Essays - Brett Reynolds

What the Tide Brought (February 2026)
A children's story about a girl, a bestiary, and a coast that is changing. Set in 1700s Scotland, it follows Mara as she watches the sea outrun her grandmother's taxonomy.
Attention, Gift, and the Discipline of Not Being Fooled (January 2026) · PDF
A comparative reading of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. Examines how moral vocabularies – gift, listening, permission – can bind appetite or merely console it. Asks where the veto lives when our arrangements let us take the gains and send the damage elsewhere.
Authenticity and Authorship in the LLM Era (May 2025) · PDF
A talk for English faculty at Humber Polytechnic. Argues that LLMs are tools for thinking, not threats to authenticity. Covers prompting strategies, assessment workflows, and what we're really preparing students for in an age of AI.
The Price of Metaphor (2012, revised 2019) · PDF
On chunking, memory, and the cost of taking our models too literally. Traces "the price of metaphor is eternal vigilance" from its origins through misattribution to an exchange with Richard Lewontin.