even the dead will not be safe from the enemy

ezra, they/he | speculative fiction writer | anti-zionist jew

[dushenyu]

hello

I'm Ezra. You can use they or he pronouns for me. My pen name is Ezra Lamdan, though you may see some of my older stories published under "E. M. Lamdan." I'm a secular, anti-zionist Jew, a Palestine solidarity organizer in my local community, and a writer of vaguely literary speculative fiction. My askbox is always open so feel free to ask me any questions you have about Jewishness, organizing, or especially my work!

About my work:

I write speculative fiction, usually science fiction, fantasy, Weird fiction, or some blend thereof. I call my work "vaguely literary" because I consider it more character-driven than plot-driven. But it is second-world and yes, there is always plot, so I have to be wishy-washy about these sorts of designations. I care a great deal about prose and spend an unreasonable amount of time nitpicking at the sentence level.

I tend to write about navigation of generational trauma and the potential for collective liberation, only possible through the pursuit of solidarity. My work is anti-colonial and anti-capitalist in nature. I seek to use fiction as a vehicle for the disruption of Zionist, white supremacist, hegemonic narratives. The characters in my stories are almost always queer.

I am drawn to writers like N. K. Jemisin, Arkady Martine, Ursula K Le Guin, and Octavia Butler. My work is deeply indebted to Afrofuturism in its approach to diaspora and historical memory, something I hope to honor. My fiction has also been greatly influenced by Marxist critical theory; Walter Benjamin has probably shaped my thinking the most, but I also draw a lot from Fanon, Fred Moten's Undercommons, Christina Sharpe's concept of wake work, and countless others, I won't just sit here listing theorists all day don't worry

I write short fiction sometimes, but also I'm working on an in-progress novel, a second-world sci-fi with some fantasy bells on. This is the first book of an intended trilogy, which, if you follow, you'll probably be hearing about a lot. I really hope to write a draft of this novel during the first year of my MFA. Speaking of -

Some facts about me!

I am a fiction MFA candidate, starting this fall. I will also concurrently be teaching English 101. So hopefully, there will be a lot of writing productivity from me over the months to come.

I've been peripheral to the publishing industry, working as a freelance ghostwriter, for the past... 4? 5? years. This has been a very financially precarious time for me as you might imagine. Please do not ask me any questions about the ghostwriting, I am not able to answer them, and suffice it to say it's nowhere near as interesting as it sounds.

I'm in my late 20s #itgetsbetter

I have 2 cats and I used to work with horses, so animals are a very important part of my life.

I have a few published short stories. None of them are particularly recent but that's okay, there will be recent ones soon, keinehora. Some of them can be found on my Patreon, where one is free (a really good one, imho) and the rest are available under my lowest contribution tier.

On a related note. I have a Patreon, linked below! You can follow for free to see my newsletters and read that free short story. I post every month talking about what's going on, what I'm reading, what I'm writing, usually a snippet of the latter, and at the end of every newsletter, a picture of one of my animals.

Ezra Lamdan — speculative fiction

Get more from Ezra Lamdan on Patreon. speculative fiction. Support Ezra Lamdan and get exclusive access to their work.

I also have a website:

Ezra Lamdan

I am always open for tag games, ask games, anything like that. I look forward to storytelling with all of you.

A note about my blog under the readmore, to be clicked if I looked familiar to you -

This is my second writeblr. You may remember the old one under the name "neshamahs" or "doikayt." I deleted in 2022 after getting harassed by a group of zionists and deciding that honestly, tumblr wasn't really worth the headache. Now i'm back a few years later, more experienced in life, and swift with the block button. All of this to say: I will not publish any hate anons, I will delete them. I will not respond to anything I deem to be bad-faith and especially not with anyone engaging in racial/ethnic hatred or other bigotry, directed at me or at anyone else. That being said, I am always open to honest dialogue and criticism, so please do reach out to me, I don't bite.

[distantvoices]

When the country doesn’t have easily accessible public libraries, piracy is sometimes the only option. They’ve been collaborating with the police to arrest poor street vendors and small book shop owners. Evil, just evil

[elgreytea]

What are you reading rn, why are you reading it, and what format are you reading it in (physical book, ereader, on your phone etc)

[dionysiaproductions]

[briannyssey]

some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life

[dushenyu]

changed my url

ezrasstories -> dushenyu

[dushenyu]

upon my return to writer tumblr i see many people are reblogging AI-written "writing advice" posts?

[dushenyu]

every post on this blog is 100% unadulterated AI dogwater

[dushenyu]

upon my return to writer tumblr i see many people are reblogging AI-written "writing advice" posts?

[kjscottwrites]

[X] <- psst click this

[anoelleart]

Protolith - Prologue

Charlotte Ujunwae died thrice before her twenty-eighth year.

1

August 30, the 184th Year of the Mother In the eighth summer of her life, Charlotte witnessed the murder of her parents. A deafening gunshot woke her. In the moment between opening her eyes and cognition, she thought it was a crash of thunder that roused her. But the sound of heavy rain banging on her bedroom window was accompanied by the scent of acrid gunpowder and burnt flesh. The slick smell of blood brought to her primal fear, the kind of fear where her body knew she faced mortal danger before her mind. A fear which made her veins run with ice before she even realized that it was indeed her mother’s body strewn across the floor. Her mother lay between her and the bedroom door with a hole in her chest. In her mind’s eye, lightning struck then, but her memories of this night warped with time. This moment of light revealed to her the stranger who’d murdered her mother. He held his gun to her father’s head. That night, Charlotte escaped by throwing herself out of a third-floor bedroom window. She did not remember how her head unceremoniously collided with a stray rock in her garden. At three o’clock in the morning, she gasped for air. Shards of glass were embedded in her bronze skin. Blood soaked her auburn hair. Yet, she dragged herself nearly three miles that morning on a broken femur until she reached her uncle’s farmstead. Under the tumultuous clouds, her scattered brain matter looked just like the dirt.

2

July 2, the 200th Year of the Mother In her twenty-fourth summer, Charlotte was unmarried. To her uncle’s chagrin, she had run away from any acceptable proposal. Had he not stolen her inheritance, she’d be a university student. Instead, she spent her nights downtown. On this night, the sky was clear and dark. The moon hung loosely, like a butcher’s hook above her. The first man who sought to hire her services instead wrapped his hands around her neck. She remembered most clearly his eyes, brown and yellow, his breath sick with alcohol, and the callouses which scratched her skin until blackness crept across her vision like a spider web. At three o’clock that morning, Charlotte lurched back to the land of the living. An undertaker stood above her, puzzled at this unexpected resurrection, perhaps upset at the loss of income, but more than anything, curious about the frightened and angry woman who was suddenly shouting at him. Her instinctual fear arrived too late, and though her return to life was met with a friendly face, she threw herself backwards and reached for the knife hidden in her boot. The undertaker was a tall and dark man, with a large smile and an even larger desire not to die by the knife of a prostitute. Over a gin on the rocks, he told her that he collected cadavers for the university morgue and garnered gold from rich medical students desperate for time with a true human specimen. “If you promise not to nearly die in another alleyway, I’ll give you the family discount,” the undertaker told her.

3

Her third death has yet to come.

***

Read more: Chapter 1, Part 1

[freakoutgirl]

Use "said" for dialogue unless you are writing a man talking, in which case use "whimpered"

[tranquildeath]

i was meant to be a 500 year old tree

[artschoolglasses]

Seen a couple posts on the dashboard lately about writing with ADHD. So, for the ADHD and neurodivergent folks who like writing but struggle sometimes… check out StimuWrite.

You can set it to make little sounds as you type (or leave them off), and emojis pop up in the corner. You can change the background, dark and light themes, set your word goal, and it gives you a percentage and total word count at the bottom. Though it’s more meant for getting a draft written up, so it doesn’t have spell check or anything like that. You’re meant to just copy and past what you write here into Google Docs or Word or Scrivener or whatever else you use and go from there. Honestly love it when I’m struggling to get words down, though. And apparently there’s an update now for StimuWrite 2?👀

Anyways, give it a try if it looks like it may help. It’s currently name-your-own-price.

[dushenyu]

head in hands. i don't know goodreads, i just don't know....

[faemorrigan]

im realizing very fast that people do not in fact know that sometimes things in stories suck on purpose and it sucking is the point

[faemorrigan]

"this story is misogynistic!!"

>looks inside

>about the pressures of societal misogyny and how its bad

[periodicallypurple]

Thought this might help others who struggle when writing. I know I get in my head too much.

[clevercrumbish]

Honestly I think the compulsion to describe things about your own original characters as "a headcanon", silly as it sounds and incorrect as it is, makes complete sense when you understand it as "this is a thing that is true about this character to me that I want to tell people about but do not currently intend to include in any actual published narrative about the character."