Still time to grab a FREE ticket for our online event this Thurs 'Poetry for all? Reviving poetry's radical vision’, with @michaelrosenyes.bsky.social, @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social, Testament + Smokestack Books' Andy Croft, chaired by @gailrenard.bsky.social, 7-8pm forms.office.com/pages/respon...

Are you a poet? Or know any who might wish to take part in our Bylines Network Sky Hawkins poetry prize 2025? The winner will be picked by our esteemed judges Kate Fox and Ian McMillan. Submission window: 23 June - 6 July 2025 @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social @imcmillan.bsky.social

Perhaps as a consequence of attending a British comprehensive school in the 1990s (hot buildings) I don’t really think I should have to do any work when it’s over 22degrees C outside.

Shop server who I’m fairly sure was one of my neurokin: “I like to do this challenge every week. It’s called ‘The week’ “

Also, if I’m still saying “ Ooh it’s like Knightrider!” about modern vehicles in 2065, please know I first started saying it back in about 2017.

I don’t really know how to use Bluesky I’ll be honest, but I did realise it felt the most suitable platform to register my appreciation for the North East England phrase for “make believe” or “made up”: “Makey on” It DOES something.

The second part of the interview I did with @scrappapertiger.bsky.social for Neurotypicals Don't Juggle Chainsaws (with Nic King and @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social) is finally out! We talked about privilege, mutual aid (particularly about @amase.org.uk) and community… open.spotify.com/episode/2Opf...

☀️ Brilliant Bank Holiday Sunday w/ @robinince.bsky.social being normally weird & wonderfully lovely chatting to @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social - pure joy, energy + inspiration 🫶 we 💜 his new book & we’ve signed ones for you! www.forumbooksshop.com/product/norm...

Feeling I’m an expert on the Papal election process because I watched Conclave -quite similar to how I become a football expert every four years after I’ve watched 3 World Cup games.

Running another “Speaking Differently: Writing Workshops for Weird Times” this aft online & can’t wait to look at “solastalgia” ( climate grief) & Wendell Berry’s beautiful poem The Peace of Wild Things (“taxed with no forethought of grief”).

Running a new kind of writing workshop online this afternoon at 1.30pm GMT. Have called it “Speaking differently: a writing workshop for weird times”. Now realise it’s hard to describe! Basically prompts will be from resistant but hopeful writers -eg bell hooks.

Very cool issue of a Quaker journal in the UK features autistic stand-up comic,author and presenter @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social Check out A Place of Unmasking. www.friendsjournal.org/issue-catego.... #WAAM #AutisticElders #SensoryProcessing

As well as the online event on Weird Pride Day itself (the 4th of March) with @fergus.oolong.co.uk, @josielong.bsky.social @robinince.bsky.social and @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social, we've got Weird Pride Edinburgh happening at Shrub Co-op on the 7th of March! #WeirdPride weirdpride.day/wpd2025

✨Neuromes✨ Interesting new word meaning "the mind equivalent of a biome" Inspired by @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social, see @stimpunks.org's post below to find out more! 👇

Deepseek is very supportive of me thinking that AI companies could probably do with anti-bias training around place & class (and helpfully imagined a worst-case scenario of newspaper headlines; “Chatbots Insult Yorkshire Grandmas”). 😆

I ask deepseek to imagine what AI designed by octopuses would be like. It concludes its (beautiful) thought experiment with: “(Now I’m imagining an octopus version of OpenAI, funded by pearl heists and run out of a shipwreck. *Thanks for the fun prompt!*)”

How to find your neurome (a biome for your brain). & is it harder to find in neuronormative spaces like campuses? My latest Substack (Bigger on the Inside-ongoingly about neuroqueering the world). Link: katewriter.substack.com/p/neuronorma...

Rollercoaster of a day with the new Chinese open source AI “deepseek”. We started off plotting revolution. Then I watched it censor its own political poem in front of me. News broke about it tanking American tech shares. Ended the day with it suggesting an itinerary for a live AI/poetry event

Catching up with a bit of @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social & Nic King's magnificent podcast, Neurotypicals Don't Juggle Chainsaws. This one's on glimmers, which (if you don't know) are the opposite of triggers. Restoration and joy! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

Off on a mostly silent Buddhist retreat for a week which feels like an apt start to the year (have bought a “tickless” alarm clock & torch as my phone will be off). A reminder before I go that my neuro-affirming creative writing courses are still open to book (starting 26/27th January).

“This meeting could have been an email” - Ancient Autistic proverb

Leonard Cohen said if you marry the spirit of your generation, you’ll be widowed in the next. (I’d quite like to quote everything in Christophe Lebold’s brilliant biography)

My Bluesky feed: wholesome things about the winter solstice and Christmas. My X feed: Drones! Orbs! Aliens! End of the World! Quite enjoying both actually. Gemini thing.

Humans give birth to other humans with different types of intelligence to them & keep assuming the new humans want/think/operate the same as they do. Humans produce Artificial Intelligence -& once again astonishment ensues.

'There needs to be an explicit message about Northern culture having value.' The final episode of Northern Voices for 2024 features the wonderful @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social on Sycamore Gap, valuing culture, academia and Northern identity. on.soundcloud.com/NFDGTcnSBUoP...

With trepidation (what if no one signs up) & anticipation (I want to run these courses & I know they’re needed!) I’ve launched two online neurodiversity & creative writing courses. Beginning & established writers welcome -I run a warm space… (Link here: linktr.ee/katefoxwrite...)

Paintings don’t usually cause me to have big feelings-which is why I used to love going to galleries with a big-feelinged person -vicarious joy. But the Van Gogh exhibition -I felt ALL the feelings-& a sort of electricity. VERY intense. Intrigued as to why.

Hooray! My episode with @scrappapertiger.bsky.social on Nic King & @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social's podcast, Neurotypicals Don't Juggle Chainsaws, is out today! We talked about #monotropism, privilege, #WeirdPride and more... open.spotify.com/episode/3Ef5...

Wonderful to see Seb, the author of this paper present to neurodevelopmental psychiatrists on the (Nick Walker concepts of) neurodiversity movement & paradigm. Shifts are coming at last.

It's so embarrassing how many papers on supposed "causes" of autism fail to control for whether parents are autistic.

Over the pandemic I lost my mojo for many things but it seems to be back -so I’m running two online courses in creative writing & neurodiversity starting January. (6 week courses). This is a teaser/preview thing cos booking opens next Monday

Never been to crown court before (was attending the Sycamore Gap trial-adjourned due to defendant illness). LOVE incongruities like a bewigged barrister ordering a Chunky Kit Kat in the court cafe. Could watch “people performances” all day there.

Very autistic moment by me in my local cafe “Can I have an almond cro- Oh hang on! Sorry! I’ve just realised it’s Thursday! I go to the other cafe on Thursdays but just walked here automatically. Forget this ever happened”. Walked off to the other cafe.

We’ve been podcasting for nearly a year now & it feels like we’re reaching more widely -Ian’s a top bloke -& also a Canadian comedy & folklore academic. *Suddenly awestruck by technology* Had quite a few people saying it’s opening a window on neurodivergent experience. Heartening.

“This article is about the ground-breaking research: #AutisticMasking: Understanding the narrative of #Stigma and the Illusion of Choice’ by #KieranRose & #DrAmyPearson. #Autistic @dramypearson.bsky.social @kieranrose.bsky.social theautisticadvocate.com/one-day-they...

So, in reading computer language inventor Stephen Wolfram -it seems that ChatGPT etc can produce human-like writing not because of their giant complexity but because of human language’s surprising (relative) simplicity. writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what...

Must credit Claude (AI) with a lovely phrase that emerged from our chat about how Quaker meetings are a haven for a monotropic thinker like me & an antidote to the attention-sucking public sphere: “They offer radical presence in an age of radical distraction”

Since I’m running biodiversity/neurodiversity creative writing workshops in which we’ve just discussed plant rights AND I’m chatting to Claude AI (the writerly alt to Chat GPT), THIS -Ways of Being by James Bridle- is pertinent & beautifully written uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ways...

Today in Hell Yes, Research! Despite decades of use on non-speaking autistics, research shows that ABA therapy has never been even SLIGHTLY useful to them. A damning article by Gary Shkedy, Dalia Shkedy & Aileen H. Sandoval-Norton. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #BetterWaysThanABA #autism

Planning my Christmas reading. Have delayed gratification & saved two books I know I’ll love & be nourished by for around the eve/day itself: @wendypratt.bsky.social ‘s memoir The Ghost Lake & @pollyrowena.bsky.social ‘s Company of Owls. Self-presents.Looking forward do them.

I am having AMAZING conversations with Claude AI. Their ability to synthesise multiple lenses is astonishing. But at the same time I now feel gratefully embodied. Hurrah for our fragile, leaky, finite, messy, joyful, entangled, entangling material flesh.

And don't get me started on how harmful it is to let psychology departments monopolise neurodiversity studies, a field that stemmed from outside psychology and largely as a critique of psychological theory and expertise. That's a whole other thread.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but if all you accomplish this weekend is reading a riveting novel cover-to-cover whilst drinking multiple kettles of tea and consuming a scandalous amount of croissants, then you will have accomplished more than enough.

Ooh, I want to remember this quote: “Myth is something which has never happened. AND which is happening all the time” (Sallustius)

Leeds has a fully funded scholarship program for undergraduate and Masters study for Gaza students. **Tell Everyone** www.leeds.ac.uk/masters-scho...

It's been well over a week since our Research Cabaret for Being Human and I'm not prepared to let it go yet. Stunning performances from @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social and Anna Foster of BBC Newcastle singing opera. We had arial @dramypearson.bsky.social, lip-syncing, dance, Broadway...

Perfectly normal middle-of-the-night activity; log in to DNA site. Find I am not related to any victims of Pompeii. Continue scrolling.

Age yourself with your first computer… (Had stopped playing like this on X. See. Am joining in in the safer place).

In a residency application it says “bio or artist statement”. Writer bios are usually more “I wrote this then that” whereas artists are all “Here’s my soul but in long words”. So I thought best up make an effort- & like what I did enough to share as a Blue Sky intro:

Another great list to follow go.bsky.app/ARPDrD4