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meghanor.bsky.social
Writer and poet | Editor of The Yale Review | Professor of Creative Writing at Yale | playing with a Substack about writing Most recent book: THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM: REIMAGINING CHRONIC ILLNESS, which was a finalist for the nonfiction National Book Award.
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The history of capitalism is also a history of its critics. In a moment when many feel the current system is untenable, what can those past critiques teach us? John Cassidy speaks with James Surowiecki, in a new interview for TYR. yalereview.org/article/john...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

“Poetry is an ancient, ancient art—a first art, unlike, say, the novel or film. People must need it—I guess I must think it’s crucial to people’s existence. When I began writing poetry, and for many years afterwards, I just asked of it that it let me get better at writing it.” —Alice Notley, RIP

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Harvard v. Trump admin isn’t just about one lawsuit—it’s about whether the gov’t can force colleges to follow a political agenda by threatening their funding As I wrote in the NYT: this is how authoritarianism enters through the budget line. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/b...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Good morning

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Hi, for a piece I'm writing: If you're a student, educator, writer/artist who has used AI & willing to share thoughts about it: whether you feel bad or good about using it; what benefits you found in it as a tool; what concerns you have, email me at meghan.orourke at yale.edu. Not for quotation

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

honestly hilarious

submitted 8 days ago • 88 comments

Our eight-year-old has become a tweenager—”You can’t understand Gen Alpha embarrassment, Mom!” he said to me this week—seemingly overnight. What are your favorite podcasts (for parents) or parenting books/blogs for this age group?

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Honored to co-sign this response—led by the brilliant @DavidPutrino—to the BMJ, pushing back on outdated views of ME/CFS. As I wrote in The Invisible Kingdom, disbelief can be as harmful as the illness itself. We need science, not stigma. 🔗 www.bmj.com/content/389/...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

A new study confirms what so many already know: being dismissed by doctors can be as traumatic as illness itself. Patients report four kinds of harm: shame, lost trust, delayed diagnosis, avoiding care. This is what I tried to name in The Invisible Kingdom: www.mycentraljersey.com/story/news/h...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

“In Western societies, a Black body is prefigured as a curiosity. Fashion is a way to turn this into an advantage.” Richard Thompson Ford on “Superfine: Tailor Black Style” at @metmuseum.org. yalereview.org/article/supe...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

new Substack post: The Self as Character — on writing from inside crisis, when the self is both subject and material. How do we shape a self who can’t yet reflect? meghanorourke.substack.com/p/the-self-a...

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

Ah, that fine work The Rainmakers, by Percival Everett.... We definitely still need human editors and in fact as ChatGPT and others come into use we may need fact-checkers and editors more than ever, at least at this iterative stage in AI's life.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

The withdrawal of NEA grants is a tragedy for the flourishing of small publishers and magazines--the places that incubate much of American literature's most interesting energies. The Yale Review doesn't rely on grants, but I'm heartbroken by how this development has affected our peers.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Really looking forward to this event with Todd Meyers, author of GONE GONE, an ethnography of the grief of those who lose loved ones to opioid overdose, today at the Remarque Institute at NYU. Would love to see you if you’re around—note, you have to register to attend:

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Happy Mother’s Day, to all who are mothers or have mothers, and to those whose mothers are no longer with us. It can be a day full of loss, I know; here is a little post I wrote for my Substack, and an old love letter to her in the New Yorker: meghanorourke.substack.com/p/on-being-a...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

So excited to talk with my brilliant friend Katie Kitamura tonight about her fantatic novel AUDITION at the Brooklyn Public Library. Come on by if you're around and interested!

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

The devastating, shortsighted attack on literature continues. List from Magic City Books. Who'd they miss? Note: the small publishers selected here for financial attack include (among other very worthy and important presses) @transitbooks.bsky.social, publisher of 2023 Nobel laureate Jon Fosse.

submitted 23 days ago • 31 comments

We, too, received an email from the NEA on Friday. Like so many others, our award for 2025 was terminated. So to all of you who donate or subscribe, or have recently bought an issue or a tote or a T-shirt, thank you. In the times ahead, we will no doubt be needing each other more than ever.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

“Alive and ticking like an electric fence.” I wrote this week about Seamus Heaney, chronic illness, syntax,& art that wakes you up. If you’re trying to re-enter a writing life after a long winter, there’s a prompt at the end for reawakening your practice. meghanorourke.substack.com/p/had-i-not-...

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

I'm writing someting short about #longcovid and the patient experience and would love to hear in my DMs or replies from anyone who wants to share whatever they think is most important for me to hear. 💙

submitted 34 days ago • 6 comments

I'm writing someting short about #longcovid and the patient experience and would love to hear in my DMs or replies from anyone who wants to share whatever they think is most important for me to hear. 💙

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

I wrote this book for the days when I couldn’t explain what was happening to me—when even I doubted my own experience. THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM is part memoir, part investigation into why so many of us feel invisible & unseen by the medical system. If you're curious, it’s on sale @ Amazon for $1.99:

submitted 34 days ago • 1 comment

An extraordinary piece of writing and reporting, and a must-read piece for any citizen, and especially those in health care and law:

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

Speaking plainly: we stand with those who push back against the administration's authoritarian advances on free thought and speech.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

This is an obvious point, but cannot overstated. There is an enormous difference between deporting someone - where they get off a plane as a free citizen in their home country AND FUNNELING THEM INTO A BRUTAL PRISON FROM WHICH THEY HAVE NO CHANCE OF EVER EMERGING!!!

submitted 40 days ago • 1744 comments

Not here to debate the lab-leak theory vs. zoonotic spillover (and I don't admire how the Biden admin and Fauci handled those questions). But Covid.gov now redirects to a wild new White House page: www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-tru...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

If the IRS deprives Harvard of its tax-exempt status, that's very bad for Harvard but it's also a catastrophe for the IRS. Instead of a neutral agency that enforces tax law, it will become a tool of partisan warfare. It may never recover.

submitted 42 days ago • 651 comments

Canny of Harvard to focus on medicine on the home page--Americans hugely support medical research and studies suggest many don't want cancer research cut.

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

submitted 44 days ago • 291 comments

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror at Yale last week. It was a transcendent day & a joy to meet Susan Howe, who moved me to tears - ack - when she said when she was a young poet she felt proud to be an American because of JA's work. 💕

submitted 51 days ago • 2 comments

If the Supreme Court decides that the government can "erroneously" disappear you off the street to a foreign torture prison, and that federal courts have no power to do anything about it, that is, in a meaningful way, Pretty Much It www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

submitted 51 days ago • 710 comments

you know things are going well when they break out the turnip photos

submitted 51 days ago • 1312 comments

Another new classic:

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Do not look away.

submitted 52 days ago • 46 comments

Some new classics from yesterday:

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Federal government making demands of Harvard in order for it to receive funding, includng committing to "full cooperation" with Dept of Homeland Security around immigration policy, including deportations: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/u...

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment