• The Oxford English Dictionary added some new words this June, including cisgender, intersectionality, freegan, hot mess, photobomb, sext, stank, twerk, and vape. Now you have a place to turn if you’re confused by the following text: “This cisgendered freegan photobombed my sext with a fuckin' dumpster muffin in his hand and now I just can't. I’m such a hot mess I could vape, but I don’t wanna get all stanky before I get my twerk on, so I’m just gonna chill and read up on some intersectionality. Been meaning to get into Lorde anyway.”

• A personal request: I have always wanted a dictionary filled with all the best words for the thing being signified. Take the word grapefruit. Isn't the French pamplemousse way better? Doesn't pamplemousse's sonic brightness more accurately reflect the fruit's color and tartness? I think the German schlaf wins over English's "sleep," since shlaf sounds way sleepier. And is there any better way to say "how are you?" than Swahili's habari gani? Get on it, OED.

• Speaking of hot messes: Earlier in the month at the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, Kenneth Goldsmith admitted that his poem, "The Body of Michael Brown," was a “failed work.” During the panel discussion, in the last seven minutes of the discussion, Goldsmith nods along with the French poet Pierre Alferi, who argues that the notion of the ego and the individual genius is absurd, and then cites the power of anonymity in writing—a power Goldsmith unfortunately has yet to tap. The moderator worried that the theorization of anonymity and the advocacy of such an idea might contribute to the the “refusal of a particularity that leads to empathy and the desire to abstract what it means to be human,” a thought his racist piece exemplified. “The machine was a very poorly constructed machine,” he replied. “I’m a poet, I make failed works,” he added, letting the sentence hang in the air long enough for you to register that he was the one saying it.



• Morgan Jenkins argues that Twitter has been instrumental in creating space for people of color in the writing world. She also questions the popular notion that a writer must isolate herself for years in order to become great.

• Readings coming up in Seattle this week include Elissa Washuta's book launch for Starvation Mode, a formally innovative work of creative nonfiction about navigating the rules imposed upon our bodies. Down at the Rendezvous in Belltown, Old Growth Northwest is featuring Stranger Genius Award winner Maged Zaher, along with Laylah Hunter and Bryan Edenfield. The reading starts at 7:30 p.m. The writers will be reading work in response to the prompt: “They awoke to the first day in their first house.”

• Do you have Friday off because of the Fourth of July or are you working overtime because (baby) you're a firework? Either way, take a few hours and send your work to these excellent, explosive, summery-sounding journals: BOAAT, Bombay Gin, Midwestern Gothic: The Lake Prize.