• The Original Art at Society of Illustrat...
  • on view October 31, 2026 – January 30, 2027
• If You Run Out of Words - Felicita Sala
• Damdaman: Feelings in Filipino - Jocelyn Francisco
• I Am a Leaf - Angelo Mozzillo
• What Do You Do with a Chance? - Kobi Yamada
• What Do You Do with an Idea? - Kobi Yamada
• You Matter - Christian Robinson
• I Am the Subway
• Frog and Toad are Together
• Lena - Chia Ying Chuang
• Where Did All the Crayons Go?

writing

• Olive Tree Writing Club - every Sunday, $10
• Q-Wave Writing Group - monthly, shared on Q-Wave's listserv
• Queer Writers of Queens - free
• Shut Up and Write - free
• Slant'd
  • Blank Page Revival - month-long writing program, $
• Two Truths and a Lie - workshop series, $
• UNSCHOOL MFA - monthly links to lots of free writing resources
• Yu and Me Books Art Analysis Workshop - $25, next in August?

reading

• Catherine Project - free
• Close Reading NYC - series and one-offs, $

Patrick Cottrell, The Creative Independe..., 9/3/2026

• Patrick Modiano "is truly obsessed with the same story. And that story from his childhood abandonment... has proliferated beautifully into a huge body of work."
• "What if plot were defined not by forward movement, but by the energy and struggle it takes to attempt motion? Or even stay in place."

Trent Davis Bailey, The Creative Indepen..., 9/4/2026

• Learning how to craft a good sentence is not that dissimilar from learning how to craft a good photograph. When you’re out in the world with a camera, you’re going to make bad photographs, and it’s okay. That’s part of the process. It’s about accepting these micro failures, knowing that you’re getting closer to the thing that you’re trying to pinpoint. And the same goes for writing.

Celine Nguyen, personal canon, the life ... , 8/12/2026

• Writing in public, as Marlene Jo observed earlier this year, can: 'remove you from the slower and unrewarding work that allows you to form a more interesting and complex understanding of things. The more I privately journal the better my public stuff gets. The private stuff is important because it’s the only place you can contend with the truth.'

Lillian Li, The Creative Independent , 8/10/2026

• I heard that to get into focus, it takes about 15 minutes for you to access that space, and then less than a second to get out of it. Once I got that ratio into my mind—this idea that it takes a really long time to cultivate the kind of focus that’s necessary to dig deep into a creative work, and you can send it all tumbling within a second of just clicking to se...

Chelsea Stark, Polygon Exit Interview, 5/29/2026

• What was important to me is if people aren’t struggling with operational problems, they can work better. If everyone understands where to go for things, it makes their lives easier. I've certainly worked at places with confusing or frustrating operational systems. And overall, having worked at good and bad workplaces, I really wanted to make sure we had a place where people felt supported and like we were creating a good culture. Sometimes, it feels like you're climbing a mountain, because the work never stops, and it is hard, and at the end of the day it’s largely vibes. And sometimes, some stuff is not your fault, or people will be upset at you for things outside of your control, and you just kind of have to eat that. That’s what it is. [...] I just wanted to make sure we had a place where no one is y...

Tony Howard Arias, Post Games(?) (can't remember), 4/15/2026

• Lecturing or starting from a conclusion [isn't] an effective way to have a dialogue [with an audience].

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Post Games, 4/15/2026

• Leaving the experience [of a piece or game] with a story or "I" statement

Meredith Gran's game dev playthrough of Perfect Tides, 2/9/2026

• Video games are a way to share embodied experience of what it was like to be alive/use technology at a certain time
• Mechanics serve theme/plot, e.g. point and click mirrors awkwardness of navigating the world(!)

games and game design

• Game designers usually don’t tell us exactly what to do. They aren’t like novelists, who fix every action of every character. Game designers work a step back. They shape the general contours of our action, but not the precise details. They give us motivations and abilities, and an environment full of obstacles to face—but then set us free to act, to figure out how to achieve those goals. Our actions are still our own.
• Scoring systems can be used to explore alternate selves. Games are a library of agency.
• This is the incredible part of games: Whatever feeling you want, whatever kind of absorption or intensity you desire, whatever level of difficulty works for you at that moment, you can find it. Games offer you the freedom to sculpt the world, the tasks, and the goal to give you whatever...