*GRABBY HANDS* Her debut, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain, was SO good, and now this? A novel about Ruskin? YES PLEASE.

I heard just now that Clutag Press will shortly come to a close, and with it Archipelago an end. Understandable as its presiding genius, Andrew McNeillie, will be eighty. But I never had such friends as I met through it, and never such a sense of home, and nowhere else such encouragement. Ach.

UK textie artist Rachel Wright who creates textile art using machine embroidery on calico with fabrics and Madeira rayons #WomensArt

My #histfic writing workshop is tomorrow and we'll be discussing extracts from this pile of joy! Still places if anyone wants to join last-minute. We're on Zoom tomorrow (Sat) 10.00-16.00, £150. If the fee is a barrier, please drop me a line! #CreativeWriting #HistoricalFiction #WritingWorkshop

The most honest artistic statement would read “I make stuff and figure it out later.” -- Airea D. Matthews

If you enjoy notebook history, may I suggest you take a look at my book, which has a lot more, and which people seem to like? 15/15 ends uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Good people of London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Sheffield - the great @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social is coming your way next week, reading from her latest book FEW AND FAR BETWEEN. Jan is a warm, funny and wonderful writer and her events are just brilliant! 📚🎤😍

Just finished this beauty from @vickymackenzie.bsky.social For fans of character driven, thought provoking, eloquently written historical fiction. Coming soon from @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social

Look, @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social thinks you should do my #histfic workshop this Saturday! 10.00-16.00 (£150) on Zoom: we'll be digging down into how to blend research into fiction, avoiding the #histfic bogeyman (anachronisms!) and creating believable characters with historical worldviews. ✒️📚

I’ve just read Vicky’s brilliant new about to be published historical fiction and she absolutely knows her chops. If you’re writing HF would absolutely recommend grabbing a place on this course quick.

Final call for my workshop on Writing Historical Fiction - 10.00-16.00 this Sat (£150) on Zoom. Why write #HistFic and how does it speak to the present day? Is it an insult to #History (bows reverently) to make stuff up? And how do you get characters to speak without sounding Ye Olde? #BookSky

It's possible to understand the world from studying a leaf. You can comprehend the laws of aerodynamics,mathematics,poetry and biology through the complex beauty of such a perfect structure. It's also possible to travel the whole globe and learn nothing. ~ Joy Harjo, The Woman Who Fell from The Sky

Congratulations to my mentee @lawriejohnston.bsky.social who has just published his latest historical novel! A RAVEN RISING brings C14th Scotland to life in a tale of fierce rivalry, ambition and treachery! troubador.co.uk/bookshop/his...

Final call for my workshop on Writing Historical Fiction - 10.00-16.00 this Sat (£150) on Zoom. Why write #HistFic and how does it speak to the present day? Is it an insult to #History (bows reverently) to make stuff up? And how do you get characters to speak without sounding Ye Olde? #BookSky

My Substack newsletter for May is now live, featuring author anxiety, Gertrude Stein and a final call-out for my Writing Historical Fiction workshop on Sat 16th May! ✒️💚 open.substack.com/pub/victoria...

My Substack newsletter for May is now live, featuring author anxiety, Gertrude Stein and a final call-out for my Writing Historical Fiction workshop on Sat 16th May! ✒️💚 open.substack.com/pub/victoria...

One of my favourite trees. And a close-up. 💚 #StAndrews

We should teach history because it's interesting. That's it. That's my hot take.

Annie Dillard was #BOTD in 1945. A brilliant essayist & sage-like on the craft of writing. Highly recommend her book The Writing Life, and her interviews are full of solid advice. "Write as if you were dying... What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon?" Also, don't save things.

Massive congratulations to Danielle McLaughlin who is the very best of us, on the launch of another brilliant book tonight @booksupstairs.bsky.social If you haven’t got a copy of #Rituals yet pick one up quick - everyone needs a bit of Joan in their life @stingingfly.bsky.social

Anyone else want to do a creative writing workshop with me, focusing on writing scintillating historical fiction? #CreativeWriting #HistFic #BookSky #WritingWorkshop

Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship @socmedfem.bsky.social is funding PhD students! More details here: smfsweb.org/foremothersfellowship.

Anyone else want to do a creative writing workshop with me, focusing on writing scintillating historical fiction? #CreativeWriting #HistFic #BookSky #WritingWorkshop

It may be St George's Day and Shakespeare's birth/deathday, but it's also the publication day for my second novel, Night Fire! Last push for the book launch this evening at Blackwells Edinburgh, 7-8pm: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/richard-st...

From the archive for Margaret Kennedy, #BornOnThisDay in 1896, thoughts on THE FEAST, a wonderfully escapist treat. Part mortality tale, part mystery, part social comedy, this immersive novel is brilliantly constructed. An ideal holiday read! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2021/11/07/t...

Happy book post today! A proof of Rose Tremain's next novel, THE HOUSEKEEPER: a bold imagining how Daphne Du Maurier came to write REBECCA! Forthcoming from Chatto & Windus in September #DaphneDuMaurier

Happy book post today! A proof of Rose Tremain's next novel, THE HOUSEKEEPER: a bold imagining how Daphne Du Maurier came to write REBECCA! Forthcoming from Chatto & Windus in September #DaphneDuMaurier

My workshop on Writing Historical Fiction is approaching! 10.00-16.00 Sat 16th May (on Zoom), £150. We'll be looking at how to seamlessly incorporate research into your story, creating convincing characters and dialogue, and how to be savvy about anachronism. Spaces still available! #CreativeWriting

Occasional reminder that my book ‘Darker With the Lights On’ is available from @transitbooks.bsky.social. My stories have been praised by Helen Garner, Claire-Louise Bennett, Max Porter, Elizabeth McCracken, Kevin Barry, Wendy Erskine & Eimear McBride, among others. www.transitbooks.org/books/darker

My workshop on Writing Historical Fiction is approaching! 10.00-16.00 Sat 16th May (on Zoom), £150. We'll be looking at how to seamlessly incorporate research into your story, creating convincing characters and dialogue, and how to be savvy about anachronism. Spaces still available! #CreativeWriting

"It’s crucial to remember that your attention is one of the most precious capacities you possess.”" ~ Michael Taft

Summer Exhibition at Manchester Poetry Library opens today - curated by Jean Sprackland. www.mmu.ac.uk/poetry-libra...

Just finished Francesca Wade's biography of Gertrude Stein. Everything a biography should be - committed to Stein's work as well as her life; absolutely fascinating, but still leaves Stein her mystery and provocations... Feel the need for some more female modernists in my life.

Like this delicious recipe:

Bluebells in the village woods this evening.

Always a delight to get a bundle of New Naturalists in. The superb jackets often overshadow how serious the series was as genuine natural history written by top ranking experts

The great SoCal bookman @erikpedersen.bsky.social revisits his story about Henri Coulette, now that the poet’s work is back in print—and Alexander Voloshin makes a cameo, too. www.ocregister.com/2026/04/17/h...

Proof copies of Each Leaf, Each Curve of Stem, my second novel, have arrived! I call it my second novel, but in my heart it's my first - thirteen years in the writing, baby. Yep, feeling quite emotional! 🌱💚✒️

There is no stability in this world. Who is to say what meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word? Virginia Woolf

Listen up. I know it's been a while, but A Personal Anthology will anthologise tomorrow, like on a normal Friday. Tomorrow's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is Kimmo Rosenthal. Hitting inboxes 2pm. Sign up here to get it: apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

Rehabilitation of the Dandelion! No other plant in the Netherlands attracts as many bee species: 107. In early spring, when nothing else is blooming, it is simply there. Meadow bird chicks that have just hatched depend on the insects that are drawn to dandelions. No dandelion, no insect, no chick.

A curious talent. One has to respect him. But how one would like to give him a kick. [On Henry James, BOTD in 1843.]

Apparently a nun went insane because she inadvertently ate a demon along with her lettuce. Such stories are often taken to demonstrate the ignorant and superstition of the Middle Ages, but unfairly so according to Katherine Harvey, as most cases of insanity were blamed on natural causes

‘..after..the party I see what’s wrong. It’s because I don’t belong anywhere else. I don’t know the rules of life and if I kept a phrase-book for 20 yrs I would not know the right answers. It’s a thing I shall never learn. I am odd, incorrect, illegitimate..’ jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/04/12/t...

Four new titles in @versobooks.bsky.social Essential John Berger series - www.versobooks.com/en-gb/collec...

"Frankly, I thought I knew how to write, but it turned out I didn’t, and I don’t. I don’t. I get to learn it over and over and over." ~ Jo Ann Beard

One of the things I love about teaching creative writing is creating a big pile of reading for myself as I start to prepare. I'm teaching a one-day online workshop on Writing Historical Fiction on Sat 16th May. From this pile I've only read THE DAFFODIL DAYS - which was a gem. What next? #HistFic