I am incredibly excited to say I have received a New Writer's Award from @scottishbooktrust.bsky.social for 2026! I'm very much looking forward to this year & spending more time with the wonderful cohort of writers.

I am very excited to have a poem in the new issue of the Rialto! www.therialto.co.uk/pages/produc...

very grateful to dishsoap quarterly for the nomination; I cannot recommend submitting to them enough!!

Delighted to have a piece today in Dishsoap Quarterly!

Piece up this week with a momentum build so strong you'll have lost your breath by the end of it. Ready, set, go read "Tennis Players" from @alicerowilson.bsky.social Link: dishsoap-quarterly.com/12-16-25

glad to see the glory of herefordshire getting some recognition

I have a poem in issue 2 of sextet! sextet.co.uk/alice-rowena...

Also go along to six foot gallery in Glasgow and you will hear me reading it

I have a poem in issue 2 of sextet! sextet.co.uk/alice-rowena...

I unintentionally read this with the affect of a contemporary poem and was oddly taken by it

today, I had very exciting news about an acceptance, had two cream scones to celebrate, and I'm now off to a writing group - not a bad day in all!

currently working on revisions of the Renaissance Florence vampire novel, and have become incredibly distracted by a gay tour de france novel

I just read this short story by Katy Finnegan and really really loved it bansheepress.org/read/bl0ss0m...

"No modeling agency praised my biceps enough, so my father bought me an oasis. It became my personal modeling venue." This week, we bring you the Great American Short Story, a brand new one by @seandowie.bsky.social. This one is a jaw-dropper. Hilarious. Unexpected. Don't miss "Thirst Trap!" 💪💀👇

I have recently been submitting to lit fic magazines where it is just a black hole of work hanging around for months (not complaining, I know it's how it is), and I have just submitted something to clarkesworld, where there is a TRACKER on how many works are before yours in the queue?? crazy

The destruction of the Gaza city mosque is a devastating loss to humanity as a whole. A part of our global medieval heritage destroyed in furtherance to a genocide. I despair.

today's intriguing reading (allegedly for novel research, but sort of just bc I am interested)

I know I'm still a classicist at heart bc I was genuinely thrilled by the revelation of what the secret manuscript was in the name of the rose

deeply obsessed with the piece "You are buying a Pope Francis condom, and I, the cashier, hand you a survey" by Adriano noble here: carmenerror.com?page_id=183

I take an anti-AI stance for many reasons, including that I just literally have 0 use-cases for it in my life, but one of its more egregious impacts on my life is that the spell-check in Word is NOTICEABLY worse after they integrated Copilot, and just hallucinates errors where there are none

I feel very sad about the itv4 tour de france coverage ending - I have very fond memories of watching the highlights show with my father as a small child

currently watching Wimbledon, eating frozen strawberries coated in dark chocolate, and drinking a non-alcoholic white wine that I accidentally froze so it's become sort of a slushie

I've begun learning some rlly basic mandarin and I'm so fascinated by words when you get this kind of list of definitions

Huge discovery for me is that I don't actually dislike audiobooks, I just dislike fiction audiobooks. All my minor tasks over the past few days have been accompanied by Quinn Slobodian's Hayek's Bastards and it has been a truly excellent experience

my fun fact for today is that 'Paladin' is recorded as a male name in fourteenth century Venice, and given that the Forgotten Realms are basically late Medieval / early Renaissance, one could very reasonably be a paladin named Paladin

this is such a wonderful novel that my copy of it is currently doing the rounds with friends because I keep telling ppl they must read it!

Incontrovertible evidence, now, of *police* investigating families supporting their kids with gender affirming healthcare in the UK. For trying to do the best for your child, following best practice in most of the world, here you get a visit from the police. Thank you, Wes Streeting.

Currently developing a theory that anthony trollope gives his characters ridiculous names as way of trying to normalize his own surname. Like I’m sorry but I have just started Can You Forgive Her, and VAVASOR??

A tiny, beautiful and evil cat who has never quite figured out that lying on grey surfaces where cars come by might be a problem

I love watching the early parts of of tdf time trials bc the commentators are just like "yeah he's taking it easy....yeah he's not really trying...yeah he's pretty much just phoning this in....so this rider's definitely just rolling around the course"

all I do at the moment is read about weird little books, e.g.: "THEDIALOGO DEL GOBBO DA RIALTO, et Marocco dalle pipone dalle colonnedi S. Marco is a rare and little-known pamphlet that stages an oral con-versation between two talking statues about the comet of 1577"

This draft is at 100k words and I am still not done but I am close enough to the end of it to taste it. Ofc I have already realized one trillion things to change but STILL we have something

I spent today writing 3500 words about André Gide's weird 1914 novel, 'The Vatican Cellars'. Read about kidnapped Popes! Conspiracy theorists and scammers! Amoral aesthetes! A selection of very funny French names! alicerowenawilson.substack.com/p/the-pope-h...

There is a fundraiser to help twelve History and Archaeology students from the Islamic University of Gaza finish their degrees. It has been organised by Georgia M Andreou of the Gaza Maritime Archaeology Project (GAZAMAP), on which the students worked.

I spent today writing 3500 words about André Gide's weird 1914 novel, 'The Vatican Cellars'. Read about kidnapped Popes! Conspiracy theorists and scammers! Amoral aesthetes! A selection of very funny French names! alicerowenawilson.substack.com/p/the-pope-h...

putting this question into the void, just in case anyone who follows me has an answer: I did a fairly extensive writing test for a games company, and it would be useful to put in my portfolio. I contacted them about whether this would be okay, and never heard back - is it acceptable to just use it??

Some weekend experiments with making a UI for a little text game

putting this question into the void, just in case anyone who follows me has an answer: I did a fairly extensive writing test for a games company, and it would be useful to put in my portfolio. I contacted them about whether this would be okay, and never heard back - is it acceptable to just use it??

saturday reading

Drinking a cold foam iced americano in a café while working on a laptop and wearing pimple patches...feeling very Of My Generation

Also! At the @socstudyofthepast.bsky.social we’re holding an emergency meeting about this at 7pm UK time (9pm Gaza) TOMORROW. All welcome - please come and please share. Zoom link via our website: societyforthestudyofthepast.com/events/

one of the great things about teaching is just having a captive audience for whatever your weird little obsession in the subject currently is. for example, I have told every student I've seen in the past few days about the batrachomyomachia

I am currently writing a presentation about the Homeric question and imagining a novel which just follows a series of Homeric scholars as they go through different interpretations of how the text came to exist. It would appeal to like 3 people but it would be fun

I have just finished the vatican cellars by andré gide and it is such a profoundly weird book

Hello everyone who studies the ancient world, here is Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine, calling archaeology the “ideological scaffolding” of apartheid. Some of us have been trying to say this for years in the face of a discipline that believes itself “apolitical”.

Currently thinking about Heracles' itch in the Trachiniae, the bedbugs bit of André Gide's The Vatican Cellars, and the opening of Solenoid. Does anyone know any other literary itches??

andré gide invents ship names

I am listening to ólafur arnolds on radio 3 and I am so charmed by his description of music that is "for your growth, and yours plants'"

I am currently writing a presentation about the Homeric question and really having to resist the urge to title a slide: "Scholia? I hardly knew her!"

Much to ponder here