she has honored me beyond measure by pairing it with one by Frances Ferguson. Swoon!

open.substack.com/pub/clarissa...
Toward an Oral History of Clarissa
contributed by Stephanie Hershinow
open.substack.com
October 31, 2025 at 1:55 AM
If you don’t subscribe to our Substack, 1) what’s wrong with you, and 2) you should at least check out this post!
I got to do a lightning round about my devotion to Clarissa with @sinsleyh.bsky.social, and she has honored me beyond measure by pairing it with one by Frances Ferguson. Swoon!

open.substack.com/pub/clarissa...
Toward an Oral History of Clarissa
contributed by Stephanie Hershinow
open.substack.com
October 30, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
Congratulations to Nikki Hessell, whose essay "Robinson Crusoe as a Transpacific Novel: Hospitality, Recognition, Translation," has been selected as the winner of this year's Maximillian E. Novak Essay Prize. Abstract below:
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
#defoe #danieldefoe #transpacific #novel
October 27, 2025 at 1:14 AM
It’s bulb day in Madison Square Park!
October 28, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
The Walton family (who own Walmart) are worth over $400 billion, yet many of their employees are on SNAP.

Bezos is worth over $400 billion, many Amazon employees require SNAP.

The people who need help are not the problem.

It’s corporate greed. It’s an unwillingness to pay a living wage.
October 27, 2025 at 9:08 PM
One advantage of giving a midterm in the survey is I get to read a short essay on “Chaplin’s Homer.”
a black and white photo of a man sitting next to a tree .
Alt: a black and white photo of a Charlie Chaplin sitting next to a tree .
media.tenor.com
October 27, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
Happy Monday writers @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social ! If you're interested in public writing, you might want to sign up for what's sure to be a fantastic event this Friday featuring Surekha Davies, author of Humans: A Monstrous History. Details below! Register here: tinyurl.com/bddsaav9
October 27, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Just did this. Thanks for the suggestion/reminder!
My sustaining donor spiel: If you have a enough money to keep forgetting to unsubscribe to something, I highly recommend becoming a sustaining donor at the food bank (or other org) of your choice.
October 27, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Show my pumpkin to your small children. I don’t really care what you think. 😂
October 26, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
In which Johanna Winant (@johannawinant.bsky.social) and I make the case for teaching whole books. And argue for a model of close reading that would bridge high school, college, and professional practice slate.com/life/2025/10...
There’s a Literacy Crisis. One Classroom Solution Should Be Obvious.
You can't get better at reading until you care about a text.
slate.com
October 24, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Update: never mind.
A good thing happened.
UVA says no to the compact
October 25, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
"Are my migraines hormonal, or am I thinking too hard about how Peter Thiel has more money than all nurses on Earth combined?"
Is It Perimenopause or the Fascist Death Knell of Late-Stage Capitalism?
Are my hot flashes due to an estrogen imbalance or a rapidly warming planet hastened by unaccountable oil barons who own our elections? Am I irrita...
buff.ly
October 17, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Here at the CUNY Graduate Center, we may not have…any money whatsoever. But we DO have a coffee shop that plays a LOT of Mariah Carey.
October 22, 2025 at 8:52 PM
If you find yourself in the NJ suburbs next month, come to my talk! You can register at ridgewoodlibrary.org.
October 22, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
Apparently CUNY has all the jobs. 😎
October 22, 2025 at 4:18 PM
8yo just described something as “so the 30s,” meaning “futuristic.”
October 22, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
from my lunch today; "the trouble is not so much AI making you more productive, but that it's tripling the output of the biggest f***ing idiot where you work"
October 21, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Insley Hershinow
"Instead of mystery, Sinykin and Winant see possibility: to them, close reading is a practice that anyone can learn."

I'm really grateful for @profdgd.bsky.social 's extremely thoughtful review in @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social today

as he writes -- "It’s enough to make the heart skip a beat."
The Problem of the Parlor | Los Angeles Review of Books
Douglas Dowland close-reads Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winant’s new edited volume, “Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century.”
lareviewofbooks.org
October 21, 2025 at 3:33 PM