Hi. We're Bad Lit Friends and we messed up. Again. Because Kirk is on vacation not last week, but THIS week, and because calendars are hard!!! So the special guests we promised you aren't here. We're sorry. Kirk is sorrier. (Or he should be.)

But! Next Friday, August 7th, we're back with a real episode: we're diving into the H.M. Wolfe / Daggermouth AI allegations from The Atlantic, why this keeps happening to debut authors of color with big deals while established authors who brag about AI use get a pass, and the uncomfortable parallels to Mia Ballard's Shy Girl situation earlier this year. It's A Lot but come on, it's us. We're a lot too for a couple of middle-aged weirdos. Links to the Atlantic piece and the underlying preprint study are in the show notes below — consider it homework. Yes, we're giving out homework because this is summer school, I guess?

See you next week. Blame Kirk.

Welcome to Bad Lit Friends. We're glad you're here, even if none of us know what we're doing.

Bad Lit Friends was created and is hosted by Meagan Thompson-Mann and Kirk Rafferty.

Show email: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠

Bluesky: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@badlitfriends.bsky.social⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Threads: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@badlitfriends⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@badlitfriends⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BadLitFriends⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Website:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠badlitfriends.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

Show notes:

Is This What Comes After AI Slop?" The Atlantic, July 27, 2026 (paywall): https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/daggermouth-novel-bestseller-ai/688067/Chakrabarty, et al., "Readers Prefer Outputs of AI Trained on Copyrighted Books over Expert Human Writers," arXiv, March 17, 2026: https://arxiv.org/html/2510.13939v4