​website | instagram | bluesky | linktree | order the glade (paperback preorder now live) | order the bruising of qilwa | order the white guy dies first | tip jar​

Welcome to the Tuesday Telegrams, a semimonthly newsletter from award-winning author Naseem Jamnia. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, where I update you on projects, offer behind-the-scenes looks, delve into craft, and other publishing and writing topics.

Happy New Years, everyone! Welcome to 2026: another year of accepted-in-advance fascism, and another year of deepening resistance.

I had hoped to spend December revamping the Telegrams—I like things to correspond to new times. My plan had been to launch a Patreon for my personal Telegrams (and to support my work more broadly) and turn my writing Telegrams into more deliberate examinations of craft and industry issues. I am, after all, an educator; last year, I focused on teaching rather than writing, and doing so revealed to me just how important teaching is to how I want my career to move.

I'd still like to do this, although the timeline will be "when it happens"—perhaps midyear. I thought I'd therefore spend this first Telegram of 2026 briefly discussing what's on the horizon for me (that is also relevant for you).

Sword & Kettle Press

Some of you may know that I'm part of the three-person team of Sword & Kettle Press, a tiny independent press of feminist speculative writing. We're also the home of the literary magazine Corvid Queen, which focuses on feminist fairy tales. We're known mostly for our beautiful hand-bound mini-chapbooks, where we physically print a few flash pieces or a few poems or one short story and literally bind them ourselves into small books. See how pretty they are! (Scroll down to "Mini-chapbook series.")

We've spent the last six months doing two exciting things that I am soft-announcing to all of y'all, before it's even gone out to our own newsletter. First, we're restructuring to be a worker-owned cooperative press. You can read more about co-ops here, but the short of it is that those who work at the press will own the press.

In doing this transition, we're going to be doing a bit of rebranding, moving from "feminist" to "inclusive" or "queer"—we're still working on those details. This transition means we will be looking for new members who want to potentially become business owners with us (seems daunting, I know, but there's a process to it!) and invest in the future of a press that creates beautiful books and is dedicated to inclusive, boundary-breaking writing.

While I'm officially our managing editor, I'm also our book layout designer, something that I absolutely love doing and will be transitioning to solely focusing on for the press, and for the past few months, I've been hard at work designing our latest project—one that celebrates this first decade (!) of the press's existence. We'll be announcing the crowdfunding campaign for that in about a month, and I'm going to come up with a secret newsletter-specific tier that any one of you can support. I'm not sure what is most exciting as a reward—maybe a craft class that will be recorded that you can attend live? If you have any burning requests, respond to this email and let me know.

Speaking of craft classes...

The Heretics' Workshop

For the past three (!) years, I've been a co-lead for the Heretics' Workshop, a local free educational workshop series and writing community hosted out of my local indie bookstore, The Radical Cat. For the past six or so months, it's been just me, and it became obvious that on top of teaching for other organizations, doing library activism, and my own writing, I couldn't sustain doing this on my own. Free community education, though, is important to me; I don't want to hold hostage any knowledge that I might be able to share.

As we've been doing the restructure for Sword & Kettle, it became obvious to the team that one thing we want to focus on in the future is building our literary community, and it occurred to me that the Heretics' Workshop is perfectly in line with this idea. Thus, in 2026, the Heretics' Workshop will be folded into Sword & Kettle's operations. While I'm still putting together what this will look like, very likely, this will include an online Zoom workshop hosted through the shop that anyone can attend for a reasonable price, and an in-store presentation of the same workshop if I'm the one running it. Doing it like this means we can bring in other writers and pay them while still having free options locally, in addition to the weekly write-ins I host at the shop.

It also means that the other cities where our members live, currently in Massachusetts and Indiana, might also have local workshops via local bookstores as well! My hope is that this transition will happen mid-spring.

If you're interested in this, join the Sword & Kettle newsletter and keep an eye on our Patreon. Chances are, we'll record the workshops for patrons. This is a backup option for when I forget to announce things in here, as I'm wont to do.

(I do, for example, usually teach a prewriting class at the top of the year to plan your writing goals; I'd like to also do this online this year, if possible! Probably in February, since I'm out for most of January.)

Other Teaching

Last year, I taught a lot—for Clarion West, the Carl Brandon Society, and Tin House. I pitched myself to many more organizations I never heard back from, though I may pitch again.

This year, I'm taking a soft break from doing so. I say a soft break, because if any of these or other organizations ask me to teach a class, if it doesn't conflict with my schedule, the answer is yes!! (Please send teaching ops my way; I'm a good teacher.)

Instead, I'm joining the Writing for Children and Young Adult faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno's, low-residency creative writing program at Lake Tahoe. If you know how my own MFA experience went at UNR's full residency, this may surprise you. (It didn't go great. Fortunately, this is hosted out of the art department, not English.)

I decided to join the faculty for four reasons: one, I'm curious whether I'll enjoy teaching in that format; two, the director currently is letting me lead my class how I want; three, I often say I want to run my own MFA program one day (but I may just want to lead my own instruction-focused organization or program; see point one); and four, as a middle finger to UNR for being an organization helmed by white supremacist, capitalist scumbags.

This isn't a transition away from community education to academic; that goes against my values, strongly. This is an experiment.

That being said, if you're curious about MFA programs, come talk to me. I have a lot to say about them, and I think if you're thinking about it (and can afford it), low-residency is the way to go.

Our program is trying to recruit, though, so it's worth looking into. I can't give you honest thoughts about it until after my first residency (which, by the time this hits your inbox, I'll be in the midst of), but from the looks of it, this program is trying to be different from what other MFAs often tout themselves. It focuses on community (rather than competition), and it has a program specifically for writing kidlit, and maybe one day we can have a track for speculative fiction. I really like the director, and my friend who has taught at this program has had great things to say about it.

What's this about a Patreon?

Finally, I would like to launch a Patreon at some point this year, with some caveats.

I want the Telegrams to remain a space where you can always access free educational resources and have at least some of the industry demystified. Publishing is purposefully opaque; it doesn't have to be.

But it takes me time and energy to put those resources together. A Patreon would be a place where people who have the means can support my efforts in doing so. In thanks, patrons would get my personal Telegrams, which are my musings about my personal life and the larger hellscape world. I may also likely share some behind-the-scenes stuff for my work, such as worldbuilding for the Qilverse, how my projects are going, etc.; I'm not sure how valuable these are for a broader audience, but feels appropriate for a Patreon. All tiers would be the same; the difference would be in what people can personally support.

My hope is to launch this after the crowdfunding is over for our Sword & Kettle project, and after I've properly transitioned the Heretics' Workshop over, so my guess is this will happen midyear or in the summer.

What is something you'd like to see from this space?

I am curious what you may find useful about this newsletter, or what you'd like to see, or why you'd support a Patreon in addition to subscribe to a newsletter (or why you wouldn't). Data is useful for me, and I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

Where I've Been: Podcast Edition

Before we head out, I wanted to share a couple of podcast episodes I did last year

Earlier in the year, I was on MEANarrative's podcast Mainstage, where I mostly talked about The Glade! It was amazing to speak to an Iranian American college student and seeing the work she's doing.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I hopped onto Of Monsters: A Speculative Podcast, which is hosted by the absolutely incredible Nicole Shawan Junior. I met Nicole when we were both at the Lambda Fellows Retreat (applications open for another week!), and they've since gone on to found one of my favorite literary organizations, Roots. Wounds. Words., where I've previously had the privilege of being on faculty. Of Monsters is their latest endeavor, and let me tell you, it hit HARD.

It's a new year, y'all! Let's not take it for granted.

Stay safe and love each other!

Solidarity Corner

If you have organizations or causes you'd like me to spotlight here, please send those links my way. We get through these things when we do so together.

To help Palestinians facing genocide (yes, still!):

• A list of verified mutual aid links​
• ​Gaza Funds spotlights current crowdfunding campaigns that are not getting as much attention
• The Sameer Project​
• The Al Jawad School in Gaza
• The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund​
• ​Crips for eSIMS for Gaza​
• The BDS Movement calls for specific brands to be boycotted in order to be effective in their targeting, but we can also be discerning individually. Here is another list of companies profiting off genocide. The only ethical consumption under capitalism is when we trace where the money goes.
• A list of Palestinian-owned brands and Palestinian goods​

To help others:

• ​Community-supported initiatives for recent events, courtesy of author Sarah Gailey's Stone Soup newsletter​
• ​CARE provides both ongoing recovery care for those impacted by Hurricane Helene
• A list of crowdfunding campaigns for displaced Black families, displaced Latine families, displaced Filipino families, and displaced disabled people from the LA fires, including affected small businesses
• The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has pages for various international atrocious
• ​A list of charities grouped by recent events around the world
• Some resources to help Lebanese communities affected by Israel's bombings
• ​UNHCR's donation page to help Syrian refugees
• The International Rescue Committee's page on Sudan
• ​Oman Tigray and the IRC's page on Tigray
• ​IRC page on the DR Congo
• The Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is not a mutual aid organization but does good work
• ​Keep Iran Connected to the internet (unfortunately via Starlink)

You can change whether to receive only writing-related (once a month) or all Telegrams (twice a month) in the footer below. Go to "Update your profile" and choose from the drop-down menu.