Substack is no solution to the knotted problems of widespread stupidity, corporate power, infrastructural plunder, the fetishization of metrics, the industrialization of addiction, and old fashioned revanchism by way of ugly new fascisms—but the platform does show that good things still come from artists, critics, and theorists collaborating, disagreeing, and working alongside one another. I’ve been relieved, at least, by the fact that there are still interesting new minds to discover on the internet, and that some people still feel moved to help such minds afford groceries. And I’m grateful that other writers are also happy to support each other, and in doing so, to reaffirm the values of integrity, individuality, and vision. With this in mind, here are the projects and people on Substack whom I find most interesting and urgent.

Dividual is a running project of Blake Butler, an American artist whose decades-long dedication to experimentation, honesty, and rigor in writing, reading, and publishing is exemplary. His style is staggeringly rhythmic, defined in turn by punches of staccato bluntness and long, flowing sentences in which philosophical, poetic, and surreal moods are carefully braided. Come for his essays on reading and stay for his hallucinatory sequence of novels. (And don’t miss his online literary journal WANTED which operates with a delicious simplicity.)

donald boat announced himself by way of an elaborate counter-grift perpetrated on social media in which he gently goaded tech bros to buy him a gaming PC and many tomes of ancient and classic literature. Once arrived, donald has published a series of increasingly beautiful and inventive reviews of American banalities—energy drinks, chain restaurants, first person shooters—in which his sincerity as a writer and thinker is repeatedly demonstrated. boat is easily one of the most interesting young American writers working today.

Mental Hellth is the project of P.E. Moskowitz, a journalist and essayist who focuses on the psychological pains created by global capitalism and the internet. Each entry feels like a clear-eyed corrective against various forms of self-harm, revanchism, and hysteria—yet Moskowitz avoids the lazy drift to centrism inherent in other projects oriented towards empathy and shared understanding. Mental Hellth is a treasure trove of testaments to sanity and compassion in the 21st century.

Numb at the Lodge compiles the recent work of the British essayist Sam Kriss, a writer who puts an acerbic erudition to good use, subjecting contemporary idiocies to a nice long acid bath. Kriss is also fluent in a literary tradition in which one mixes fact and fiction playfully—a rare recognition that the task of the writer is not to be a faithful subject of the empire of empiricism, but rather to use language to expand our sense of what can be said.

Opaque Hourglass is the home of the American writer Mark Leidner. His poetry and short stories are popular for good reason as they are consistently kind, surprising, and playful. If you read him sleepily you’d mistake his work for wisdom literature the likes of Zen itinerants—and you wouldn’t be wrong. Mark’s got one of the most inviting styles going and is a devotee of literary joy. (Plus he’s a screenwriter!)

Special Cup! is the work of Garri Saganenko, an expat American who currently resides in Germany. A poet and essayist, Garri focuses on how desire, sex, and family history inflect our self-regard. Since leaving the cult of the States, he’s been riding that wave of clarity granted to writers who get out.

1st Responder houses the writing of Eric Raymond, a trenchant dispatcher from the belly of the American beast (i.e. San Francisco). Few writers are as incisive about the techno-feudalist inhumanities organizing contemporary society, and few writers are as concerned about the wellbeing of artists of all kinds.

big reader bad grades is the Substack of Alexander Sorondo, a magisterial profiler of literary figures like Vollmann, Danielewski, and Moore for the solid publication The Metropolitan Review. But Alex rambles more widely than the study of those already known; writing regularly from his post in a grocery store in Florida, Sorondo pushes himself to paint a clearer and clearer vision of that common, messy humanity in which writers and quieter weirdos are all similarly immersed.

Corpstext documents the artful desires and aesthetic experiments of the American artist M Kitchell. M has practiced photography, writing, book design, and publishing for many years, and currently focuses on fashion and self-design informed by the philosophy of Georges Bataille and other avant-gardists. M’s essays are luxurious investigations of the bounds of expression, and accordingly, feel both timely and out of time.

DECENTRALIZED FICTION is the hub of ARX-Han, a pseudonymous writer whose novel INCEL has inspired a renewed commitment to writing literature as a mode of finding the core truths of daily agonies. ARX’s output is mostly in the form of reviews and essays, and he is a sensitive and systematic thinker who proceeds with fearlessness. I particularly admire his comfort with a near-scientific and effortlessly networked materialism when it comes to engaging with passages of contemporary literature; his reviews bring a refreshing empiricism to a field so often defined by petty squabbles between middling charismas.

BLOOD IN THE MACHINE is the journalist and editor Brian Merchant’s running study of the bullshit of AI, be it by tracking the moves of its peddlers or documenting the destructive effects the technology is having on living human beings. I’m not as staunch a critic of the products of machine learning (mostly because I believe that most technologies are used wisely only after decades of experimentation), but I appreciate any and all skepticism directed towards a boring corporate boosterism so obviously propped up by billions of dollars of capital and the wishes of various empty-eyed CEOs.

The Tourist is the notebook of Phil Christman, a Christian writer and professor whose intelligence and leftism stands stark against the dominant cravenness of American evangelicals and their sycophants. His writing is witty and funny and heartfelt, and he engages volubly with pop culture and great literature, yet he is unafraid to call shots and spot bullshit and repeatedly remind us of what matters: caring for each other.

Keeping Up with the Iskandrian follows Kristen Iskandrian, an American writer and bookstore owner. Kristen has a wonderful way of addressing mystery; she uses clear and direct prose to initiate us into some common yet fraught experiences of interiority (such as reading a new book, or navigating holidays with family). Her work seems warm and relaxed and true, a gentle nudge from a smart friend who knows you’ve got more in you.

the late review is the project of kate wagner, a writer who subjects herself to a level of rigor under which most of us would wilt. Probing her illnesses and interests and lacks, Kate seems an iron-steady hand in an age whose chaos seems hellbent on making us tilt into oblivion. If you want a view of what scholarship of the future might look like, you’d be well-served studying Wagner’s work.

Woman of Letters is run by Naomi Kanakia. Naomi’s a fascinating figure for a few reasons. The first is that she is an incredibly perceptive and thorough reader, yet her long and prolific reviews of authors’ various oeuvres are delivered in a perfectly inviting and approachable prose—in other words, she is an adept smuggler of depth, that current contraband. The other is that she is a deeply engaged citizen of the world of letters, highlighting self-published novels and probing Substack’s literary pantheons and reviving interest in obscure writers working in under-appreciated genres. I really look forward to her book about the goodness of reading canonical work.

Isabel Pabán Freed uses Substack strictly as a newsletter, sending her readers instead to a beautifully pared-down website of her own design. We see in both this refusal to play Substack’s silly metricized games and Isabel’s self-hosted essays the discipline and focus required of any serious and scholarly thinker today. Yet Freed’s seriousness, evinced so clearly in her addressing and contextualizing subjects like sexual assault and political emancipation and suicidal depression and being trans in America, is mixed with the levity of someone who obviously enjoys thinking, enjoys writing, and sees both activities as constituting a full, beautiful, and responsible life. I’m yet to read her fiction, but I’m certain I’ll dig it.

Lastly, Zona Motel and The Metropolitan Review are the two best literary journals on Substack. Zona Motel is a self-styled BROTHERHOOD whose members attend to books published by small and/or independent presses. Its reviews, essays, reports, monthly Zoom sessions, and even its gossip column (yes: a gossip column) all convey the bright and dirty energy of people who yet believe in the project of a free (read: fearless) artistic community; I particularly admire Zona Motel’s not-giving-a-fuckness about commercially propped-up art and the prerogatives of big publishers. The Metropolitan Review is a bit more charitable to the products of prestige, yet the journal also features close readings of offbeat texts and essays written from challenging perspectives. The principal boon of The Metropolitan Review is its momentum; its founders and editors have done a great job of gathering like minds under the banner of putting good work in front of smart people. Professions can still be built off making good on that promise, and I see a long future for The Metropolitan Review and its regular contributors.