Releasing a new comic today for Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, GA. What started as a research project about a colonial sailing vessel spiraled into a eulogy for a dead model ship builder. Stories often carry us where we need, but are afraid, to go. lucybellwood.com/new-comic-th...

Looking for a good read over your mid-morning break, lunchtime sandwich, or evening tea? May we suggest our latest Meet a Medievalist Maker blogpost written by Julia Salkind, in which she discusses her creative-critical experience working with the lai Bisclavret🐺 Follow the link below to read on👇

Exactly so and part of what I call “opportunity theft” comprises the cultivation of the expertise needed to enter the conversations that ensure the longevity of scholarly community. bsky.app/profile/sonj...

A pleasing bookstack!

Sumer is icumen in! And with it, the unfurling leaves of more Guild events! 🌱 Join us for more Making Space sessions, and a special workshop on modular haiku comics. Not a member yet? Join us (for free) via out website: www.guildmedmak.com/join-the-guild

What is GOLDEN RAGE? It's "Battle Royale meets The Golden Girls" and it's about menopause, infertility, community, and machetes. Read the first issue free and pick up the collected books here! imagecomics.com/comics/relea...

It was life-affirming to listen to a cross-section of medievalists talk about their creative-critical projects - about making privately and publicly; for process or product; for earning, or joy, or necessity. Very grateful for @drlauravarnam.bsky.social and @hellomizk.bsky.social, and our GuMMies.

🌻Creators can apply for a table at the Indigenous Zine Fest here. The deadline to apply is May 1 🌻 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

In London on Wednesday 15 April? Come and join me for this Westminster Abbey lunchtime talk on 'English History Through Poetry'. We'll be in St Margaret's - just yards from Poets' Corner. Info and tickets: www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-events... #history #poetry #book #event

I re-edited this video to show all the hesitations and ‘uhhhhh moments’ between the pen on paper moments. I find this stuff more interesting than the actual drawing bits now.

I will be thinking about the “everything but the actual drawing” video and what it says about how drawing actually feels and works for quite some time. Definitely worth a read!

LOOK AT THAT PIGEON! 😍

It has been quite some time since I finished a book in two days! This was exactly the bit of all-consuming escapism I needed.

'[...] the canon takes on a malleable, almost organic quality, like a network of cells that keep self-replicating.' Our latest Meet a Medievalist Maker blogpost is by the creative writer and performance artist Dr Clare Mulley, who writes about her experience responding to Völuspá 👇

I donned my Medievalist Makers Party Hat™️ (designed by the brilliant @eleanormaybaker.bsky.social) and we had a PAR-TAY! 🥳 By which I mean our amazing members shared their incredible work- wowee, I was blown away!!! 🤩🤯 The talent was Off The Chart!! Thank you all!

Truly you have not LIVED until you have experienced #FlaxChat 😍

Such a good time at the @guildmedmak.bsky.social birthday zoom! We had a show-and-tell; I remain in awe our members’ creative work! Thanks so much to my co-founder creative-critical BFFs @eleanormaybaker.bsky.social and @drlauravarnam.bsky.social and to all our members! (The cats slept through it…)

I have been listening to this band since 1995 but never seen them live…

A lovely Saturday afternoon! 🧡

Roses are redde Love ys a thinge

An evening full of wry smiles, giggles, and laughter was had by those who attended @15thcgossipgirl.bsky.social 's 'Joke Writing for Medievalists' yesterday evening! We had medievalists join us from the UK, Iceland, Germany and Switzerland. Want to get in on the action? Join the Guild today!

And what I’m calling “opportunity theft” is the theft of someone’s future and their potential by means of robbing them of appreticeship, menteeship, and experience now. Using AI to perform the tasks that students and trainees do in the early phases of training and education is opportunity theft.

Uhhh, Jared brought over his collages yesterday and they are SO GOOD?! You've got about one week to get in on this preorder!

A thing @rahhh.bsky.social has just said: “Maybe not everything has to be Chaucer.”

Hark, fellow creative pilgrims, clever bookworms, and mischief-makers all! I have glorious news: I am making a comic! My full announcement (and upcoming C2E2 panel details) can be found here: www.audreyavril.com/journal/2026...

Last winter I was awarded the Newberry Medieval Minicomic Prize, and with the most esteemed counsel of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library, I hath spent these busy months crafting a comic inspired by the world of medieval manuscripts. I am excited to share what I have learned!

Delightful time at our first @guildmedmak.bsky.social workshop tonight with the incredible @15thcgossipgirl.bsky.social who taught us some strategies and techniques for mining jokes from our scholarly interests. Much giggling ensued (and occasionally bled over into outright cackles of glee)!

Huge thanks to Poetry Wales for publishing my poem TURN OF THE TIDE from my Beowulf project & to Doryn Herbst for the wonderful interview questions. My poem is dedicated to the late Michael O’Neill, Professor of Romanticism at Durham & a wonderful poet ❤️ poetrywales.co.uk/laura-varnam...

Bee submitted her portfolio for art high school today - her theme was “mermaids” and I am in AWE of the work she created!

Love this podcast!

Does it get better than Stardew Valley and some Chaucer on a cloudy day? Possibly not! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/y...

Stunning book worth checking out if you are a medievalist or a comics fan or both!

SCREAMING! This is the coolest thing!

It’s my one year “survived my defense” anniversary. Woo! I have mostly recovered and am still so pleased with how the blanket turned out!!

Finally got around to scanning my pages from Hourly Comic Day! Better late than completely forgotten, right?

Exciting new workshop for Guild members!

I’m so excited (and a bit nervous!!) to be running this little jokewriting workshop for @guildmedmak.bsky.social on 12 March—tell your favourite medievalists to sign up and join us! 🤪

Finally got around to scanning my pages from Hourly Comic Day! Better late than completely forgotten, right?

A friend sent a minicomic from @abbyhoward.bsky.social that he grabbed for me ages ago and Bee was just a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit excited. 😂😂😂

Ink stains. Water stains. Awe.

My agenda understands even if my drawing supplies don’t…

Back to the diary: look what my child has been up to!

Box get - let’s go! Thanks @scarygorgon.bsky.social for sharing this idea!

This is fun. You should go draw horsies instead of whatever it is you're meant to be getting on with*. gradient.horse *That's a lie. If you have important things to do don't listen to me. But this is cute.

“Making Space” with @guildmedmak.bsky.social tonight? Time to PLAY!

On 25th Feb, 5.30-6.15pm, I’m giving an online talk, chaired by Baroness Amos, on ‘Poetry as Creative Criticism: A Reading of Beowulf.’ You can sign up at this link! www.univ.ox.ac.uk/event/univ-o...

The inspiration.

... each letter was passed around and forwarded to friends and/or communally read at dinner parties or assemblies. And the contents of any given letter were commented upon by its collective audience, both publically and privately. Plus ça change ... 2/2.

Spent today in an archive of 19th-century diaries. I know people have commented on how the frequency of mail in e.g. 19th-century London made letters like emails, bouncing back & forth multiple times per day. But I realized today that they were actually more like social media posts, because ... 1/2

Really looking forward to this - already bothering the ever-patient @rahhh.bsky.social with all my ideas!