kidswithnukes.com · Meet the Author

Jacob Clifton

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I’ve been paying close attention to stories for as long as I can remember. Other people’s, for about fifteen years. My own, for the last ten. The tools and the instincts are the same either way — you’re always looking for the moment the mask slips, the thing the story is about underneath the thing it thinks it’s about.

For fourteen years I was a flagship staff writer at Television Without Pity — one of the defining TV criticism sites of its era, reaching a million readers a week at its peak. I covered Battlestar Galactica, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, True Blood, Doctor Who, and about forty other shows — writing recaps that were less about what happened and more about what it cost, and what it meant, and why you couldn’t look away.

After TWoP, I worked as an editor at Gawker Media and Tribune Media, and wrote for the Austin Chronicle, Vulture, BuzzFeed, and Tor.com/Reactor. I founded A Rough Trade Writing School, where I teach creative writing to people who want to stop performing the idea of being a writer and start doing the actual work.

I’ve published four novels, a TV criticism series called the WATCHING books, and the Wild Magic Oracular Spectacular — a one-year, 52-card deck of writing lessons. Oldie is the novel I’m writing right now, in real time, here.