ICYMI: The Southbank Centre is launching Indie Night, a new initiative celebrating the work of independent presses 👇 #BookSky

Have a read of this with your morning ☕️ 🇫🇷 We're going to Paris! 🖋 Fantastic courses in poetry, prose, and memoir 📖 Another European Book Club 🖥 Online Salon Don't miss out! @grahammort.bsky.social @susannacrossman.bsky.social

‘The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination’ by @michaelavieser.bsky.social & @ekostories.bsky.social, a wonderful book of 36 short essays on sound in place & imagination I commissioned for @reaktionbooks.bsky.social. Published this week.

Karen (@karenmcleod.bsky.social) is an excellent writer/teacher/person and this masterclass is a bargain, online and will be excellent. 👇👇✍️✍️ www.outsavvy.com/event/29810/...

back this week with a stacked September, incl. interviews with @alinaetc.bsky.social Tim MacGabhann & Austyn Wohlers; extracts from work by @andrewgallix.bsky.social Charlotte Northall, Adam Judah Krasnoff & Joseph Nechvatal; fiction from @addisonzeller.bsky.social & @robrubsam.bsky.social ... 1/2

This is very good: Strike! at Asquith Street Background Painters Association — Emily Lu minorliteratures.com/2025/05/08/s...

My story ‘Small Bad Things’ which came third in @themothmagazine.bsky.social short story prize is published in @irishtimes.com today 🎉 There is a small paywall - (£1 for first month) 👇

If you are tall enough to see over the paywall, my story 'Bee Box' is up on the @irishtimes.com now, after coming second in @themothmagazine.bsky.social The Moth Short Story Prize. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Nice to see @shelleyhastings.bsky.social come third in the Moth short story prize. Shelley read at an online event I did years ago and was a different class. Great things to come I'm sure. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Every issue of The Moth is crammed full with beautiful art, two great interviews, short stories and new poetry on familiar and surprising subjects – in the case of Issue 45, meatballs, neck braces, and conceiving in the Aldi carpark... 🌷bit.ly/pastmoths

We’re so delighted to announce that we’ve chosen @desperatelit.bsky.social prize shortlistee @shelleyhastings.bsky.social’s story ‘Glimpses of Her’ for our Annual Salon prize! Shelley will join us at next year’s Annual Salon in Madrid, where she’ll be invited to read.

What a treat to hear the wonderful @davidcollard.bsky.social chat with @ronanhession.bsky.social & read from his new book #ACrumpledSwan - a brilliant online event - thank you so much 👏💙💙👏 www.waterstones.com/book/a-crump... #books #booksky

Totally delighted to be shortlisted for this - and to also win the @saloneurope.bsky.social prize - I cannot wait to take part in the salon next year in Madrid 😍 you can pre order the book and order the anthology of all the brilliant stories now 👇👇

So after Brussels, we'll be off to Madrid with @saloneurope.bsky.social in October. Want to read your work @desperatelit.bsky.social, eat good food, explore Madrid and make new writer friends? It's a small event so only a few tickets left. I can't wait! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/madrid-lit...

‘The Life of Andy’, a short story of mine online at the late The White Review: www.thewhitereview.org/fiction/the-...

Sarina Sarina 😍❤️😍💫🥳😎⚽️

Very excited about this collaboration and commission it’s been a long old process. It brings together my writing practice, obsession with ‘close looking’ & how expansive that can be - and my arts facilitation work with people living with dementia. 😎🔬 www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...

I used to be better at telling people I'm doing stuff. In 2 weeks I'm bringing back the multi-award-winning HEADS UP for one night only in a stripped back performance as part of the Shedinburgh programme, and I'd love you to come. Aug 2, 8pm, Wee Red Bar bookings.shedinburgh.com/event/9854:1...

Camilla Grudova writes brilliantly about how precarious it is to live as a successful & dedicated writer who doesn’t come from money. Recommended reading especially for publishers, institutions & funding bodies stingingfly.org/2025/06/25/t... @stingingfly.bsky.social

Do you tend to write in one "form" & fancy sampling another? Do you write "long" & are wondering about going short? Come along to my Pick'n'Mix Zoom writing workshop, July 2nd, for a little poetry, flash fiction & hybrids! All welcome, pay-what-you-can available: www.tickettailor.com/events/tania...

"Art isn't the province of the young." I interviewed short story author @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social about her brilliant debut novel, The Benefactors. www.telegraph.co.uk/books/author...

Just finished this and it is brilliant, hilarious, moving, clever, excellent music, beautifully shot. Hoping there will be a season 3. Like nothing else. Thank you @bridgetchristie.bsky.social

Nostalgic night - Roni Size following me from 90’s Bristol to Fox & Firkin Lewisham. 💃🏻Packed full of people who were there the first time round.

Good morning. In 3 weeks we launch the debut English novel - 22.5.25 The Orange Notebooks by @susannacrossman.bsky.social In London Waterstones Trafalgar Square hosted by Catherine Taylor. We'd love you to pop in and say hello. @thebookseller.com @booksaremybag.bsky.social

She’s back! 🕸️

Saw Eline Arbo’s sublime adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s The Years on Sat -cheapest seat in the rafters, furthest I could be & still it reached me - a whole embodied life joyous pain, time flitting, the smears of blood across the sheets, desire, past & future. I loved the book & this took it & flew.

Just saw Chekhov’s Three Sisters in the Globe’s Wanamaker & loved it - grief, longing, boredom- brilliantly acted, sometimes deliciously so - lit by candlelight - only on for few more days. A proper treat. Sat in Tate afterwards with a martini looking out at St Paul’s. I love London. A good day. 🍸

Prepare to have your heart opened and broken and rearranged and to count every minute of that as a blessing. One of my heroes does it again. Out in July in the UK.

BRILLIANT PEOPLE ON BLUESKY. A starter pack with writers, artists, politicos & all round good eggs. Pack 1 features @kitdewaal.bsky.social @regretteruane.bsky.social @bigbeardedbookseller.com @jnraeside.bsky.social @cauverymadhavan.bsky.social @drewgum.bsky.social & many more. Please follow & repost

I had not heard of this book but now I am going to read it tonight.

The only support we have for our son’s educational situation (autistic, burned out of mainstream) comes from Drumbeat but Lewisham are cutting their funding and reducing their staff. They are a lifeline to us and families like ours. Please sign! you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/no...

I need to print a small pamphlet and want to go into a printer’s and have a conversation rather than do it all online - somewhere in central London - any advice please? #printing

My #podcast this week focuses on the issue of #gender and how it impacts on #socialcare. We need to stop seeing #care and support as ‘women’s work’ and recognise it as the work of all humanity. #InternationalWomensDay creators.spotify.com/pod/show/don...

International women’s day dawn lake swim at Beckenham Park. Stunning/freezing/agony/glorious. 🏊🏼‍♀️🏊🏼‍♀️🏊🏼‍♀️

Advance copies of my next book arrived from New York today, with a lovely cover design by Anne Marie Hantho. Launches in Dublin, London and online in June. More details here: www.saggingmeniscus.com/catalog/a_cr...

If you're looking for some great databases of the ongoing resistance (as well as some other useful resources) here's a thread of where to start. 1. Check out Choose Democracy's website with incredible guides on action you can take: choosedemocracy.us

I want to read a new Gwendoline Riley novel please. No one like her. Reading My Phantoms again to help me get through February.

16/28 Feb is #ReadIndies month & each day I’ll feature a book from an indie publisher. @cbeditions.bsky.social are one of my favourite indie publishers and last year’s Spent Light by @larapawson.bsky.social was a both a big hit and an extraordinary original achievement. From a toaster to the world

On Thursday evening I was at Birmingham Museums Trust to hear from their citizens’ jury. Sharing a few thoughts here:

Open wound Mire Lee is growing - third time I have been. Something precious about these hangings multiplying all over the clean lines of the turbine hall.

Every year I’ve looked forward toThe Observer’s list of ‘most exciting debut novels’. It is so wonderful that The Benefactors is there for 2025, in such great company, and described as ‘riveting.’Thank you @theguardian.com and @sceptrebooks.com.Such a big deal. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Trump exploded in fury at Bishop Marian Budde on Truth Social a little after midnight, calling her a "hater." As we argue on today's pod, there is nothing MAGA despises more than appeals to common decency and humanity. newrepublic.com/article/1905...

Well this is my favourite ever play still hot still got it let it crack you open and make you feel

Musk likes to say X is “citizen journalism”… …it’s anything but. REAL citizen journalism is the Bylines Network of 10 local publications that edit & publish real articles written by citizens - all IMPRESS regulated. Follow us — and these other investigative & “for public good” media sources. 🙏🏻

See when we had the Arches, it was a space in the city centre with multiple rehearsal rooms where someone who had never made a professional show in their life could email the office and ask to book in for like a week, and get it no bother, and come in and make a theatre show in there for free

On route to a writers retreat at The Hurst - a week away from kids and work to try and wrangle my book into shape. Hoping for productivity, walks & plenty of sleep 🤞🤞🤞

‘if you haven’t had an eye-wateringly expensive lawyer draft a statement about how consensual your sex with a tormented junior was, then are you really properly creative at all?’

Writing tip: After you finish, go back & cut all the adverbs. Then all the adjectives. Then all the other words. Eat the paper. Now you're free.

This looks excellent I will be going so should you 👇👇👇