Over the years I've been writing, I've been fascinated by the no of Japanese words, once unfamiliar to English-reading audiences, that have become widely recognisable (no longer requiring clarifications on the page). On this note, I enjoyed @wheatfu.bsky.social's article: tinyurl.com/yzmewfca

Post-winter break, I'm still working through the contents of my inbox and finding some great things to read. I enjoyed this piece by @judecook.bsky.social, which asks if 'politics and fiction make for uneasy bedfellows? Does one, as it were, fatally undermine the other?'

Great seasonal historical and cultural roundup from @akennedysmith.bsky.social. I look forward to another year of her excellent Substack essays: open.substack.com/pub/akennedy...

I enjoyed this New Year essay by @samanthaellis.bsky.social with its focus on training & recovery, rereading & rewriting. And I completely agree with Samantha about this: 'I’m a huge advocate of rereading and how books change for you when you go back to them, and what that can give you.'

Congratulations to Better Known on reaching its 400th episode! I've discovered so many new things from this podcast 'about people’s passions which they think should be better known', & being interviewed (with Emma Claire Sweeney) back in 2017 was great. I recommend this series! tinyurl.com/4zaf73bh

In Jane Austen's 250th birthday year, it's great to see so many libraries marking the occasion. Lovely to discover this mention of A Secret Sisterhood (which I cowrote with Emma Claire Sweeney) in the Berlin-Peck Library's list of works associated with the great author: tinyurl.com/yjsvkj7h

@akennedysmith.bsky.social's essay on DNA pioneer Dr Rosalind Franklin reminds us of the continued importance of giving women's historic scientific discoveries their due.

Bluebell magazine is open for submissions again. Deadline 1 December: open.substack.com/pub/bluebell...

OK, I sort of have an interest in this subject already but I really liked this atmospheric @japantimes.co.jp article by @alexktmartin.bsky.social on Tokyo's 'phantom stations': www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/10...

'Motherhood has opened up a new seam of creativity for me. It’s given me access to new feelings and to new ideas. I did not switch off my brain when I became a mother.' Couldn't agree more, @samanthaellis.bsky.social. Loved this honest & inspiring essay: tinyurl.com/y889he4c

Nice to read this review by Sophia Rose of the forthcoming @aurorametro.bsky.social anthology Encounters with Jane Austen. My Secret Sisterhood coauthor, Emma Claire Sweeney, & I were pleased to be contributors - & to see our essay given a particular mention here. www.thequillink.com/post/guest-r...

I wrote the introduction for the 1st issue of Bluebell literary mag (submissions for the 2nd issue are open now). This essay by Eugenia Webster is one of the pieces that has really stayed with me. I look forward to issue 2: open.substack.com/pub/bluebell...

Always happy to share news about the fantastic Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize! Deadline: 7 Jan, 2026. @lucycavcoll.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/lcfictio...

I thought this essay by @ypathak.bsky.social on motherhood, food & love was wonderful. And I personally related to this bit: 'every time I put a spoonful of food into one of my babies’ mouths, my mouth opened unconsciously, as though I was taking a ghost-bite for every bite they ate'.

'But Winnie decided that "no woman (it is not my business to consider a man’s life) has any excuse for living a life that is not worth living".' A sad & ultimately inspiring essay by @akennedysmith.bsky.social on 19th-century women's education, female solidarity & the importance of good teachers.

'For most of my students, the benchmark of whether they fall in love with a work of literature is if they can ‘relate’ to it ... I often suggest that they should go to fiction for the opposite reasons: that it opens up new fields of experience, new worlds, new cultures.' Via @judecook.bsky.social.

'It must have appeared to the young Virginia Stephen as if they were worlds apart; while she was stuck at home with her father and her tedious domestic duties, ‘Miss Harrison’ was a brilliant Cambridge scholar who was already famous for her lectures.' Interesting essay by @akennedysmith.bsky.social.

Wonderful essay by Susie Boyt on Barbara Pym's beautiful, yet quietly devastating, late-career novel The Sweet Dove Died, which Boyt argues may have remained unpublished for so long 'not because it was too quaint but because it was too uncomfortable'. It's a real favourite of mine.

‘For years, his biography on press releases was just four words long: “Eagle scout, Missoula, Montana.” David Lynch wasn’t just American, but freakishly American, and like any good scout was both pathologically self-assured and incurably naive.’ Ruby Hamilton on Lynch: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

'The Victorians had turned death into something of a pageant...The Great War, however, turned death into something sudden, cruel and unknowable.' Having written about Victorian Spiritualism in my last book, Out of the Shadows, I found this idea, & @alicevernon10.bsky.social's essay, so interesting.

Morning reading. I love the way that this essay by @judecook.bsky.social captures the essence of a place, & intertwines the author's personal memories with his literary work. It also made me miss Paris. 'Paris in the Blood': open.substack.com/pub/judecook...

'Can you sum up your mixed experience in one word? "Home. Both places are home."' So much chimed with me in this interview with Emily Itami, author of Kakigori Summer: mixedmessages.substack.com/p/emily-itam...

Entries are open for The Book Edit Writers' Prize 2025 judged by @janiceokoh.bsky.social (deadline 13 October). More details here: www.thebookedit.co.uk/writers-prize

'As a teenager who once ached for stories of young people like me, my oft-stung adult heart fills to think that we can now share Tsujimura’s tales with the people we’ve grown up with, grown up around, and grown apart from.' Wonderful LitHub essay by @yukitejima.bsky.social tinyurl.com/mwv7f6dm

Back at my desk today after a summer break & catching up with reading. And what a joyful & inspiring post to get me back into the swing of things: 'Libraries to fall in love with' by @akennedysmith.bsky.social. open.substack.com/pub/akennedy...

From @oliviacampbell.bsky.social's always interesting Substack - an essay focusing on inventor Leona W. Chalmers and a history of period protection products (a real window into past women's lives) open.substack.com/pub/oliviaca...

Writers! Note that AI translation (under the guise of "global access") is being seen/used as the weak point to get AI into publishing (possible bc Eng lang publishing is weak on translation). Stand with translators & for more human translation, fairly paid!

Great review of Nancy Wu’s narration of Vanishing World, clearly pointing out the ways in which she brings her humanity and skill to the job. A timely reminder why we shouldn’t let AI replace human narrators!

Thanks @akennedysmith.bsky.social! It was an honour to see my book Out of the Shadows featured in your excellent Substack newsletter. It's great to see Emma Hardinge Britten - famed orator & spirit medium - getting more of the interest she deserves.

Love and good London novel, and there are some great recommendations in this interesting piece by @jacquiwine.bsky.social.

Jane Harrison was also a notable Town figure in #Cambridge - she was in the first cohort of new women magistrates to serve the Borough (with Florence Ada Keynes, Clara Rackham, & Leah Manning IIRC) in 1920 following a change in the law removing the ban on women magistrates.

What a fantastic portrait of the amazing Jane Ellen Harrison. I have written about her early career, when she collaborated with Oscar Wilde among others. oscarwildesociety.co.uk/publications...

I wrote the preface for the first issue of new literary mag Bluebell - out now - & was delighted to discover so many interesting new voices in its pages. I look forward to many future issues. www.bluebellmag.com/bluebell-iss...

Lots of great cultural recommendations, plus an interesting profile of classical scholar Jane Ellen Harrison, in @akennedysmith.bsky.social's latest Substack: Cambridge Notebook #16 open.substack.com/pub/akennedy...

'Here’s what I wish I knew all those years ago. It can be better to take decades to get published.' Such a heartening piece on learning from experience & writing what pleases you by @jessicabergergross.bsky.social, author of fiction debut Hazel Says No. @literaryhub.bsky.social. tinyurl.com/snrwtbf7

Completely fascinating - & moving - piece by Yukiko Duke on a mother-daughter book translating relationship, & the joys & challenges of transforming Japanese prose into another language. Essay translated by @iangiles.bsky.social. Thanks @jolloyds.bsky.social for sharing this.

On Bloomsday, I enjoyed reading this round-up of One-Day Novels by Henry Eliot. open.substack.com/pub/henryeli...

'Her landladies were deeply suspicious of Sayers’s wish to hold literary salons for Somerville students ... One landlady told her that she would rather have a badly behaved male undergraduate as a lodger than "a permanent woman". Catching up on reading. Enjoyed this by @akennedysmith.bsky.social.

'I never expected to win with a little story about a woman going through the menopause and joining the Townswomen’s Guild!' I really enjoyed this interview with Clair Humphries -- this year's winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. I look forward to reading more of her work.

'9 Books for Fans of the TV Series Miss Austen' by @ceilidhann.bsky.social. Lovely to see Rachel Cohen's The Austen Years here - as well as my book A Secret Sisterhood (cowritten with Emma Claire Sweeney), which explores the friendships of 4 great female authors, inc Austen: tinyurl.com/5bkkxwv3

I've been inspired by this @openbookon.bsky.social piece on writing seasonally by @samanthakgarner.bsky.social. I plan to get out into the city to write today.

'Compared to Hitchin, with its toytown streets and manicured lawns, Soho felt like real life. London was jammed with restaurants and cinemas and hustling nutters on the make. It was grown-up, scary and serious.' @judecook.bsky.social's essay recalls the imaginative world of a teenage film enthusiast

So looking forward to seeing this adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills, directed by Kei Ishikawa, who says 'In a few years' time, we might not be able to get to hear [the stories of those who experienced the Second World War], and that weighed heavily on me.' tinyurl.com/4e4mm329

Many congratulations to @sarahemsley.bsky.social, whose well-researched & atmospheric novel, The Austens, comes out this autumn! I was lucky enough to read an advance copy & can't wait to see it fully out in the world.

Great to be at @lucycavcoll.bsky.social last night for the fifteenth anniversary of the annual Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Congratulations to this year's winner, Clair Humphries, plus all the long and shortlistees! Looking forward to reading your books. open.substack.com/pub/lcfictio...

Congratulations to all the writers shortlisted (and longlisted) for this year's Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize! open.substack.com/pub/lcfictio...

'[The books] weren’t all true, but there were things in them that were. They were true and yet they were not specifically true.' I never tire of reading these past Art of Fiction interviews by @parisreview.bsky.social. This one by the late Jane Gardam is typically compelling.

In a rare post on SomethingRhymed.com (which profiles female literary friendship), my Secret Sisterhood coauthor Emma Claire Sweeney shares news about a writing retreat she's running in Paris this May with @ruppin.bsky.social. A few places still available! tinyurl.com/mw2a48vp

'A few of [these languages] are under threat, their continued existence in question, because of creeping linguistic homogeneity, moving like a silencing killer across our landscapes, rendering words unspoken and forgotten.' Very interesting essay on endangered languages by @drlornagibb.bsky.social:

“You’re working at the edge of risk, if you’re lucky. The writing can so easily go dead—you want to feel some excitement when you’re in the room, some throbbing in the gristle. You want to hit the wave.” We’ve unlocked our interview with Hanif Kureishi. buff.ly/IqKhBzy