Very sad to hear of the death of Johnathan Main, of Bookseller Crow fame, in Crystal Palace. A lovely man. Deepest sympathies to his loved ones, and his many friends.
fiction writer / dublin / london / 🇵🇸 forthcoming - Dooneen / june 2026 / from New Directions, and Fitzcarraldo Editions previously - A Shock / Hawthorn & Child / Animals / etc agented by @laurencelaluyaux.bsky.social
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Very sad to hear of the death of Johnathan Main, of Bookseller Crow fame, in Crystal Palace. A lovely man. Deepest sympathies to his loved ones, and his many friends.
I wrote this. Read it if you're depressed (or if you're not!) lithub.com/six-very-dep...
'My writing is always political work. It is a warning about the condition we are in. But I can’t offer answers. I don’t have them.' Joseph Williams speaks to @benpester.bsky.social about his debut novel, The Expansion Project. Read here: thelondonmagazine.org/interview-th...
Uniting 44 nations, the Global Sumud Flotilla sails to support Gaza and challenge injustice. Let’s make our voices heard. #GlobalSolidarity #GlobalSumudFlotilla #StandWithGaza#SailToGaza #BreakTheSiege #GlobalMovementToGaza
Fair play to Naoise Dolan, and to Sarah Clancy (@sarahmaintains.bsky.social) - two Irish writers joining the Sumud Flotilla to Gaza. It's a brave thing to attempt. I hope they make it. 🇵🇸 ✊ #SAILTOGAZA globalsumudflotilla.org
Hassan Blasim is always worth reading. Three stories here, each very different. Elias In The Land Of ISIS is simultaneously warm and chilling. The third, Bulbul, includes discussion of fusha (Modern Standard Arabic) versus (Iraqi) ammiya in literature. Bulbul is written in ammiya.
Some news from me, thanks to a team of super activists who have been working for months, the biggest flotilla to try and break the siege on Gaza is leaving on Aug 31st. I'm proud to be going on it and obviously nervous. We'd love if you'd follow globalsumudflotilla.org #FromEveryRiverToEverySea
Sarah, I am filled with admiration. This is a remarkable and beautiful thing to attempt. Respect and solidarity. 🇵🇸✊
This will be the last Writing Fiction course for a while. Places still available. Join me and up to 14 other writers to talk about, read, write, and generally fixate on fiction: what it is, how it works, who it's for, and how to create it. At The Bindery - @faberacademy.bsky.social's London HQ.
"Victoria's death needed to become a crime for the public to feel safe in a vertiginously unsafe world. It took two trials, and a juggernaut of over-prosecution, to get that result." Clair Wills is one of the very few people I'd trust to write about the Marten/Gordon case. And she does it superbly.
"It is a famine we could have prevented.. food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred metres of food.. a preventable famine sustained by complicity" Tom Fletcher from the UN on famine being declared in Gaza City
These writers are still in Gaza. Where a famine has just been officially declared by the UN. Buy the book - all proceeds will go to the writers. Buy it and read it. Stop arming Israel. End the genocide.
A remarkable book. Diaries by 4 Gazan writers - Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, and Ala'a Obaid - inside Gaza, from October '23 to March '25. Affecting, shocking, frightening. And suffused with beautiful dignity, humour, and love. Can't recommend enough. From @commapress.bsky.social
"Hunger is loud. I read, but hunger is shouting in my ear. I write, but the maw snaps with every keystroke." "It is about refusing to disappear." Ahmed Kamal Junina, starving in Gaza.
Join us on Friday 29th August, we are honoured to host Palestinian journalists Ali Abunimah and Abubaker Abed for a discussion on Western complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide – and what we can do to end it. #FreePalestine www.ipsc.ie/event/dublin...
This is out now, in shops, just sitting there - a weird set of subroutines ready to be activated in your imagination. All you have to do is read it. Don't be frightened. Everything's going to be ok. (I loved it.) From @benpester.bsky.social
Aren't they just??? Thanks Trish!
Thank you Karl!
Thanks Steve
Thanks David.
Thanks Ben - and congrats on the Expansion reviews. Hope you're enjoying it!
Thanks So!
I know, I'm sorry. Maybe treat yourself to some books?
Thanks Gabriel, I appreciate it. And congratulations to you on Poor Ghost, which I've heard such good things about, and I'm looking forward to reading.
Very happy to tell you that my novel Dooneen will be published next June by Fitzcarraldo Editions (@fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social) and New Directions (@ndbooks.bsky.social). Many thanks to Jacques and Barbara - both of whom say lovely things here - and to superagent @laurencelaluyaux.bsky.social.
Sally Rooney on the bullshit proscribing of Palestine Action by a bullshit government. And. By the way. I think this is how to use the platform granted to you by success. Expressing solidarity, criticising injustice, standing up. Instead of, for example, kicking minorities for billionaire kudos.
Anyone who belongs to any minority group needs to be aware that what is being done to trans people can and will be done to them. In a decade we have been stripped of our rights to exist in public spaces by a press campaign and a well funded lobby.
Ok. Still don't really understand what it means. But presumably the process will not involve using ai to make calls about the ai-ness of texts, which would rather defeat the purpose. Interested to see how it develops.
This is very positive, very good to see. Congrats Sam! But I do have to ask - what is "technology-led text analysis"? Would human-led, technology-assisted text analysis not be better?
Alice Zoo was part of Writing Fiction last year. Great to see that her story Little Venice is one of 12 shortlisted for the Brick Lane Bookshop Prize 2025. All the stories will be published together in October I believe. @bricklanebookshop.bsky.social Alice is also a very fine photographer.
" ... they think they deserve every bit of their lives built upon the suffering of others... " I'm very late to it, but Noreen Masud's essay Quietly the World Shifts, for @tolkajournal.bsky.social, is great. You can hear her reading it and talking about it on this podcast - pca.st/episode/2b4c...
It's many years since I've read him. Of mostly historical sociological interest now I think, but sure aren't we all.
You are loved 🏳️⚧️
Remembering Sinéad O’Connor on her 2nd anniversary, and words from a new song, Milestones, she sang the last time I saw her play live. It ends with the lines: “One day we’ll sit with our maker Discuss over biscuits and soda Which one of you and me was braver Which one of us was a true soldier?”
Novelist, essayist, critic and recently departed literary icon Gary Indiana would have turned 75 today.
Super day and solidarity at trans and intersex pride in Dublin today.
Please enjoy this picture of Wisława Szymborska pointing out the way to the Cliffs of Moher in 2008.
And I met you.
All these festivals, events. I really distrust the attempts to portray fiction writers as people that anyone would want to meet.
the time needed Franz Kafka, 'The Next Village', tr Willa and Edwin Muir
Our statement on Gaza, signed by almost 400 Irish writers. irishpen.com/2025/06/05/s... Please share widely.
It’s publication day for The Penguin Book of Polish Short Stories. It took 39 authors 100 years to write, and me about 4 years to compile and translate, with the help of 11 other translators. It aims to show the variety and brilliance of modern Polish literature.
This is all apparently true, but has such a texture of fiction about it that it would be more meaningful if someone had made it up.
Vladimir Putin's paternal grandfather Spiridon Putin was Lenin's personal chef, and cooked for Krupskaya until her death. He also fed Stalin. And once, Grigori Rasputin. His grandson Vladimir Putin was 12 when Spiridon died, and particularly enjoyed his grandad's fish soup, and lamb with herbs.
I'm not a political scientist nor historian, nor have I read the book, so what do I know? But David Runciman's trashing of Quin Slobodian's "Hayek's Bastards" in the LRB includes this paragraph. And I've rarely read a better example of how centrists just cannot help themselves.
It's no accident, Margaret.
Muriel Spark and Janet Frame lived in Camberwell at the same time. I imagine them catching each other's eye on Denmark Hill on a Thursday morning, Janet on her way to the Maudsley, Muriel late for work. Oh hello.
The last Leo, Leo XIII, was born in 1810. In 1896 he was persuaded to allow a film camera into the Vatican. He is the oldest (or, the earliest born) human being ever caught on film.
The pitch one I mean. Yours is nice
Really obnoxious account.
You've done a wonderful job with them Esther. Congratulations to you. And I love your invocation of heteropessimism in the afterword to The Suicides. Made me immediately want to reread all three. Or, gave me another motivation to.
The translation by @eallen.bsky.social of three Di Benedetto novels - Zama, The Silentiary, and this, The Suicides, is a wonderful job of work. Great, strange, gripping books. Allen's preface to Zama and afterwords to the others are fascinating. All from @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social.
Another writer I've worked with on the Writing Fiction course is Susannah Waters, who is on the shortlist for the @galleybeggars.bsky.social short story prize. Her story Axe Murderer can be read at the link -
Patrick Duffy is a new writer I got to work with on my @faberacademy.bsky.social Writing Fiction course a while ago. A really interesting writer. This is a great short piece of his currently available to read on oxonianreview.com. I think he also has something in the new @gutter.bsky.social
Really like the Turkish cover of A Shock. Out now (or soon) from Ithaki Yayınları @ithakiyayinlari.bsky.social Translated by Ata Türkoğlu
