The Imago Machine

Writing, cities, deserts, climate change, publishing, and whatever else I'm obsessed with this week. (Occasional oracular advice included.)

Welcome to The Imago Machine, a newsletter by me — variously Arkady Martine and Dr. AnnaLinden Weller, depending on what hat I’m wearing today. I’m the author of A Memory Called Empire (2019) and A Desolation Called Peace (2020), published by Tor Books, along with a whole slew of short fiction in places like Uncanny Magazine, Fireside, and Shimmer. I also write criticism, book reviews, and nonfiction, sometimes about climate change, future cities, and medieval empires; sometimes about perfume and clothing-as-politics.

When I’m being AnnaLinden, I’m a city planner, climate change policy advisor, and Byzantine historian. I grew up in New York City (where I was raised by wild classical musicians), and am continuously obsessed with my town; despite this, I live or have lived pretty much everywhere else.

This newsletter is where you’re going to get the entire strange conglomeration of my brain. Essays, microfiction, thought on writing craft, publishing, and the vicissitudes of being an ambitious, goal-oriented writer who is also super into her dayjob … and also thoughts on landscape, architecture, aesthetics, climate change and predatory delay, my obsession with true crime novels (and false crime novels), Byzantium and medieval Armenia, what I think about the fall 2019 Paul Gautier collection, adventures in Judaism, new fountain pen inks, etc. etc. etc.

The free version of this newsletter will have a post at least twice a month (possibly more!), along with all announcements of actual places I will be or things I will be doing. The subscriber-only version is once a week, usually on Mondays, and includes all the above — plus it’s where you’ll get microfiction, previews of new work, and writing craft talk. Subscribers will also get access to occasional Oracular Advice posts, which are a thing I used to do on Tumblr back in the days of yore: you ask me questions and I will answer you, sometimes with Tarot or poetry or other weird shit, sometimes just from me. Think of it as an advice blog for strange ambitious creatures attempting to figure out how to live in the world, with all its horrors.

The first post will go out on Monday, August 13, to all subscribers — and in fact, all posts in August will be free! Subscription-only posts start in September.

I’m very happy to have you here. Come listen. Come talk.