I'm endlessly fascinated by the subject of women and money, and this first person story I commissioned for Psyche is a classic gaslight swindle. Why are so many women pushovers for money-grabs dressed as courtship? psyche.co/turning-poin...

The fiction flagged up here looks to be the best crop of new books in a long while. I want to read them all (butt how - given I've got 30+ books to read now for the Queen Mary Small Press Prize) Lord give me more hours! www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

This event has all the feels. I'll be chairing, asking what memoir can do that other forms can't, and how each of them was changed by writing theirs @lilydunn.bsky.social and @joannapocock.bsky.social dauntbooks.co.uk/shop/events/...

Always a joy to work with Jay Griffiths. Her unique understanding of our relationship to nature shines through this essay. @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/why-w...

Why Ai can't write my book. It's sycophantic, can't break with pattern recognition, flat, sad, it can't simulate emotional acuity, personality or experience on the ground. on.ft.com/47k2y5v

In politics, you never get fired for fucking up, you only get recycled.

This is a terrific piece. Timely and barbed. Brava @pollyrowena.bsky.social lithub.com/nature-is-no...

Mariam Abu Dagga, a Palestinian journalist whose photos captured the destruction in Gaza, died in an Israeli strike on Gaza's Nasser Hospital, the one she regularly documented. Here are some of the scenes Dagga captured during the war:

the far right also claim authority over British identity (whiteness), British symbols (flags), and history (colonialism as civilisation), myth-making around them, and making those symbols and discourses unpalatable to the Left.

What the screaming fuck is it going to take before western governments do more than furrowed eyebrows www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

Morning inspo

Just donated to @unicef.org . Not virtue signalling just sharing utter despair over #GazaFAMINE. My grim believe is that Israel is deliberately killing children - so it won't have to face the righteous vengeance that will befall it tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow. Disgusted, disconsolate, beyond sad

Dogs can blow up families just as easily as they can glue them together. So says @lilydunn.bsky.social in this terrific piece psyche.co/stories-of-c...

The teaching season is upon us. I'm thrilled to be running at @arvonfoundation.bsky.social course - it's life writing with a focus on change/transformation. Co-teaching with the brilliant Miranda France. Guest is Ben Masters. www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

The quasi-dream states of night-waking and how they relate to creativity are so fascinating, as @lauracummingart.bsky.social shows observer.co.uk/culture/art/...

Virginia Woolf bemoaned her cotton-wool days when she couldn't distinguish one ordinary moment from the next, but in her fiction she celebrated just those moments! Diana Saverin considers Woolf in relation to her own cotton-wool days aeon.co/essays/like-...

What can I say? I have strong tastes when it comes to the #personalessay. Here's a preview of what you'll get if you sign up for my @faberacademy.bsky.social. @lilydunn.bsky.social I wonder if any of your mentees might be interested in this? faberacademy.com/reading-room...

I loved working on this piece on the doodle's place in modernism. Of esp interest to @andrewgallix.bsky.social @willrees.bsky.social aeon.co/essays/doodl...

Writer and publisher @richardnskinner.bsky.social invited 16 writers (me included) to pen an essay about cinema. Write on anything you want, he said. So we did. Many of the essays are personal, all of them are fascinating. Follow the link below to purchase your copy of The Carbon Arc.

Who can resist a half-price book?

Authors were misled, their sales figures low-balled, royalties delayed or unpaid, and reprints and marketing costs deducted from their profits. Authors are already last in line for profit - and least in line, typically receiving just 10%. Robbing them is scandalous. observer.co.uk/news/busines...

A few places are still left on my course. Sign up if you can free the week for writing. Hopefully you can get a draft essay done. And then there's the fun of all the places you might send it to for publication.

Katia Ariel is a super talented Australian writer. Her first novel was short-listed for the Stella Prize. Here she writes for @aeon.co on life strange synchronicities and how they help us make sense of ourselves. psyche.co/stories-of-c...

Not surprised @bbctv.bsky.social 's Between the Covers got cancelled. Not a book programme. Never was. From the corny title to the focus on bestsellers to the dominance of stand-up comedians (nothing against stand ups but would you get a panel of writers to opine on an improv?)

Partying with @samanthaellis.bsky.social and Bidisha Mamata Thank you for the photos @rsliterature.bsky.social.

Wishing this venture from Will Atkinson every success. The words Phoenix and rising and ashes come to mind.... www.thebookseller.com/news/new-pub...

The brilliant @katemanne.bsky.social put in the hours to transcribe the 'Jane Doe" transcript I remember seeing back in 2016, and which then disappeared from the web. Testimonies of women Epstein groomed and gave to Trump for sex. It is difficult reading. katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual...

The Republic of Consciousness Prize for small press fiction has a new sponsor and a new name. The Queen Mary Small press Fiction Prize. I'm excited to be judging it alongside @stuhennigan.bsky.social & @susannacrossman.bsky.social therepublicofconsciousness.substack.com/p/new-name-a...

I'll be teaching my first course for the @faberacademy.bsky.social during the last week of August. Focus is on the personal essay. If there's something you've been longing to write, but dallying, put it off no longer. faberacademy.com/tutors/marin...

Poet Honor Moore is in conversation with Anna Motz about A Termination — a book recounting her experience of having an abortion more than 5 decades ago. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/philosophy...

Alone on the arctic ice, Melanie McGrath encountered a she-wolf. It watched her as she watched it.Time slowed, and she melted into the landscape. psyche.co/stories-of-c...

More on the history of Trump and Epstein and their close friendship from Michael Wolff @yalereview.bsky.social yalereview.org/article/mich...

There was a time (before Epstein's trial) that the 'Jane Doe' transcripts were available online. They have since been removed. But: did anyone else come across them? Because I remember reading them and Tump was mentioned as a 'client'.

"Why should babies die of malnutrition in the 21st century, especially when it’s entirely preventable?" www.972mag.com/gaza-starvin...

Stomach-turning ethnic cleansing. Every day the same terror for Palestinians and horror for us. Israel wants its victims to be too terrified even to eat. That western govenments are still supporting this criminality beggars belief. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Honoured to be among the @rsliterature.bsky.social 2025 cohort of new Fellows. Signing the book with George Eliot's pen was a highlight. And the after party wasn't bad either.

When does a replica start re-writing history? aeon.co/essays/from-...

Stupid, short-sighted and prejudicial. Libraries ought to know better than to ban books www.thebookseller.com/news/transge...

I'm excited to be running a 5-day course for the @faberacademy.bsky.social on Crafting the Personal Essay. Last week of August. Online. A chance to act and write that essay that won't leave you alone. faberacademy.com/product/craf...

I agree with every word of this, but missing is the fact that this is a world of old men. There are plenty of old women who hoard power too, but there are also plenty of old women - & plenty of women - doing things and differently. Gerontocracy is patriarchy: you can't undo one without the other.

Lovely stuff here.

Another Story of Change. Hard-hitting visceral stuff on Psyche Magazine. psyche.co/stories-of-c...

Women writers in Afghanistan are subject to the harshest living conditions and censorship. This essay on Forced marriage was a joy to work on, in collaboration with @untold-narratives.bsky.social. aeon.co/essays/the-s...

I'm excited to have an essay in this bold collection about film, but even more excited to read the other contributions. Coming July 2025 richardskinner.weebly.com/lsquothe-car...

Gorgeous first person on how personal grief enabled war reporter @salmanmasood to become a better chronicler of death. psyche.co/stories-of-c...

Brilliant, nuanced, moving first person story from @jamesmcconnachie.bsky.social in the new Psyche magazine @aeon.co psyche.co/stories-of-c...

I've been Fitzcaraldoed! @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

Amazon is such a distorting mirror. I had no idea I'd written a management book 🤣🤣

I can't see innocence any more. 🤣 Only the sexualisation of women via the commodification of animals.

The whole Western-Arab military complex is culpable. That handshake between Trump + Muhammed bin Salman symbolises what the Palestinians are truly facing. A mountain of complicity.