Alissa Wilkinson
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alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Alissa Wilkinson
@alissawilkinson.bsky.social
32K followers 760 following 2.8K posts
Critic @nytimes.com. Author AFTERGLOW (forthcoming), WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES (Liveright) and SALTY (Broadleaf). Teaching writing and criticism (Whitworth MFA, NYU XE).
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alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I spatchcocked my turkey a different way today (essentially, cut it across the waist) and when I pulled out the bottom half, which cooks faster, I realized it looked like an AI’s idea of a turkey
November 28, 2025 at 6:21 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I also published a book in 2022 with introductions to nine 20th century women who were artists, activists, and all-around badasses, all through the lens of food. With recipes and illustrations. It is delicious. (And a very good book to give as a gift.)

www.alissawilkinson.com/salty-lesson...
November 26, 2025 at 9:58 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I published a book this year that is about Joan Didion and the movies! And really about American political culture.

www.alissawilkinson.com/didion-we-te...
November 26, 2025 at 9:48 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you’re from
November 23, 2025 at 5:40 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
This, believe it or not, is actually where the article started to take shape for me
November 19, 2025 at 3:05 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I mean
November 17, 2025 at 4:54 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
November 13, 2025 at 3:05 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
This bit in particular was quite memorable to me when I was like 11
The image contains text that reads: Whole language represents a major shift in thinking about the reading process. Rather than viewing reading as "getting the words," whole language educators view reading as essentially a process of creating meanings. . . . It is a transaction, not an extraction of the meaning from the print, in the sense that the reader-created meanings are a fusion of what the reader brings and what the text offers. . . . In a transactional model, words do not have static meanings. Rather, they have meaning potentials and the capacity to communicate multiple meanings. This view of reading is nothing less than the radical literary philosophy of deconstructionism. In an article in Contemporary Authors on Jacques Derrida, the French proponent of deconstruction, we read: [D]econstructionism emphasizes the reader's role in extracting meaning from texts and the impossibility of determining absolute meaning. It is important for homeschoolers to understand this connection between whole language and deconstruction. The purpose of both is the destruction of the absolute word as represented by the word of God in Scripture. If children are taught to invent their own meanings in whatever they read, then what is to stop them from reading the Bible in their own subjective manner, inventing whatever meaning happens to please them?
November 12, 2025 at 7:45 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Published in 1969, so, you know, but still kind of a perfect book.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/23716/...
That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God's chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore, it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has His delight with the sons of men.
November 12, 2025 at 3:47 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
This is a wild read (especially if you've ever worked in arts administration) but this bit made my eyes bug out
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...
November 8, 2025 at 4:14 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
This is horrifying
November 7, 2025 at 4:40 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I don’t know all the statistics but it’s hard for me to imagine we wouldn’t swiftly move to do something about virtually any other device that did this kind of thing
November 7, 2025 at 4:39 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Hey, I’m leading the theater newsletter! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/t...
November 6, 2025 at 12:25 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
This is 42, which means Fish Cheeks martinis and my suggestion that you go vote with your brain.
November 4, 2025 at 8:15 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
That’s helpful, thanks Google AI
November 2, 2025 at 10:45 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Last minute costume idea
October 31, 2025 at 3:22 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Hah, of course I know all about the filmography of Zohran Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair, but I had not caught on to this credit in her film QUEEN OF KATWE (about a teen chess champ from the Ugandan slums and the coach at the missionary program who teaches her).
October 29, 2025 at 12:13 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I taught from Didion’s 1988 essay “Insider Baseball” last week, the piece that crystallized the angle of my book back in 2020, but it’s this passage that’s been banging around in my head nonstop for a year and won’t let go. (She knew all this from being in Hollywood for a couple decades, of course.)
American reporters “like” covering a presidential campaign (it gets them out on the road, it has balloons, it has music, it is viewed as a big story, one that leads to the respect of one’s peers, to the Sunday shows, to lecture fees and often to Washington), which is one reason why there has developed among those who do it so arresting an enthusiasm for overlooking the contradictions inherent in reporting that which occurs only in order to be reported. They are willing, in exchange for “access,” to transmit the images their sources wish istransmitted. They are even willing, in exchange for certain colorful details around which a “reconstruction” can be built (the “kitchen table” at which the Dukakis campaign conferred on the night Lloyd Bentsen was added to the Democratic ticket, the “slips of paper” on which key members of the Bush campaign, aboard Air Force Two on their way to New Orleans, wrote down their own guesses for vice- president), to present these images not as a story the campaign wants told but as fact.
October 26, 2025 at 4:59 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
One of my favorite things about Threads is that every time you open it you see someone posting something like this, and every single person under it has seemingly never heard of the concept of engagement farming
October 24, 2025 at 10:09 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
I was trying to remember where I learned in homeschool history class about a particular Revolutionary War slogan today and had to chuckle when I located it
October 18, 2025 at 2:01 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Talk about superhero cinema
October 11, 2025 at 4:45 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Like if you know this is going to happen you might be able to sit back and let it wash over you
October 10, 2025 at 1:29 AM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
❤️ 🎥
October 8, 2025 at 7:12 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
dang
September 28, 2025 at 6:21 PM
alissawilkinson.bsky.social
Last night I made dinner for 8 and realized only when explaining the menu to the group that it was accidentally vegan. I’m not sure we would have even realized otherwise. It was an incredible set of recipes, so I’ll thread them below:
September 21, 2025 at 2:32 PM