Thank you Kim! You saw it first!

Thank you @sudhab.bsky.social and @andrewporter01.bsky.social for your Wigleaf top 50 longlist. So much reading, so much joy! For anyone whose peak overwhelm happens invisibly pre-9am, this one's for you: pitheadchapel.com/have-you-see... @kimmagowan.bsky.social ♥️

I hear a lot about writers going over their intended wordcount but anyone out there ever carve out too much? I've been whittling separate chapters and oops! It's getting small.

Entries are open for the @welkinpress.bsky.social genre prize. Micro-fiction experiments boost my stamina for longer projects. Highly recommended for anyone in the middle of a novel draft!

www.whaleroadreview.com/rinkema/ Oh Emily, the socks! @emilyrinkema.bsky.social

Very pleased to announce that all the coaltits nesting above my front door have fledged. Two nearly didn’t make it when their nestbox fell down at the weekend, but since then, their parents have been wildly busy with beaks full of caterpillars and the last one flew this morning. Phew.

Oh no! Did you forget to register?? 👀 Writing to Change the World with Yun Wei is a virtual cross-genre workshop exploring how writing can awaken, unsettle, and inspire change — for writers of all levels. 🗓 May 19 🕖 19:00–20:30 (CET) 📍 Online #WritingWorkshop #CreativeWriting #Poetry #Writers

Writing me: All the adjectives! Yes! Not just a torch, but a flaming, burning, blazing torch! Let's not get confused here! Editing me: Please go directly to jail.

FlashFlood opens for submissions on 19 April till 25 April. Flashes up to 300 words. Stories will be published on NFFD. Pre 2023 previously published considered. Reserved slots for unpublished writers. For more details see our submission guidelines: flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/p/submission...

So much and so much. @andreabishop.bsky.social @jmwwjournal.bsky.social

We're open for MULTIGENRE FULL-LENGTH MANUSCRIPTS!!! April 1 - June 1, send your multigenre books to our SUPER EXCITED brand new multigenre reading team, headed by our SUPER EXCITED multigenre editor, @erinvachon.bsky.social! Link for full details + to submit: splitlippress.submittable.com/submit

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

Oh god this one.

Two years ago. Belfast. Starlings.

Do yourself a favor and take the 3 minutes to read this beautiful story: “Heart” by @djpoissant.bsky.social in @cincinnatireview.bsky.social 🔥❤️ So good! www.cincinnatireview.com/micros/heart/

Oh I am deep in a hole of outrage but this little story by Petra Marteleur brought me out of it for one excellent minute: www.mattkendrick.co.uk/welkin-stori...

Appropriately includes Caren Beilin's REVENGE OF THE SCAPEGOAT! "The funniest parts of this funny American book are the dialogues between Iris’s aching feet, whom she has named Bouvard and Pécuchet (after two characters in an unfinished Flaubert novel)." electricliterature.com/7-novels-abo...

Exciting new books from Dorothy

If we keep praising AI for its mistakes and nonsense now, maybe it'll grow up to be a generally contented entity whose middle-aged pathology is limited to grieving the discontinuation of its favourite deodorant.

Thinking of starting a list of new year savings, but need to set up the basics: if I consider getting my hair cut 4 times today, do I count the thought or the repetition? Or do I only clock it once my hair hits the kitchen bin? Scrubbing dried pizza off the scissors just in case...

Thank you @dseuss.bsky.social - just thrilled to see my story 'Have You Seen Me' was chosen for the 2026 @bestmicrofiction.bsky.social anthology. Just look at the company it's in! And of course huge thanks to @pitheadchapel.bsky.social's @kimmagowan.bsky.social for publishing and nominating. 🎉

I am very excited about everything I am going to print, paint, read and make when days of the week exist again. For now, it’s enough to remember to drink water occasionally and remember my name.

This is a wonderful book, inside and out.

“Guzmán’s daughter was still in the NICU, unable to eat or breathe independently. The doctors had planned a meeting to review the baby’s prognosis and care plans… As Guzmán went to buckle her seatbelt, she looked out the window and noticed they were surrounded.”

"Mary suffered more than her child, and for longer. She suffered the horror of her child's suffering until her dying day." Just Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor breaking me one line at a time.

A story Stoppard told several times, in several places:

These posters for the South Korean stage production of Macbeth are the greatest thing ever? #art

'Challenge is part of our lives, make it part of our reading lives too' @cdrose.bsky.social on winning the Goldsmiths Prize

Thank you so much to everyone in Ireland who borrowed #ChristOnABike from their library. Lovely to get a PLR statement & enough to buy a wee treat. Love #readers Love #libraries ❤️📚❤️ #books #booksky

So happy to be nominated with this happy bunch. Thanks Pithead Chapel!

It's an honor to make top 10 in flash fiction and in the top 100 overall! Thank you for your work, Brecht, and thank you to our amazing writers and readers who make this possible.

Loved this panel at @genevawriters.bsky.social this weekend. Transparency about despair, confusion and knock-backs adding power to their stories of success.

Slow readers may not compile huge end-of-year booklists, but they’re the novelist’s dream: lingering long, repeat-reading paragraphs, befriending characters, missing nothing.

Gearing up to start a new novel revision with new working title, new font, new feel. All I need now is to be marooned on a planet with 30 hour days. 20 to write, 10 to sleep. The dream.

Music By Men.

Florence's new album.

Exciting news for students writers! In partnership with The Geneva Writers Group @genevawriters.bsky.social , we are thrilled to sponsor four Emerging Voices Scholarships for the 2025 Geneva Writers Conference November 14–16. Applications close Oct. 26. degrootfoundation.org/geneva-write...

The otherppl podcast celebrates its 1000th episode today. 1000 author conversations there for the listening. Congrats and thank you @bradlisti.bsky.social for this huge archive. Dorthe Nors, Kate Zambreno, Tony Tulathimutte, Anne Enright… too many favourites. 🌟

Just under 20 days to get your micros (-250 words) in! Fiction, CNF, hybrid, published, unpublished, translations. We're so easy. What about that killer micro you published 20 years ago? It's eligible. We're searching for the best. Deadline Nov 15th. www.smokelong.com/the-smokelon...

Oh Emily I feel so seen! Yikes. “I just want her to be happy,” I say. “I just want her to write poetry,” I say.

Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest:

Good morning. What a week. I love that a quiet book is making such a big splash. A book corporate publishing wouldn't know what to do with is travelling the world. Leonard and Hungry Paul by @ronanhession.bsky.social Indy publishing. www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

‘Entrances to the underworld were usually located on the coast, while the highest and lowest of men were buried there, from local heroes to dead fisherfolk.’ @josephinequinn.bsky.social on the ancient coast: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

New @fallowmedia.bsky.social with a Marguerite Duras film script & companion essays by Daniel Fraser & myself, Lisa Robertson on Adnan, Maija Makela on Notley, Owen Hatherley, Stephen Sexton, Lalla Romano, JC Vaughan, Maria Sledmere, Devki Panchmatia & Russell Persson fallowmedia.com/shop/fallow-02

Announcing a special micro category for the Baltimore Review fall issue: 400 words max, one or two micros in one sub, micro submission period (9/1 – 9/14) and response by 9/30. Payment for accepted work at our usual rate. Because we love the short and surprising. baltimorereview.org

Oh my, THIS. Beauty on the page and ascending above my day. Thank you @jmgatford.bsky.social

Dead Ink Books launches Outsider Classics republishing forgotten masterpieces and once-censored provocations to open the debate about the canon - who gets to create it, who gets excluded from it – and show that it is a malleable and changeable thing. @deadinkbooks.bsky.social Brilliant.