Source = ‘An Almost Obsessive Relation to Writing Instruments’, in this collection of interviews (translated by Linda Coverdale):

Arpan K Banerjee reviews Oliver Basciano’s Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity, and the Modern World, exploring the modern history of leprosy through archives, literature, and personal narratives. thepolyphony.org/2025/11/25/b...

RIP Walt Whitman you would have loved a scandal involving sexually explicit poetry and a grass metaphor

@bodleian.ox.ac.uk 24 hours to go to my Photo Oxford talk at the Weston Library or online, exploring the life of Constance Talbot. Join me to hear about her witnessing the birth of #photography and her lifelong love of art. Wednesday 1-2pm Weston Library, Oxford: photooxford.org/events/const...

RIP to David Bellos whose book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything massively contributed to me wanting to become a literary translator. When I was writing my own book about translation, I kept in mind how funny and accessible his book was.

*FRANKENSTEIN SPOILERS * As someone who teaches frankenstein every year, I had SO many thoughts about this film. I am a fan of GTD’s movies. Loved the nested doll structure and how freaky Elizabeth was. Loved the costumes, acting, and music Was very ? about the time period shift by 50 years+

'Faith, though often unfashionable in the arts, emerges in Aboulela’s work not as an oppressor, but as a source of solace – a well of deep knowing.' In #PENTransmissions, Sabrina Mahfouz’s encomium for #PENPinterPrize 2025 winner Leila Aboulela. pentransmissions.com/2025/10/24/b...

Another scholar deported. Such a proud and strong civilisation. thewire.in/rights/globa...

Something for all you Big Rebels to get behind! A callout to UK indie booksellers to amplify Day of the Imprisoned Writer / 15th November.

At English PEN’s #PENPinterPrize event on Friday, Leila Aboulela, winner of the 2025 PEN Pinter Prize, announced writer, journalist and human rights activist Stella Gaitano as this year’s Writer of Courage. Congratulations to both writers! www.englishpen.org/posts/campai...

‘Five musicians from the Vienna Philharmonic are thought to have taken their instruments to the camps or ghettos, where they played music before they were liquidated. Then there was silence.’ Thomas Laqueuer on Kate Kennedy’s ‘Cello: A Journey through Silence to Sound’ www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

excellent essay: The Origin of the Research University open.substack.com/pub/asterisk...

How much does an unwell octopus cost? Sick squid.

As today is World Octopus Day I’ll again mention that a Spanish equivalent to “like a fish out of water” is como un pulpo en un garaje. It means “like an octopus in a garage.”

Through the mail slot today. Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Magadh by Shrikant Verma, translated from the Hindi by Rahul Soni. Both from @andotherstories.bsky.social.

"Would this mean we are listening / to the same song / everywhere / all the time?" Lisa Asagi submerges into dark and resonant waters with her poems and whale sculptures in this month's poetry feature. Explore the depths on our website! buff.ly/uPRTr1X

RIP Jane Goodall, you were cool as hell for lots of things, but especially for liking this

Registration is now open for the inaugural (hybrid) event of the Decolonising Plant Knowledge: Voices from Subverted Plant Worlds research network @crasshlive.bsky.social (Oct. 15) with talks by Banu Subramaniam and Stephen Hugh-Jones www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/47794/

THE REMEMBERED SOLDIER on longlist for National Book Award in Translated Literature! A monumental novel of European history and pleasures + pains of profound love in Anjet Daanje's stunning prose + David McKay's crystalline [email protected] newvesselpress.com/books/the-re...

Today @nulybranch.bsky.social introduce a new series in "Archival Outliers, Invented Ephemerals in Constructing Environmental Histories." niche-canada.org/2025/09/26/a... #envhist #archives

"“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said @adiod.bsky.social , a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. “These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"Beautiful illustrations bring the animals to life" in NIGHT NIGHT, CHRISTMAS our new #TouchAndFeel storybook www.slj.com/review/night...

Oh this is BAD. The new TOC from academia dot edu. You grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness…

Academia.edu is changing its Terms and Conditions, and they're so outrageous (AI training; signing over ownership to them etc) I closed my account today. A thread with some practical tips if you want to delete your account (5 steps):

Would love to a publish #envhist response to this research on @nichecanada.bsky.social. DM me if interested. "In the research published in the journal Earth, Richardson also identified the disappearance of natural words from books between 1800 and 2020, which peaked at a 60.6% decline in 1990."

Really happy to have a new paper forthcoming at PPR! Ever wondered if there’s any point in feeling regret? In this paper, I argue that regret is valuable because it helps us overcome temptation. Check it out: philpapers.org/rec/GOHRLA

August is Women in Translation Month! To celebrate we asked critics, scholars, and translators: what are some of your favorite works written and/or translated by women? Here are some of their recommendations. We hope you would check out a few of these and celebrate women in translation!

This is a pig with syncephaly, a condition where there is one head but two bodies - and four ears, though here the extra ears have fused together, and can’t be seen from this angle. It was prepared for the collection of anatomist and obstetrician William Hunter in the nineteenth century.

"It is crucial to note (...) that such utopic imaginings of female friendships may occur when one is not only cognisant of differences but also ready to work with those differences." Vrinda Chopra and Sonakshi Srivastava #139 @vrindac.bsky.social @sonakshis11.bsky.social

Check out our open-access edited volume on the history of science translation: tinyurl.com/ym4ahm6b

Got the brilliant opportunity to read and review Lomasko's latest for Asymptote. www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2025/08... @nplusonemag.com

excited to do this with the best of my colleagues and friends! join us, virtually, to discuss approaches to academic writing, and what writing centres may and can do! @rgsibg.bsky.social @vrindac.bsky.social

“All of a sudden the silence was broken by a low wail, answered by another from the other side of the pool, as the mother rose up from her den and came towards them, rage flashing from her horrible yellow eyes…” —“The Bunyip”, a story from THE BROWN FAIRY BOOK by Andrew Lang (1904) #BookWormSat

saw a blue salmon swimming upstream to spawn today

On WWB, Robert Allen Papinchak reviews @‌juanjosemillas.bsky.social's ONLY SMOKE (tr. Daniel Hahn and Thomas Bunstead), which turns its looking glass on the fairy tale form. Read the review: buff.ly/dOt3s0f

‘Biological organisms, including humans, function as phosphorus sinks: we gather it into our bodies, transform it into something more useful and move it across the landscape, releasing it back into the broader ecosystem.’ @jjvincent.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Podcast for the eco-minded (and even the eco-curious)

We Computers: A Ghazal Novel is a multilayered exploration of authorship and digital intelligence. Check out this interview Hamid Ismailov and translator Shelley Fairweather-Vega.

Coming next month! THE STREET WHERE SANTA LIVES "centers community in this likable story about a child’s friendship with a new neighbor" www.publishersweekly.com/9781664300750

One month left to submit to TURKOSLAVIA (Fall 2025)! We welcome prose and poetry translated from Turkic and Slavic languages (loosely defined) into English. Please send doc or docx files—with source text—to [email protected]. Prose should not exceed 5,000 words. For poems, please send up to 5. 💙

Enjoyed this www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/rev...

Rouge National Urban Park (RNUP) is an anomaly among Canada’s green spaces. Connected to public transit, Rouge National Urban Park is accessible to Canadians who may not otherwise reach national parks. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...

From David Bayles & Ted Orland's book, Art & Fear

APPLY: Lithuanian is one of the languages of the wonderful Emerging Translator Mentorship @writerscentre.bsky.social this year, and I’m v happy to return as a mentor. Please share this opportunity with people interested in translation, literature and languages ✍️📚🇱🇹 Deadline: 31 Aug. Link below!

There is no real “throwing” of the voice, alas; the ear’s deficits are made up for by the eye, which focuses on the puppet’s moving jaw, forming the suggestion that whatever’s being said by you is said by your companion.

Dan Hutto's Critical Notice of Mind as Metaphor (OUP, 2023) is now out in Analysis. Many thanks to Dan for his constructive and thought-provoking comments! Lots for me to mull over... You can read it here: doi.org/10.1093/anal... @oxfordacademic.bsky.social #philsky #philmind #cogsci

Wow, I've never seen this. Very cool, thank you so much for sharing it! And I'm very interesting in the writer, Daniel Boukman, who wrote the play it was based on. I yelled when I saw that Boukman also wrote the screenplay for Isaac Julien's BRILLIANT experimental documentary on Franz Fanon