katie cusumano

I wrote about professional wrestling — and about ambition, and success, and how you measure those things for yourself in a sport lacking inherent competitive stakes — for @thebeliever.net www.thebeliever.net/the-work/

I was at this show, and seeing the coverage of each tour stop has made me think phoebe bridgers singlehandedly revived the "concert review," a form that became somewhat obsolete when we started collectively documenting ... everything.......

for the Brown Alumni Magazine, I wrote about a pair of scholars of early modern Spanish literature who are weirding the self-help book with their decidedly non-academic debut, "Convent Wisdom" www.brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/202...

It's pub day for the Best American Food and Travel Writing 2026! So many amazing selections in here, and also I read my own forward on the audiobook version which was pretty cool to do. Grab a copy! www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

✨Agni 104✨ I started working on the Agni nonfiction team in April, and this is the first issue that I directly read for. so so so much great nonfiction in here (the mother museum! bog hag!!!), AND there's Proximity, an extended portfolio of writing by women of color agnionline.bu.edu/about/the-jo...

I love this essay, from the new @agnimagazine.bsky.social (out today!), and I'm so glad that the great @longreads.com team did, too. thanks especially to @cherilucasrowlands.com for making this happen 🖤 longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

"As with her ashes, putting the murder into her possession feels off to me. Did she own it? Was it part of her? It wasn’t something she could claim, like a package or a piece of luggage." A new essay from Daniel Barnum, co-published with @agnimagazine.bsky.social: longreads.com/2026/10/15/m...

what are some of your favorite nonfiction character studies? whether just a paragraph of really effective character description, or a full-on reported profile? next month, I'm teaching a teen workshop on writing characters in nonfiction, & I'm looking for examples to share.

this is so great

I hope this leads to a huge spike in sales for her elsewhere, sally rooney forever www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

walking down canal street from the subway, i saw a pigeon lay down in a puddle and die, and it was just a little too on-the-nose

also i think about this part of anne carson’s paris review art of poetry interview at least once a week / every time i sit down to work on an essay

♥️

Derek Drexl and Amira Lukens, two of the wrestlers featured in @k-e-c.bsky.social’s new essay “The Work,” went on @opb.org’s “Think Out Loud” to talk indie wrestling and share match stories: www.opb.org/article/2026...

This was my reaction too and I don't even know whether the "we" is humanists, women, people with the ability to read, Canadians, fans of Sappho, fans of Emily Dickinson, translators, classicists, or people who appreciate the feelings of sad red monsters. Either way, yes

seems like a good time to repost my @essaydaily.bsky.social piece about pro wrestler mick foley's autobiography HAVE A NICE DAY: A TALE OF BLOOD AND SWEAT SOCKS (and also about belief, and being santa when you can no longer be a heel) www.essaydaily.org/2024/12/dec-...

or, as a talking head put it in one made-for-tv wrestling doc I love: "wrestling's real; people are fake."

"Cannonball, world’s strongest slam, dropkick, Boston crab, lion tamer, some dozen or more slaps into a powerbomb. And then, dropping knees-first onto ­Amira’s shoulders, Johnnie leveled her." Katherine Cusumano for @thebeliever.net www.thebeliever.net/the-work/

“The Work,” @k-e-c.bsky.social’s “literal tour de force” of independent wrestling in the Pacific Northwest, is a Longreads Editors’ Pick! Thanks to @longreads.com for recognizing Katherine’s work. Read their writeup here: longreads.com/2026/10/01/i...

"Once you penetrate so much as an inch beyond the fakeness... [you] understand that 'winner' and 'loser' don’t matter much in the traditional sense. They matter as narrative categories serving the stories and the characters and the awesome physical feats they execute."

what!!!!!! thank you @longreads.com longreads.com/2026/10/01/i...

pls read my essay, which has roland barthes and elementary school-age girls screaming FUCK YOU BITCH from the front row and about a million drop kicks and a lot of other things

this is thrilling and depressing and wildly empathetic, loved

I’ve become obsessed with the disappearing night sky. I miss going outside wherever I was and seeing the stars! Glad to be able to write about this for @us.theguardian.com. Thanks to the kind readers who have already sent me emails about their own night skies. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

an oldie that is just so so good oxfordamerican.org/magazine/iss...

👀

“I’ve had countless people tell me, ‘It’s amazing all the wildlife we’re seeing — I didn’t think taking out those dams would make a difference.’ Now everything can flow freely and clearly, the way that it was intended.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/c...

One of the most exciting things happening in Portland today is the city desperately trying not to exploding whale this building.

I keep overripe bananas in the freezer at all times for the smitten ("ultimate") banana bread, a recipe I live for and would also die for anyway, people should be reading @weareravenous.com !!

the Grasshopper Fire on Mt. Hood seen from my flight from New York to Portland yesterday

"He plays absurdist games with himself: 'Imagine gene-expression space, 20,000 dimensions … You can taste ten parameters of your own blood chemistry.'" a @lizweil.bsky.social masterclass!!

apparently I'm being impersonated by AI. if you receive an email from katherinecusuma.agni@gmail.com (or any email that isn't my one professional email, katherine.e.cusumano@gmail.com) THIS IS NOT ME. I hate this timeline.

who is brave enough to let me write about r/orif, the sub where people go to discuss their orthopedic trauma surgeries

brain is working overtime to frame finishing up a couple of big projects as "fun" (excitement! opportunity! what's next!) and not as "cause for existential terror" (perhaps these are the last good stories I ever write! what's next is nothing!)

my story on the steam tunnels beneath the @oregonstate.edu campus, for the Oregon Stater, has just won a silver medal from the CASE awards — sort of the ASMEs of alumni magazines 🩶🥈 www.case.org/awards/circl...

portland friends: tonight several brilliant writers, including @jeremyklemin.bsky.social and @jasonsepac.bsky.social and @devonfredericksen.bsky.social, are reading at Literary Arts. be there!! literary-arts.org/event/2026-o...

I admit I am a REAL sucker for voicey dude essays about combat sports, but this is excellent www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/m...

"when one describes something, one is also describing how the described deviates from the norm, and therefore also describing what is and is not normal." absolute banger in the summer @thebeliever.net by my friend Alfred Jung Lee: www.thebeliever.net/on-descripti...

thank you to all the editors who've ever told me the ending needs another try

I am more or less constantly trying to sneak one (1!) exclamation point into every essay

jalen brunson cries so i cry