Thanks to @martindoyle.bsky.social and Mary Miniham @irishtimes.com for taking my piece on heavy coats and ragged people for today’s paper - with a shoutout for new @universitypress.cambridge.org book on #IrishRomanticism #speirgorm

The first bird that I photographed in 2026 - Great Northern Diver, Ballycotton 1/1/26 #BirdsSeenIn2026 #Ballycotton

Many thanks @luiciolfi.bsky.social for delivering this year’s annual HCI@UCD Christmas Lecture on the topic of our increasingly digitally-entangled worklives. Is hybrid really the ideal “new normal”? Food for thought as we enter the winter break! Wishing you a lovely holiday from all at HCI@UCD!

Portpatrick - once ‘Ireland’s Gretna Green’

Thomas Hardy’s great end of year lyric poem, 'The Darkling Thrush', first published in The Graphic on 29 Dec. 1900, and then in The Times on 1 Jan. 1901 – though a deleted ‘1899’ on the manuscript suggests he may have written it earlier.

PREORDER CANADA ALERT 🚨 Fabulous Cover Alert 🔔 Save a bedraggled writer prompt 🎺 Thank you for sticking with me stamp ❤️ www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/555536...

Pleased to begin role of ambassador for Ellisland, 'The Home of Auld Lang Syne' from Hogmanay- interviews with BBC, ITV and Fox today. Read Joan McAlpine on the Ellisland appeal in www.scotsman.com/news/opinion... @glasgowburns.bsky.social @iassl.bsky.social @paulinemackay.bsky.social @asls.org.uk

And the finest Christmas tradition has arrived — #DuvetKnowItsChristmas is today! 1) Follow @rhodri.biz 2) post your pics of your makeshift Christmas Eve sleeping arrangements and 3) give money to the homeless @centrepointuk.bsky.social

Sorry to have missed this great celebration and congratulations @pflonergan.bsky.social on the book!

Earlier this week, we gathered at the Royal Irish Academy of Music for the Dublin launch of DRUID THEATRE: FIFTY YEARS by @pflonergan.bsky.social, published by @lilliputpress.bsky.social.

Gorgeous Cork skies just now, definite stretch in the evenings 😅

On the show today: @henrymckean.bsky.social on the Merchants Quay Christmas party; Candian English; @hollyh.bsky.social on declining non-fiction sales; The oscar-nominated Irish film; @jamesproclaims.bsky.social previews Christmas TV shows; @jayroszman.bsky.social on Daniel O'Connell selling beer

Delighted to see this new special issue of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy on ‘The Philosophical Writings of Scottish Women’ in print. I had a lot of fun writing this short piece on Susan Ferrier earlier this year - now free to read @edinburghup.bsky.social: www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/....

The first interdisciplinary history of vertigo, 'A Cultural History of Vertigo' covers medical accounts from antiquity to the present, testimonies of lived experience, and literary and cultural representations of vertigo. 📘: https://bit.ly/4o3v4x2

Winter Solstice, Co. Tipperary, Ireland.

The man in charge of logging each native seed in Ireland has described the project as like “Noah’s Ark” for plants – a vault for renewal after ecological disasters. Ecologist Darren Reidy has been researching, gathering and banking native seeds across Ireland since 2022. jrnl.ie/6910184

A shared heritage - Watching #NewgrangeSolstice from North Wales. 📸 From Plas Newydd home of the Ladies of #Llangollen from #Kilkenny #Wales #Ireland

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

Livestream from Newgrange, worth seeing as sunlight is starting to light the tomb right now ☀️

I’ll be at Cambridge Museum of Zoology @zoologymuseum.bsky.social on Wednesday, 11 February, 19:00-20:00, to talk about encountering #extinction in museums with lots of reference to their exhibitions! Book your free place: www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/events/talk-...

Christmas came early when this pleasingly chunky lad plopped through the letterbox this morning. So good to hold in my hand the proof of, well, the best part of a decade’s work, really. Hope @bsecs.bsky.social members enjoy reading about Mary & gang over a festive tipple. bsky.app/profile/soph...

I’ve just bought a copy at the CUP bookshop—and here it is, together with the Reliques of Irish Poetry, together with one of her pictures of flowers.

Low key, but definitely Christmas at the UL @theul.bsky.social

O'Connell's other beer connection ... 'All Wise Men Drink it Because it's the Best'

Breaking news from @glasgowburns.bsky.social and the perfect way to round off this year! Thrilled to be working on this new project celebrating The Burns Supper x Living Heritage - check out our global survey here: forms.office.com/e/ksbivWh7zs We cannot wait to hear from you! #BurnsSupper225 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

How do you celebrate Burns Night? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 UofG's @glasgowburns.bsky.social has launched The Burns Supper at 225 Years: Scottish Tradition, Global Reinvention. Help us build a crowdsourced archive of Burns Suppers worldwide for the 225th anniversary next July. Learn more: gla.ac/44Veysf

@jayroszman.bsky.social on Daniel O'Connell as global icon - and beacon of beer drinking during prohibition!

if anyone is looking to commission writing on chloé zhao’s hamnet over the next few months: 💀 @edelsemple.bsky.social is the undisputed queen of shakespeare biofiction studies 💀 i myself specialise in irish shakespeares (especially actors), and celebrity casting. let us write/give talks for u!

Absolutely delighted to see that my article on Catholic chapels in Ireland from the 1790s to the 1820s is now available in Architectural History, the journal of the SAHGB - a real career dream come true to have an article in this journal, I must say! #skystorians www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Delighted that @deanbrowne.bsky.social is joining UCC School of English and Digital Humanities as Arts Council Writer in Residence for 2026 www.ucc.ie/en/english/n...

Here's something that me and Evan Brier have been working on for ages: a special issue on editors in postwar US literature, full of essays by brilliant scholars. Delighted to see it published! post45.org/sections/iss...

Okay!!! Posted on all platforms!!! This will be in print in the NYT Book Review on Sunday.

'Creative Medievalisms Now: Writing the Middle Ages Today and Tomorrow', forthcoming symposium at Cambridge. A two-day symposium for writer-researchers working on medieval materials to reflect on craft, research processes, and work in progress. Booking essential: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creative-m...

Congratulations Tom - for everyone who wants a concise history of runes and, really, who doesn't?

Our director Eimear combines her love of books and her love of Cork into a list of recent books for West Cork People. Clue: they are all books by authors living in Cork or from Cork. Lots of inspiration for Christmas presents and Christmas reading ❤️📚 online.flippingbook.com/view/7903684...

Next, the book club scam phase of the publication cycle 😰

Late afternoon light over Manhattan.

Update !

How Ireland Voted 2024 is published. My copies finally turned up yesterday having been delivered to a random address. Thanks to the lovely person who accepted them and kept them for me. Nice to have the physical book before Christmas and copies are starting to appear in bookshops as well.

Rare sketches made of Dickens's plays in rehearsal are now on display at the Dickens Museum. I've been lucky enough to see these up close and really enjoyed studying these - a must see! www.msn.com/en-us/entert...

My little book will be available for pre-order in January 2026. Please consider ordering a copy for your library. I'll be eternally grateful if you would like to review the book. Happy reading! 😊 www.routledge.com/Irish-Writer...

Defy the icy weather, Torontonians, and come to the Toronto Reference Library to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th with me and some very smart & funny Austenians: Alex Hernandez, Tom Keymer, Karen Vallihora. This coming Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. in Beeton Hall at the Reference Library.

Nice to see the Great Northern Divers / Common Loons in Ballycotton Bay again. It must be the great seafood that brings them all the way back here every winter! #Birds

First proof now off my desk. Corrected second proof expected in Jan. 2026. Thanks to all those watching & waiting. #thelongestjourney global.oup.com/academic/pro...

In VPR 58.2, @kyleeanneh.bsky.social traces reproductions of F.W. Burton’s 1840 watercolor “A Blind Girl at A Holy Well” to consider how #periodicals deployed its sentimental depiction of blindness in mid-century debates about Irish culture and nationhood: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... @rs4vp.org

'the heart is sick with hoping and hoping before books reach Ireland' Maria Edgeworth in 1816 Publication day for @universitypress.cambridge.org Irish Romanticism was yesterday but no sign of any books in Cork yet! www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...

⏱️FOUR MORE WEEKS to submit your abstract to @darlingorlaith.bsky.social and Fionnula Simpson for their upcoming 8-9 June 'Bad Feelings: Sadness and Gender in Contemporary Culture' conference, a research project funded by the UCD Humanities Institute's Seed Funding Scheme.

Reminder to get those abstracts in for our sad girl summer conference!

Day 11 of the Coastal Lexicon Advent Calendar and today’s word is: 🌊 neap (tide) — occurring at the 1st & 3rd quarters of the moon, when the high-water level is lowest "Such a dead Neipe...as no Man living was known to have seen the like, the Sea fell so far back from the Land" (H. Spelman, 1698)