ANIMAL GHOSTS (1980): Spooky short story anthology centred around, well... animal ghosts. The cover is particularly striking - those animals are freaking out, man!

🦇🎶It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

Warwick English came 5th in The Guardian today, which is great for us. But also notice that Lancaster came 3rd for Creative Writing & 7th for English - but the university is decimating programmes & firing 1/3 of academic staff over the next six months 🤔🤔🤔 @lancasterucu.bsky.social #saveartsandhums

Started the day with a free gig at the Lancaster Jazz Festival - Johanna Burnheart at the Herbarium cafe, in a rammed side room I didn't know was there until today. She was superb. tidal.com/browse/artis...

Early 20C Marxist Gothic. Here for it.

When you’re researching in the British Library and you discover the copy of the 1853 novel you’ve called up is inscribed by the author…

As usual forgot to take photos, but here's a couple from @catherinespooner.bsky.social's and @coffinboffin.bsky.social's wonderful keynotes 🩵

So grateful to @ogomproject.bsky.social for bringing us together for the dream mermaid conference. A brilliant three days thinking about submarine fantasies 💦🧜‍♀️🩵

This frontispiece in my book just made me laugh a lot. Is this Buddhist reincarnation, or some other form of afterlife?

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Worrying long term hidden fiscal drag The family income threshold at which English students maintenance loans start to get reduced is just £25,000/yr. It has been this level since the 2008/2009 academic year. We have had 64% (CPI) inflation since then. So it's been slashed hugely in real terms

Gender began in 2015 (Later than it might have been) Between the end of Ed Miliband And Minions on the big screen

Introducing our brand new podcast for the 'Ann Radcliffe, Then and Now' project! You can find our first episode, 'Editing The Italian', an interview with Professor Michael Gamer, by clicking the link below 👇 player.sheffield.ac.uk/events/editi... And be look out for episode two, coming soon..

Superb article on why and how we need to take a more proactive stance towards social class in higher education by @bethjohnsontv.bsky.social: www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/soci...

"People do not want the messy, uncomfortable truth that disability is not a choice but a natural variation of existence. That disability is part of the natural world. Publishing has a responsibility to think about the consequences of the messages it supports & perpetuates." @pollyrowena.bsky.social

It me! I'll be doing a panel about the @blpublishing.bsky.social Tales of the Weird series with Zara-Louise Stubbs, editor of 'The Uncanny Gastronomic', at Nottingham Waterstone's on Halloween 🖤 Especially fun as I used to work at this branch, many moons ago...

My nam is cowe Wen somer comme And sun dos shyn And bes do homm My emale offe! Im outt off reech! Awaye I goe I hitte the beeche

Delighted to receive these beauties in the mail today: the newly paperbacked volumes of The Cambridge History of the Gothic that I co-edited with @dalegothic96.bsky.social and @catherinespooner.bsky.social for @universitypress.cambridge.org

wonder if decades of mocking media studies as a Mickey Mouse subject has anything to do with this at all

A treat in the post today: paperback edition of the award-winning, three-volume The Cambridge History of the Gothic, co-edited with @angelawright1794.bsky.social and @dalegothic96.bsky.social.

Waterstones are running a pre-order promotion this week which covers my next novel, The Heist Of Hollow London, out in September. Order before 31st July and get 25% off: www.waterstones.com/book/the-hei...

‘For the Dead Remember: The Life of M. R. James’ will be published by Oxford University Press on 10 September 2026. Set your watches, mark your calendars, and spread the word!

Our three-volume Cambridge History of the Gothic, a monumental labour of love that we worked on for many years, has just come out in paperback! @angelawright1794.bsky.social @catherinespooner.bsky.social @universitypress.cambridge.org

The UK did have one standout product that was considered globally valuable- universities- and unilaterally decided to stop providing the product because it was more important to be xenophobic than successful

You and me both, wasps, you and me both

Lola is the most literary cat.

Publishers Weekly have given my next novel, The Heist Of Hollow London, a starred review and called it an "impressive thrill ride" that "works on every level." That's exciting. www.publishersweekly.com/9781250372062

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Oh, Duo.

Why are the British public hooked on ‘true’ stories? Thread:

Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature University of East Anglia 12 months fixed term full time www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNS327/l...

Lect/Asst Prof in Creative Writing, Temp 5 years, 0.5 FTE University College Dublin universityvacancies.com/university-c...

It’s St John’s Eve, when St John’s wort reaches the height of its magical powers. Hanging it on doors and windows is said to keep away storms and evil spirits.

Reminds me of a favourite Peanuts:

"It's a party at the end of the world." Read about our own Prof Catherine Spooner's research on the white dress in Gothic literature and film, and how this ghostly aesthetic has taken over runways around the globe 👻 @catherinespooner.bsky.social | @theguardian.com

I spoke to a Guardian journalist about my current research project… www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025...

Cover reveal!! I can finally talk about the Top Secret project I've been working on with @deadinkbooks.bsky.social! Ten haunted house stories by modern masters of the #Uncanny, compiled and introduced by yours truly - all wrapped up in a glorious deluxe hardback edition. Full details below.

My brilliant colleague @catherinespooner.bsky.social in @theguardian.com on the white dress 👇👇 www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025...

“If universities start to fail, it will be disastrous for Labour MPs and their constituents. It would be the modern equivalent of the factory closure, or the end of the pit. “And despite how some Labour MPs seem to imagine their voters, it would be Labour’s core supporters who were most affected.”

Men are extremely keen to explain to me that Britain *needs* a domestic steel production plant and doesn't necessarily *need* universities. Okay. Steel contributed about £1.7bn to the UK economy in 2024. Universities contributed more than £200bn.

Newcastle University staff invited to a ‘Doodling for Wellbeing’ session (‘Let your pen dance across the page' in 'a perfect escape from the everyday hustle and bustle'. Invites sent on same day 153 academics were informed of their location in 'redundancy pools', with 38 redundancies planned. 1/2

Good morning to everyone, but especially to all the otters, for today is their special day! To celebrate World Otter Day, here is an engraving of an otter from the book 'The Illustrated Natural History' (1863) by J. G. Wood. 📷🦦 Reserve 590.2/WOO #WorldOtterDay #OtterDay #Otters #RareBooks

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

Funny, every writer in the UK knows how it'd work. You'd ask @alcs.co.uk to organise it. Seeing as how it's EXACTLY WHAT THEY ALREADY DO.

Happy World Goth Day everyone!

Want.

So excited that the next series of the Eden Book Society is on its way! This time, they're rummaging through the archives from 1993... Hoping they'll unearth some Gothicky treasures in the style of Poppy Z Brite, early Patrick McGrath, David Lynch (but really, whatever they find is good with me).

In huge news, the UK government was just defeated in the House of Lords for a second time over AI & copyright. The government had removed amendments to the Data Bill that would require AI companies to disclose their training data. The Lords have now reinserted them. 🧵 1/2

Heartened to see that close to 900 fellow academics and educators have already signed our letter in support of trans rights, trans wellbeing & trans inclusion, and against essentialist, anti-scientific, racialised & regressive views of womanhood. Please do read, share & sign! tinyurl.com/mud7va29

This is amazing.