Joanne Merriam
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joannemerriam.bsky.social
Joanne Merriam
@joannemerriam.bsky.social
1.1K followers 600 following 900 posts
Kjipuktuk|Halifax (formerly Tsalaguwetiyi|Nashville). Inventor #DSPBposts. Small press, murals, 🇺🇸 & 🇨🇦 poli. I turn tea into words: novel AETHER AND EGO (Inanna, fall 2026). Sign up for my newsletter at https://joannemerriam.com.
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joannemerriam.bsky.social
Joanne Merriam @joannemerriam.bsky.social · 7d
Hey #bookish folks, starter packs for #SmallPress:
* Canadian: go.bsky.app/D4YKenp * US: go.bsky.app/S4HKBuC * Rest of world: go.bsky.app/S5N1WAY * Academic: go.bsky.app/EoXRRgy * plus, #Writers' orgs: go.bsky.app/2uiSCde aaand I post small press #books under #DSPBposts. 📚🌍 🌈📚 #Booksky 📚💙 🪐📚
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Very interesting thread: #BookSky
radonjournal.bsky.social Radon Journal @radonjournal.bsky.social · 9d
How Much It Costs to Run a Literary Journal – 2025

Radon Journal is a not-for-profit science fiction publisher committed to transparency. This is our yearly public financial thread. We also want to show aspiring editors the true costs of running a semi-pro journal. #writingcommunity (1/10)
November 25, 2025 at 10:27 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: Glenn Kurtz's Men at Work: www.sevenstories.com/books/4770-m... & Olga Tokarczuk's The Lost Soul, trans Antonia Lloyd-Jones: www.sevenstories.com/books/4275-t... (both @sevenstories.bsky.social). See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #BooksWorthReading #booklovers
Book cover for Glenn Kurtz's Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen who Built It (Seven Stories Press): The author of Three Minutes in Poland and Practicing uncovers the identities of the Empire State Building construction workers, made famous by Lewis W. Hine's legendary portraits. https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4770-men-at-work Book cover for Nobel Laureate Olga Tokarczuk's The Lost Soul, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Seven Stories): a beautifully illustrated meditation on the fullness of life. https://www.sevenstories.com/books/4275-the-lost-soul
November 25, 2025 at 10:56 AM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men (@transitbooks.bsky.social) & Susan Straight's Sacrament (Counterpoint/@catapultbooks.bsky.social) See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #BooksWorthReading #bookish #readingchallenge #readingcommunity #booktok #booklovers
Book cover for Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men (Transit Books): Ursula K. LeGuin meets The Road in a post-apocalyptic modern classic of female friendship and intimacy. https://www.transitbooks.org/books/iwhohaveneverknownmencollectorsedition Book cover for National Book Award finalist Susan Straight's Sacrament: A Novel (Counterpoint): about a group of nurses fighting through the first year of a pandemic and the beloved California community they will risk their lives to protect. https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/sacrament/
November 24, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
commondeerpress.bsky.social
Thank you for including Fierce Voice by @suecurrie24.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 7:36 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: Alphabet Soup by A. Gregory Frankson (@dundurnpress.bsky.social): www.dundurn.com/books_/t2211... & The Bare Bones of Our Alphabet by Irene Marques (@mawenzihouse.bsky.social): www.mawenzihouse.com/product/the-... See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky
Book cover for The Bare Bones of Our Alphabet by Irene Marques (Mawenzi House): a collection of poetry that reveals an all-consuming yearning: the desire to find a language that can tell the most about our existence. What the poet asks for, works obsessively to tap into, is a native tongue, a vernacular that bypasses the traps of a supposed rationality and objectivity forged in a body-politic consumed by self-interests that reduce our ontological experience. The Bare Bones of Our Alphabet calls for an activation of our primary ways of seeing that perceive spontaneously, without deliberation, which have been subdued by the material beneficiaries of our world and deemed non-intelligent. The poems invite us to re-enter our truly bare bones—our empty, sparkling space—before the codified verb, with its imposed grammar, placed us in a consented incarceration. The poet endeavours to uncover the bare alphabets we must return to—the redeeming letters—where the possibility of rebirth resides, for all and everything that has been annihilated by an unethical rhetoric, a verbosity of lies, engendered through undemocratic paradigms crafted by humans. https://www.mawenzihouse.com/product/the-bare-bones-of-our-alphabet/ Book cover for Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters by A. Gregory Frankson (Rare Machines/Dundurn): A tasty yet experimental recipe of creative memoir in poetic prose cooked up for your consumption — one letter at a time. Alphabet Soup is a poetic exploration of the deeper meaning discovered by stirring up the depths of one’s most personal lived experiences. Twenty-six letters, one missive addressed to each letter of the alphabet, dive into the scalding heat of memory through themes that recall and reframe love, death, joy, sorrow, victory, devastation, and more. Using prose that is by turns startling, revelatory, humorous, sorrowful, and triumphant, these introspections on the nature of living engage the mind and heart in the difficult, unending work of grappling with one’s past in the present, with the hope it can help create a more satisfying future. https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781459750333-alphabet-soup
November 23, 2025 at 3:10 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
1/2 I'm not celebrating #Yanksgiving since I'm in Canada now (and while Canada has a #Thanksgiving holiday, it's in October). However, I just observed the #NationalDayOfMourning early by making a small donation locally to the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre.
November 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
tricon-hfx.bsky.social
We are thrilled to have you! 😊 If you haven't, check out our Indie Author Pop-Up! We're setting up a "bookstore" for indie authors only during the con!

tricon-halifax.com/vendors/
Vendor Applications - TriCon Halifax
Now open! The TriCon vendor hall will be located at the NSCAD Port Campus at 1107 Marginal Rd. The vendor hall will be open every day of the conference – from 3pm on Friday, May 15th 2026 to 1pm on Su...
tricon-halifax.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
tricon-hfx.bsky.social
One month left for Early Bird tickets! The all-weekend pass is just $85, and mystery t-shirt pre-order, $20! Prices on both will go up Dec 21st.

3 days of panels, workshops, lectures, launches, and networking with other writers & creatives in speculative genres? Yes plz!

tricon-halifax.com
Blue card showing outlines of ticket stubs and the text "Earlybird Ticket Deadline Dec. 21, 2025" with TriCon details.
November 21, 2025 at 1:43 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
1/9 - Cleaning up my files and deleting #book covers I’ve already posted in my daily(ish) #SmallPress #BookSky #DSPBposts. Enjoy these beauties again! A thread. (Alt-text for book details.) 🧵 #books 💙📚 #BooksWorthReading #bookish #readingchallenge #readingcommunity #booktok #booklovers
November 22, 2025 at 8:17 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: An Indian Among los Indígenas by Ursula Pike (@heydaybooks.com): www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/an-i... & Where the Jasmine Blooms by @zslong.bsky.social (@fernpub.bsky.social): fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/where-t... See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #BooksWorthReading
Book cover for Where the Jasmine Blooms by Zeina Sleiman (Fernwood Publishing). Two Palestinian cousins with very different lives meet in Lebanon and discover their family’s political secrets amid the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/where-the-jasmine-blooms Book cover for An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir by Ursula Pike (Heyday): A gripping, witty memoir about indigeneity, travel, and colonialism. https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/an-indian-among-los-indigenas-paperback/
November 22, 2025 at 7:09 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Beautiful cover! So sleeeeek
November 21, 2025 at 12:55 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Hey #WriteSky, have you heard about @tricon-hfx.bsky.social? One month left in the early bird registration period!

The Trident Conference for Speculative Fiction
Kjipuktuk | Halifax
May 15-17, 2026

🌍📚💙 #SpecLit #DiverseBooksky #HaliSky 📚🪐⚔️🩸🌈📚
November 21, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
bookshelfie.bsky.social
#booksky
November 19, 2025 at 9:00 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: Everything for Everyone, @genderhorizon.com & @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social (@commonnotions.bsky.social): www.commonnotions.org/everything-f... & The Seaweed Blanket, Nancy Deas (Red Deer Press): www.reddeerpress.com/Detail/08899... See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky
Book cover for The Seaweed Blanket by Nancy Deas and illustrated by Mike Deas (Red Deer Press). When Maren and her younger sister visit lonely Aunt Pearl, they long to play in the sea but their aunt keeps them too busy until the dog accidentally gets out and a chase ensues. https://www.reddeerpress.com/Detail/0889957614 Book cover for Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 by M. E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi (Common Notions). By the middle of the twenty-first century, war, famine, economic collapse, and climate catastrophe had toppled the world's governments. In the 2050s, the insurrections reached the nerve center of global capitalism—New York City. This book, a collection of interviews with the people who made the revolution, was published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the New York Commune, a radically new social order forged in the ashes of capitalist collapse. https://www.commonnotions.org/everything-for-everyone
November 20, 2025 at 12:26 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Day 3 of the #LivingRoomMural (day 2, which I'll link below, was 26 days ago - I have been working on the rest of the house). Excited to be able to get back to this though it'll probably be another 3 weeks to a month before I can do more. #muralartist #mural #artistsonbluesky #painting #blueskyart
November 18, 2025 at 5:38 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Hey #bookish folks, starter packs for #SmallPress:
* Canadian: go.bsky.app/D4YKenp * US: go.bsky.app/S4HKBuC * Rest of world: go.bsky.app/S5N1WAY * Academic: go.bsky.app/EoXRRgy * plus, #Writers' orgs: go.bsky.app/2uiSCde aaand I post small press #books under #DSPBposts. 📚🌍 🌈📚 #Booksky 📚💙 🪐📚
November 18, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
robmclennan.bsky.social
The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 21: Stuart Ross, Liam Burke + Amanda Earl, / @coachhousebooks.bsky.social @ottawasmallpress.bsky.social @meetthepresses.bsky.social ;
smallpressalmanac.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...
The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 21: Stuart Ross, Liam Burke + Amanda Earl,
span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents The Factory Reading Series the pre-small press book fair reading featuring reading...
smallpressalmanac.blogspot.com
November 16, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
jeffcottrill.bsky.social
This is on Saturday! Only five days away.
Tell your #Ottawa friends to check out my new novel, Performance Reviews. (I'll still be selling my debut, Hate Story, as well.)
#books #booksworthreading #novels #smallpress #smallpressbookfair #authors #novels #novelists #bookfair #satire #humour #humor
November 17, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
bookieschicago.bsky.social
As the year ends we've increased the footprint of indie presses from around the country. As times change it's important to support these smaller publishers who are putting out fascinating books. It's not surprising that so many indie pubs are putting out award winners. #smallpress #indiepublishers
A bookshelf from a bookstore showing a selection of books from various small presse
November 14, 2025 at 12:28 AM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Reposting to bookmark to remind myself to do this once Cloudflare is no longer down... also to share because this anthology looks 🔥
kristadb1.bsky.social Krista D. Ball: Canada's Snarky Potato @kristadb1.bsky.social · 11d
Head on over and support this Canadian small press by clicking "NOTIFY ME ON LAUNCH" (right hand side of the pretty mushrooms). It won't be launching until 2026, but it helps ye ol' algorithm to smash the button.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/tyc...
Fascination, an anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish
November 18, 2025 at 1:17 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: Dwelling by @allisonpoet.bsky.social (@redhenpress.bsky.social): redhen.org/book/dwelling/ & The Great Lunenburglary by Bryn Pottie (@moosehousepress.bsky.social): www.moosehousepress.com/product-page... See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #readingcommunity #bookish
Book cover for Dwelling by Allison Joseph (Red Hen Press). Dwelling is the latest collection from Allison Joseph, whose wise words, narrative passion, and lyrical intensity have made her a fan favorite with audiences of all ages. In Dwelling, Joseph is concerned with the inevitable search for home—as a woman, as a person of color, and as a poet. Her poems take on subjects from the serious and sublime to the humorous and ironic. Whatever her subject, Joseph is humane, humble, hilarious, and high-spirited. This poet goes wherever her imagination thrives—dwelling among us and beyond us. https://redhen.org/book/dwelling/ Book cover for The Great Lunenburglary by Bryn Pottie (Moose House). In 1922 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, two friends with dreams of breaking the mould of Maritime music find themselves entangled in the most daring heist in Nova Scotian history. This rollicking farce combines wild adventures with trenchant comments on current events. Join the greatest caper Nova Scotia has ever seen! https://www.moosehousepress.com/product-page/the-great-lunenburglary
November 18, 2025 at 12:28 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
ICYMI, #WriteSky folks:

TriCon: The Trident Conference for Speculative Fiction
Kjipuktuk | Halifax
May 15-17, 2026
@tricon-hfx.bsky.social
GOHs Amal El-Mohtar, Kurestin Armada & Carl Engle-Laird
tricon-halifax.com

🌍📚💙 #WritingLife #SpecLit #DiverseBooksky #Booksky #booktok #AmWriting 📚🪐⚔️🩸🌈📚
November 18, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
tricon-hfx.bsky.social
Charles R. Saunders, father of "Sword and Soul", was an author & journalist whose work established him as a pioneer of Black specfic.

TriCon is proud to present readings from winners of NS's Charles R. Saunders Prize, as well as a lecture on Saunders from his biographer, Jon Tattrie!
Blue card reading Featured Programming: The Charles R. Saunders Readings above a line drawing of a man with thick glasees on the left, and the cover of "To Leave a Warrior Behind" by Jon Tattrie on the right, and logos of TriCon and the WFNS in the lower right.
November 13, 2025 at 3:01 PM
joannemerriam.bsky.social
Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books: Survival Takes a Wild Imagination, Fariha Róisín (@andrewsmcmeel.bsky.social): publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/surviva... & Time Is the Thing..., T. Fleischmann (@coffeehousepress.bsky.social): coffeehousepress.org/products/tim... See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky
Book cover for Survival Takes a Wild Imagination: Poems by Fariha Róisín (Andrews McMeel Publishing). In the powerful follow up to her critically acclaimed debut collection, poet and activist Fariha Róisín is writing, praying, clawing, and scratching her way out of the grips of generational trauma on the search for the freedom her mother never received and the kindness she couldn’t give. https://publishing.andrewsmcmeel.com/book/survival-takes-a-wild-imagination-poems/ Book cover for Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through: an essay by T. Fleischmann (Coffee House Press). How do the bodies we inhabit affect our relationship with art? How does art affect our relationship to our bodies? T Fleischmann uses Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s artworks—piles of candy, stacks of paper, puzzles—as a path through questions of love and loss, violence and rejuvenation, gender and sexuality. https://coffeehousepress.org/products/time-is-the-thing-a-body-moves-through
November 17, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Joanne Merriam
debmerriam.bsky.social
I see from my Halisky friends that it’s time to don the festive apparel @joannemerriam.bsky.social made me
A charcoal grey tshirt with Woody, the Talking Christmas Tree, depicted with fangs and the words “Shop all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die.”
November 12, 2025 at 5:43 PM