My classroom policy on AI is: this is the only AI we will be using in the classroom.

This photo of Alaa Abdel Fattah's smile by Mohamed El Raai is the most beautiful thing you could wake up to.

Sally Rooney, Deborah Levy, Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux and Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen are among 20 authors urging French president Emmanuel Macron to resume a “lifeline” programme for evacuating Palestinian writers, scholars and artists from Gaza.

Mariam Dagga, a journalist killed yesterday by the IDF left behind two sets of instructions: that her colleagues not cry at her funeral, and asked her 11-year-old son to make her proud. Murdering journalists. Bombing hospitals. Causing a manmade famine. Slaughtering children. This horror has to end.

I concur / endorse / second / echo this suggestion.

Screenwriter of 'Top Boy' and 'Mobland', Ronan Bennett, on the recent Palestine Action ban: "Mr Starmer, Ms Cooper, go fuck yourselves and fuck your legislation too" www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/fre...

Francesca Albanese will be remembered as one of the bravest women of the era, standing against genocide despite the daunting forces arrayed against her. Sanctioning her, rather than the war criminals who are starving and murdering Palestinians is another moment of shame for the US trib.al/Oe77sph

I think this book is a strange and shimmering joy

Book workers / creatives - share & sign. the proscribing of Palestine Action sets an incredibly dangerous precedent docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Almost every paragraph of this article describes another atrocity or war crime, with first-hand testimony from Israeli soldiers. Beyond obscene, and the callous indifference of the UK political and media establishment equally so. archive.ph/3LjoW

Everyone: oh no I can't believe you're learning Dutch it's such a famously difficult language why would you Dutch people:

Hello my fellow Nottingham translation fans 👀 ⬇️

brb, off to buy a monkey sanctuary and a load of typewriters

Would you like to see your name on this page? Simply write us a letter at The Letters Page School of English The University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD and you will receive a personalised, hand-folded aerogramme in return! More details at link in bio. 🔗

This is from Pamenar Online Magazine, but not in the way we ever wanted to share. Parnia Abbasi (2002–2025), a young Iranian poet, was killed with her family in a brutal Israeli strike on Tehran. We honour her voice. Do not stay silent. www.pamenarpress.com/post/parnia-...

Evidence once again that quilters absolutely know what's what.

I finally did a new Class Notes, and it's not even really a Notes at all but just a suggestion that you come to the online launch for Éireann Lorsung's 'Pattern-book' this evening. I think you should come to the online launch this evening, 7pm, by the way. open.substack.com/pub/classnot...

People who are still shouting that Israel is not committing genocide must be clapping their hands over their ears every time an Israeli minister steps onto a podium because

This will be great and you should join us Or this will be great and you could join us It would be great, I think, if you would join us Éireann's book is great! Why don't you join us? Pattern-book is great so come and join us Patterns as poem-making and poems as joiners - 28th May. Great. Do join us.

What's the word for when you go round for ages telling people that a new book is going to be great and then it shows up as an Observer Book of the Month? The opposite of schadenfreude, I guess. observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Think of the least time it's ever taken you to say yes to an invitation, and know that I said yes to this invitation in half that time. My venn diagram with "cycling" and "writing" is a perfect circle, even Mr Venn would be like, what, this isn't what I meant

Some guy says "these are poems conducted at ground level, at walking pace, attentive to the changing of the light, of the seasons, of the certainties we thought we were growing up with" and although I'm pretty sure there's a comma splice in there I think it's all true. This book is great.

TFW it's open mic night down at the local but you didn't bring the casio with you

The Platform Conference for Writers of Colour is back on Sat 5th April. Join us for this day-long event, which aims to support and encourage with advice and inspiration. Check out the programme and book your ticket: middlewaymentoring.co.uk/platform-con...

Targeting an individual for assassination at a building known to be his romantic partner’s residence by collapsing the whole structure seems to me to fall squarely within the Geneva Convention’s prohibition on targeting civilian objects, and probably other defined war crimes as well

Anyone who actually thinks there are any public services left to cut has surely not used public services for a very long time. The policy should be: Get more taxes, make things better, hurry up. It's really not complicated.

70 year wait is over for Newcastle fans. What a result. If only jamal khashoggi was alive to see it.

Nottingham is about as far as you can get from the sea in the UK, which makes it the perfect place to talk to Xiaolu Guo about whaling, 19th century girls who disguise themselves as cabin boys, Taoism, and her new Moby Dick book, 'Call Me Ishmaelle.' Come and join us, ye landlubbers!

Staat er honig nog steeds voor eten? En zal er vis bij de visdeurbel zijn?

Not all resignation letter are worth the time but this one absolutely is. Astute & thoughtful. It lays out with clarity the big decision the country faces: how do we pay for the newly insecure world: by cutting investment and our social safety net, or through fairer taxes and smarter borrower rules.

The New School of the Anthropocene is a radical, trans-disciplinary, low-fee experiment in higher ed. I'm proud to teach there & to think together with students from Gaza, Ukraine & beyond. Applications open for 25-26: virtual/in-person More on our ethos/apply here: nsota.org/home @nsota.bsky.social

🖊️📚🧠 Our Arts Council England project WRITE IN THE HEAD is featured by the BBC in this excellent and deeply human article interviewing stroke survivors about our online creative writing programme for people with acquired brain injury. See: www.bbc.com/news/article...

Moby Dick, but with a Kentish lass who disguises herself as a cabin boy and runs away to sea, ending up in New York where she joins a whaling ship led by Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature? Also with Taoist monks? YES PLEASE XIAOLU! fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/events/an-ev...

Going to stick my neck out here and agree that first you defend the jobs, and then later you argue the case for better pay. But first you defend the jobs.

We are alarmed and shocked by the arrest and detainment of our author and colleague Mahmoud Muna, along with his nephew Ahmad Muna, owners and booksellers of Jerusalem’s Educational Bookshop. Please share our statement below widely.

With the beatific Stax-inspired "Knowledge," @edwyncollins.bsky.social lets go of his "old self" in favor of who he is today. I spoke with him and his wife/manager Grace Maxwell about aphasia, optimism, Orange Juice, and more for my newsletter.

If we're talking about blurbing books again, can we agree that some people blurb only books they like, regardless of whether they know the author? The assumption that it's all just backscratching is pretty dismissive of the people who try to do this unpaid labour with some integrity, imho.

"When was the exact moment you decided to sell everything and live on an island with twelve rows of beans and a hive of bees?"

I'm completely astounded that the government is just silent on the collapse of the British university system. The effect isn't only on the jobs that are going, but for all those that rely on universities and will be lost over time: caterers, admin, gardeners, etc. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So this mostly turned into an exercise in finding out how many writers I haven't read yet, which was is always good. But thanks for suggestions; for the record, I also suggested stories by Jesse Ball, Lydia Davis, Rebecca Lee, Rachel B Glaser, and Charles Yu.

Email from a student (win!) to say they found this morning's class interesting (unbelievable win!), and they'd like some suggestions for more writers (literally dancing down the corridor win!) who withhold information from the reader. Short of saying "anyone worth reading", who's good to suggest?

You might think this consultation has over fifty detailed technical questions in order to discourage engagement, but surely that's not the case, surely? Anyway: you can submit the form without answering all the questions. Please do.

stunning, from Sunjeev Sahota

Every time you share a "The Conversation" post I want to remind you that they have a multi-million dollar annual budget and pay writers zero dollars, including adjuncts and grad students. We cannot rely on exploited labor to achieve a better public humanities. www.patreon.com/posts/better...

YES I'm going to keep talking about learning Dutch until I get an invitation to a Dutch book festival, what's wrong with this strategy?

In Dutch class this morning I tried to say "little game" and actually said "sex toy," if you're wondering how my day's going.