Our Lottie turned three years old this week. She tumbled into our family at an inopportune time and caused absolute havoc, but stole our hearts. Now I can't imagine life without this bright-eyed, funny, loving, and irrepressibly joyful little soul.

Happy winter holidays from me and the little reindeer, whatever you may be celebrating this season. And for those who find the holidays hard, for all kinds of reasons, I'm thinking of you especially today. May the days pass gently.

Good morning. It was good to be back in the fields.

Dartmoor, Devon, West Country friends: The Chagford Mummers will be performing all day on Sunday, 4 January, traveling from pub to pub in Drewsteignton and Chagford. It's traditional, folkloric, silly, and free...but the players won't say no to a pint of beer. #Mumming #Folklore #FolkDrama

If you're looking for a last-minute holiday present for someone who loves art and biographies, 'Artists, Siblings, Visionaries' is terrific. Our spaniel, Lottie, does't look terribly impressed in this picture, but I was.

I had this poster tacked up in my art studio (on Endicott Street in the North End of Boston) in the late '80s. Too many items on this list are still the same all these years later. <sigh>

Another book for my Reading List. I'm happy to see some fine women artists in this collection of 20th century art conversations.

A beautiful piece on landscape, loss, and transformation by one of my favourite writers: Terry Tempest Williams, based in Utah. emergencemagazine.org/essay/a-holl...

A great start to the weekend of the winter solstice! What a morning at Newgrange today. The livestream link now available - be sure tune in on the morning of 21 December at 8:40am. 🔗 gov.ie/solstice 👈save it, share it, join in! #ShareTheSolstice #NewgrangeSolstice #WinterSolstice 📸 OPW Guides

Happy Winter Solstice, one and all - and welcome back, Light ✨ And thank you @cstrawbridgeart.bsky.social for allowing me to share your magical Winter Fox and Solstice Blessings painting! #wintersolstice

On the shortest day, have cheer - the light will return! This photo was given to me a few days ago by my friend Clare Nettleton. It shows winter sun lighting up the window I made for Grace’s Room, at Williton Hospital, Somerset. It is of Exmoor …

Musicians with a Solstice Tree puppet, and two of the three folkloric Obby Osses who danced down the aisles of our village church at this year's Winter Solstice gathering. Photographs by Claire-Shauna Saunders. Dartmoor, Devon, UK.

A poem for Winter Solstice: "The Shortest Day" by Susan Cooper, author The Dark is Rising and numerous other luminous books. The image is from www.thelostland.com. The poem is © Susan Cooper.

A wee gift from @righttoroam.bsky.social this season: our first Christmas film! It's a beautiful mini-doc profiling the concept of Wild Service on a neglected river in east London, now being restored by a community of guerrilla guardians... Check it out here: youtu.be/7sjOGOguq5A

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar Window 20 ‘Winter Sunrise’ Artist: SR Badmin

An evocative winter image by my Dartmoor neighbour Virginia Lee:

Reposting for New York friends. What a great line-up!

This week I was invited onto performance artist Jolie Rose's 'Nonsense in the Chaos' podcast. It's different than the books-and-publishing talks I usually do, being a conversation about myth, ritual, nature, Spirit, & kairos time. If that appeals, have a listen. It's on Apple podcasts, Spotify, etc.

On my reading list:

'Winter hares in conversation' by UK contemporary printmaker Angela Harding #WomensArt #ArtAdvent

“And then I laughed.” Absolute winner of today’s One-Line Paragraph Award.

I feel, perhaps predictably, strongly about this. If you also do, this post shows a way to steer your borrowing with Libby to books with a real person doing the audiobook reading.

Dartmoor, Devon, West Country friends: The Chagford Mummers will be performing all day on Sunday, 4 January, traveling from pub to pub in Drewsteignton and Chagford. It's traditional, folkloric, silly, and free...but the players won't say no to a pint of beer. #Mumming #Folklore #FolkDrama

More light in the darkess: "Mariana and the Black Whippets" by our former Dartmoor neighbour David Wyatt.

Light and music in the darkness.

Today in Chagford (Dartmoor, Devon, UK) at 5:30 pm:

I really enjoyed this conversation with @theodoragoss.bsky.social about Patricia McKillip, Borges, Shirley Jackson, language, female monsters and much more.

Uggi is adorable *and* hilarious.

On the return of the salmon to the Klamath River: emergencemagazine.org/essay/a-rive...

'Wish I had a river' by contemporary printmaker Fiona Watson #WomensArt

Lottie and friends.

The Groke is a ghost like character in Tove Jansson's Moomin stories. She embodies the idea of the darkness, the cold. Tove loved all things scary & unknown #WomensArt #Winter ❄️

I completely agree with Alexandra's thread below. If you do too and you're on Instagram, please consider leaving a comment on video.

I've been looking up reviews of my 1998 novel Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, because reasons. I thought I'd turned off AI, but was presented with this:

Ai has confidently told me that I have two cats named Bramble & Clover, I grew up on my grandmother's farm, I was a ballet dancer before I was a writer, and I've been married "many times". All it came from hallucinated sources; none of it is true. This is just one of the many reasons to resist Ai.

"Mummers At Christmas In The Olden Time. - Drawn By E. M. Corbould." The Illustrated London News 22.12.1866. #FolkloreThursday #Christmas #Mummers #Art #History #1860s

The Chagford Mummers will be part of this Winter Solstice event coming up in Chagford (Dartmoor, Devon UK) on 16 December -- contributing music, stories, and a riot of Osses. All are welcome.

It's lovely to see these old Mumming photos, as we have a Mumming troupe here in Chagford that my husband is active in, along with folklorist @lisaschneidau.bsky.social and others. Their next appearance will be in local pubs (a traditional Mumming venue) on the 5th of January. More info soon.

It was a honour to be asked to write the Foreward for this enchanting compendium of world-wide fairy creatures, legends and belief. Written by two of my favourite folklorists, Sara Cleto and @briarspell.bsky.social, the volume is beautifully, lavishly illustrated by Annie Stegg and Kristin Kwan.

Tove Jansson's (1957) illustration from her book 'Moominland Midwinter'. Moomintroll, unlike his family who hibernate, decides to stay up through the harsh winter. It is a tale of endurance, acceptance and learning to live with the discomfort of uncertainty #WomensArt

I wrote an op-ed for The 51st arguing that DCPS middle-schoolers need to be reading full-length novels to build concentration, empathy, and strong foundational reading skills 51st.news/opinion-dcps...

For those with access to The NY Times, this piece on Cornelia Foss is fascinating. Her latest exhibition features work using Little Red Riding Hood imagery to explore the trauma of fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939. I hope her unfinished memoir is published one day.... www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/n...

Happy to have an essay from my forthcoming collection up @literaryhub.bsky.social today! "The time a library lends, I suspect, is a little like love: the more it gives away, the more comes back to it in kind."

the plethora of depressing articles about reading lately made me think about how a person winds up a reader—and stays that way. it's not a science, that's for sure! the weird alchemy of childhood and curiosity and countless variables that all could have easily been different

For academic friends researching fantasy and mythic/folkloric literature:

Congratulations to Emily Selove and the Magic Centre at the University of Exeter for their new PhD programme in magic! I know the Magic Centre folks via my husband (who is doing a drama PhD there involving esoteric studies), and they are an amazing group of scholars. www.exeter.ac.uk/study/pg-res...

Picked up ‘The Christmas Book’ a graphic celebration edited by David Larkin, at the weekend. Here’s an illustration by Edmund Dulac. ‘Many a winter’s night she flies through the streets and peeps in at the windows, and then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful patterns like flowers.’

For day three of our Artist Advent Calendar, poetry and a picture. William Morris & the beautiful ‘Meeting in Winter’ manuscript, from ‘Book of Verse’, made for Georgiana Burne-Jones, 1870. ❄️ For more content and to join our community, become a member of the society- www.pre-raphaelitesociety.org/

December's #FullMoon is known as the #ColdMoon. Artwork by Catherine Hyde, contemporary UK artist #womensart #ArtAdvent

While Barker’s Flower Fairies get a bad rap today, the illustrations were noted for their extreme botanical accuracy - like Beatrix Potter with her anatomically accurate animals, Barker was interested in getting children to appreciate the natural world