A special Christmas INVENTORY is FREE via the @backlisted.bsky.social Patreon now. What the Incredible String Band got up to 58 years ago today, and may the pure light within you guide you all the way on. 🙏 Christmas Day 1967/2025: The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. www.patreon.com/backlisted

My 14 year old son Luca took me here after cricket training today. He said there is hope in that sky Mum, I’ve never seen anything like it, the locals said there are half a million starlings here. Keep your families close, hug your children, help those who need us, do a 1000 piece puzzle, enjoy!

Treat yourself today to this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydvU...

Happy Christmas from the trauma grotto! Love x

these treasures delight my crow brain

I’ve just finished reading ‘Wild Twin’ by Jeff Young, published by those wonderful people at @littletollerbooks.bsky.social - a powerful, lyrical and creative masterpiece.

Today's @theguardian.com country diary by @jensoilandpen.bsky.social goes back in time in this Merseyside wood. #countrydiary #naturewriting

Six Time Machines.

Horse head, Gunārs Binde, 1976

Wild Twin is one of the books in Cal Flyn‘s Five Books overview of the memoirs that won major literary prizes in 2025. Plus Helen Garner’s brilliant How To End A Story: Collected Diaries. fivebooks.com/best-books/a...

An image of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool. I lived beside it for so many years when I directed plays on the Unity Theatre stage and taught community film workshops. Looking across the Mersey when I captured this photograph years later made me proud and emotional. A wonderful city.

Annie Leibovitz. Louise Bourgeois. New York City. 1997.

"Comedy is the art of telling truth through the medium of lies. I mean, if you’re into intellectualising it at this point, then that’s where it’s at." Paperback available two weeks today. Kindle available for pre-order now.

Pequod Books (Berlin) came through yesterday with this paperback copy of 2026 Sacred Parasite Author @wildtwin.bsky.social's Ghost Town, so I took a picture of it on my favorite, on their, green couch.

Gift ideas for the Ghost Mountain fan in your life. This monograph on @tomcliment.bsky.social whose beautiful artwork features on the cover. Includes an essay by Cristín Leach – I first discovered Tom's work though Cristín's book Negative Space. www.solomonfineart.ie/publications...

‘The latex pieces are not exactly works of art but things Bourgeois thought and made with; so too the house is another kind of work, something she made in the course of making, which yields information to those willing to rummage around.’ Jo Applin on Louise Bourgeois. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

My review of Joseph Luzzi's The Innocents of Florence is here: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

A timely reminder that my book would make the most marvellous Xmas gift for the exasperated woman/bewildered man in your life. 10% off with the code FAZAKERLEY if bought direct from www.michelehowarth.com. Happy to include sweary dedications if that’s your thing. Gift wrapping an option - just ask.

So beautiful - a life laid out.

The Sacred Memory Bank ready to be packed up and shipped to Kirkby Gallery. The exhibition opens on 19th January and it’s VERY exciting! Come along. x

Don't know anything about this metier, these times, this woman, but by the end of the piece I was just as delighted as if I'd read about Eve Babitz or someone. A kind of life you couldn't even have been on the edge of, but bigger than life-sized. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

The Sacred Memory Bank ready to be packed up and shipped to Kirkby Gallery. The exhibition opens on 19th January and it’s VERY exciting! Come along. x

For those who are interested in panto, I spent a very happy few days reading some old books including 'The Annals of Liverpool Theatre' from 1908 and 'Recollections of Old Liverpool' from the late 19th century about Victorian panto in Liverpool open.substack.com/pub/liverpoo...

The cathedral tonight looking a bit unreal, more like a model than an actual building. Love that navy blue sky.

Liverpool friends, it would be lovely to see you at my book launch. 5th March, at the British Music Experience, in conversation with Jeff Young @wildtwin.bsky.social. Non-Liverpool friends, we are planning events in London and Oxford too - watch this space. www.britishmusicexperience.com/pennykiley

I am choosing to keep this essay permanently unpaywalled. It's about the general idea of people reaching their artistic peak later in life, and the amazing art my parents have been producing in their 60s and 70s (much of which has made its way into my books): www.tom-cox.com/the-magic-ro...

David Berman (Silver Jews, Purple Mountains) reading an untitled poem by Frank Stanford. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV6o...

Memories of standing outside when the film was an A certificate, and asking complete strangers to take you in.

This morning, we published a beautiful piece by David Lloyd about the loss of his mother, and how local radio soundtracked their relationship. It’s deeply moving and an essential read 💛 www.livpost.co.uk/losing-local...

It's an honour to have written a foreword for a new edition of perhaps my favourite novel (or is it a novella?), A Month In The Country by JL Carr. It's published by Quince Tree Press, now run by the Carr family. Do investigate their other wonderful wares. www.quincetreepress.co.uk

Margaret Macdonald, The Three Perfumes, 1912, Glasgow School artist who was believed to have influenced Klimt #womensart

One thing you will never think after reading a great book or listening to a great album or seeing a great piece of art is, “I’m really glad this person remained cautious while they were making this and guarded against being perceived as weird.”

I wrote (again) about this insult to the memory of my favourite cinema for the 14th edition of Science & Magic but it’s also about catching stars in a cinema projection beam and damp overcoats. You can read it here along with lots of brilliant writing: www.violetterecords.com/science-and-...

I wrote (again) about this insult to the memory of my favourite cinema for the 14th edition of Science & Magic but it’s also about catching stars in a cinema projection beam and damp overcoats. You can read it here along with lots of brilliant writing: www.violetterecords.com/science-and-...

Ahead of the publication of my next novel, Drum, here is a Not A Blog piece about comedy. A sort of starter drug for the book to come. www.rob-chapman.com/cenestpasunc...

Look what just arrived!

In every breath you take there is one molecule of air from the last exhale of Cleopatra.

Hervé Guibert. 1980. Suzanne and Louise is a story of devotion and desire. Almost all its images are domestic portraits of the titular sisters, the author’s great-aunts, who live together in a hôtel particulier in Paris’s fifteenth arrondissement.

Ghost Town & Wild Twin, for the wanderers in your life... Wild Twin: ‘This exceptional memoir…’ Adelle Stripe, Tribune ‘A surging heart-song.’ Iain Sinclair Ghost Town: ‘A book of beauty and longing.’ Anthony Quinn, Observer @littletollerbooks.bsky.social www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/l...

@wildtwin.bsky.social www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/whats-on/wha... Thought it may be of interest, Jeff . I know it wasn’t your watering hole … but you could call it ‘your local’ for the first period of your life(?)

I bought these cos they’re @littletollerbooks.bsky.social publications and I really enjoyed them. Highly recommend 👍

If your looking for a present -

I’ve been heartily recommending both of these to everyone who’s bought a copy of Jeff’s Colossive Cartography at Brighton Art Book Fair - and I heartily recommend them to you. Yes, *you* in particular.

Ghost Town & Wild Twin, for the wanderers in your life... Wild Twin: ‘This exceptional memoir…’ Adelle Stripe, Tribune ‘A surging heart-song.’ Iain Sinclair Ghost Town: ‘A book of beauty and longing.’ Anthony Quinn, Observer @littletollerbooks.bsky.social www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/l...

Birkenhead Priory.