K.E. Semmel
K.E. Semmel is a writer and translator and Dylan enthusiast. His debut novel, The Book of Losman, published in October 2024 (SFWP). kesemmel.com.
- The GOP and its media mouthpieces spent more time discussing Hunter Biden’s stupid laptop than they will ever discuss the depraved monsters who committed vile acts against children. The moral depravity within our government is astonishing.
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- "Feeling 'inferior' has its perks. You can choose to wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up, dust yourself up, and take action to rise above your inferiority complex. You can motivate yourself, in other words, to do better. To be better." #running open.substack.com/pub/kesemmel...
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- In too many families we say, "politics divide us. So let's not discuss politics." We don't discuss *why* politics divide us. We don't discuss *who* is dividing us. By not discussing politics we don't find the common ground that unites us all.
- Whenever the reckoning for this administration comes (if it comes), one of the first things that needs to be done is a dismantling of Fox News and the entire media engine that makes state/corporate propaganda possible. Excellent story here in @motherjones.com. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
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- "The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again." - William Faulkner, The Paris Review, 1956
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- Today I passed 26,000 words on my WIP, all written since May. I’m going to take a moment to celebrate that.
- I don’t believe in writing more words. I believe in writing perfect words.
- I wanted to share my experience of masking tics. Something I've always done, and likely always will. #tourette open.substack.com/pub/kesemmel...
- WTF are we doing. Day after day after day after day after day...
- I’ve read that in “You’re Missing” Bruce Springsteen was writing about a widow after 9/11. But this song could be written for a man or woman whose spouse or child has been disappeared by ICE. A really gorgeous song. youtu.be/xsrz3mPq7pM?si
- Just a thought for organizations and businesses. You don't *have* to use every holiday as an excuse to send an email to constituents, particularly if all you do is give the same (or similar) feelgood statement as everyone else.
- Not that it matters to anyone but me, but I have been writing some of my best prose (I think?) over the past four or five months. New fiction. The high one gets from creativity is so fucking powerful.
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- It’s horrifying to me that we’ve offered perhaps our greatest human asset, our language, to machines that commodify it into discrete units of value for the taking and breaking of human minds. open.substack.com/pub/kesemmel...
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- It’s a sad fact that Bob Dylan’s lines “we’re living in times where men commit crimes/and crime don’t have a face” from his song “political world” will always be true.
- This article in the @TheAtlantic by translator Benjamin Ross is excellent—a warning about what we lose when we rely on AI to translate language. As a literary translator, i can certainly relate. Disappointing to find the audio version narrated by AI. www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...
- I recently interviewed #tourettesyndrome and disability advocate Jhonelle Bean for my substack, Bright Boy. Hear what she has to say about how her advocacy has helped her mental health. Hint: talking about it is good. youtube.com/shorts/URW1X...
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- The thing i’ve learned about writing in the 30 years I’ve worked at my writing is that it can be both excitingly challenging work and, at the same time, incredibly *fun* work—the very best kind of labor there is. Why would anyone use AI to do this?
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- On 9/11, terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers and attempted to fly another into the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Now this administration is completing the job for them. The destruction of the WH during a gov't shutdown, while the country decays, is a perfect symbol for today's GOP.
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- My friend @sejalshah.bsky.social asked me why I named my Substack "Bright Boy." Here's why. open.substack.com/pub/kesemmel...
- Chaos is too gentle a word for fascism, for the meanness and cruelty we’re witnessing every single day, but it's exactly what this administration wants to provoke. #NoKings
- Reposted by K.E. SemmelICE has been deployed to *provoke* civilians, not to protect them. They want to throw tear gas canisters and get people on the streets riled up, all to create footage for Fox News and Newsmax, et al., that will be used as a pretext for imposing martial law to lower voting rates in Democratic cities.
- I recently interviewed #tourettesyndrome advocate and all-around amazing person Vernell Jones for my substack. Watch here: youtu.be/thbBgG7kOoU?...
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- I was thrilled to write a story on adults with #tourettesyndrome for AARP. It features some fantastic humans who've dealt with TS all their lives. Few studies have explored the impact TS has had on us adults with TS, I write, but that’s beginning to change. www.aarp.org/health/condi...
- I'm looking forward to this event with @sejalshah.bsky.social at Brighton Memorial Library next week. bml.libcal.com/event/14829483
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- Now that Trump has taken over the national guard and plans to deploy them to DC, a reminder: he’s in the Epstein files. The President of the U.S. is a rapist.
- I wrote about 'normalizing' #tourettesyndrome this week in fiction and in culture. kesemmel.substack.com/p/normalizin...
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- The less I'm on social media the happier I am, and the better my relationships with other people, *real* people. Of course, that means I have almost zero engagement on this platform.
- For my substack this week I wrote about 11 Bob Dylan songs that have deep artistic meaning for me. Call me a luddite if you will, but in the age of generative AI, I'm going to embrace great human-made art and cling to it. Click on the link to see the list. kesemmel.substack.com/p/11-great-b...
- I saw an academic abstract published by Taylor & Francis today that acknowledged use of ChatGPT “to proofread and improve syntax.” In other words, to “sound vacuumed of personality and just like every other academic article.”
- In Part II of my two-part essay on AI and the future of literature and storytelling, I write about a resource that's become devalued in our culture: empathy. Give it a read. If you like this, subscribe for more. shorturl.at/fChh7 @sfwp.bsky.social @susanschulman.bsky.social @ipgbook.bsky.social
- The world we live in increasingly resembles an episode of “Black Mirror.”
- I’m proud to be on this list. Specifically, The Book of Losman spotlights #tourettesyndrome. Though there’s no cure, Losman is willing to partake in a dubious trial in hopes of finding one. Things kind of go off the rails for him. It’s a comic novel with heart.
- One of the tragedies of our time is that, instead of banding together as a human species to fight the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation (our biggest existential threats), we are fighting the system of governance that we thought we’d eradicated 80 years ago.
- Very cool to find The Book of Losman on @clmporg.bsky.social's reading list for Disability Pride Month! Get The Book of Losman here: buff.ly/kYY19zZ @sfwp.bsky.social @susanschulman.bsky.social @ipgbook.bsky.social
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- We are truly entering a dark period of American history, one marked by cruel violence, greed, and deliberate misinformation designed to infect the nation with the deadly pathogen of hate. The script is being written by vicious people now. Let’s hope the histories are written by other, better people.
- Thank you, @morelle.house.gov. I just called your office to express just this hope. I’m happy you are my congressman.
- If you don’t know who your House representative is, find out here. Then call them and tell them to oppose the Big Brutal Bill. www.house.gov/representati...
- I was truly honored to be selected as the keynote speaker at last weekend's virtual #ticcon25. Writing the address took a couple late nights over the past few weeks, but it was so worth it. I'll post the full text on my substack this weekend, but's also here: touretteconference.org?fbclid=IwY2x...
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- If you are looking for an audiobook this weekend, let me recommend my debut novel, The Book of Losman (@sfwp.bsky.social). It's available at @libro.fm. Tristran Wright is a wonderful (and 100% human) narrator. @dreamscape-media.bsky.social libro.fm/audiobooks/9...
- New Substack! "Not a day goes by, and usually not any waking hour of any day, in which I do not feel some compulsion to loudly chuff air through my nose or mouth, jerk my head, blink, or twerk my neck like I’ve got Nikki Minaj’s fanny strapped to my shoulders." open.substack.com/pub/kesemmel...
- Unfuckingbelievable. And yet it's trump so it is fucking believable.
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- As a writer, I vacillate between believing everything I write is garbage and thinking everything I write probably is garbage. I try not to dwell on it either way.
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- Up on @jmwwjournal.bsky.social today, this conversation between @taracampbell.bsky.social and me. We discuss the genre on a sliding scale, defining the broad boundaries authors have made using examples such as Lesley Nneka Arimah, Margaret Atwood, and more. jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2025/05/26/s...
- Wonderful essay today in @literaryhub.bsky.social by Elizabeth Costello. "As in our own society, decisions about language reflect and create systems of social control. People in power aim to stay that way by choosing what is and isn’t named." lithub.com/gorilla-unde...
