Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
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kateem.bsky.social
Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
@kateem.bsky.social
Mover of words at peachfieldpress.uk. Latest story out now! https://fiction-fans-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp/products/solstitia-issue-4 Book reviews at katemacdonald.net. Recorder of🏺finds, organiser, Q clerk, knitter, academis aegis @OxfordBrookes
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Greetings, all those who wander in the Bluesky! I write SFF fiction at peachfieldpress.uk, I write about how I set up a small but doughty publishing house at katemacdonald.substack.com, I move words around, I measure excavated things and I organise. 💙📚🧶🏺🐸🌱🍫
The Handheld Diaries | Kate Macdonald | Substack
We published 48 books in seven years to recover forgotten fiction and lost authors. This is how we did it. Click to read The Handheld Diaries, by Kate Macdonald, a Substack publication with hundreds o...
katemacdonald.substack.com
Oh dear, that'll teach me not to contribute to a conversation among men who are using it to wave their egos around.
February 16, 2026 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
This is the Gov looking for your input on the BBC. It takes a while to complete (15/20 mins) but it’s pretty comprehensive and covers most aspects.

Please share. I’m surprised many people haven’t seen it yet.

www.gov.uk/government/c...
Britain’s Story: The Next Chapter - BBC Royal Charter Review, Green Paper and public consultation
www.gov.uk
February 15, 2026 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
The entire UK diplomatic budget is about £1.4 billion a year. That’s pretty much precisely 0.1% of government spending.

BBC World Service is about £0.25 billion (it should be higher), or 0.02%.

These are rounding errors on rounding errors. Double each and public expenditure wouldn’t twitch.

Mad.
February 15, 2026 at 9:23 PM
Stonking good truth-telling writing here.
February 15, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
A romance cartoon for the @theguardian.com
February 15, 2026 at 10:30 AM
Great review, with unnerving evidence of people who can remember the Wingspan attributes of birds in the wild.
February 14, 2026 at 11:39 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
February 12, 2026 at 1:44 PM
Great review filling in the background to my novel The Shetland Witch!
Ancient Greek Fates meet Shetland’s Witches in Kate Macdonald’s The Shetland Witch. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 . 🔗👇 #ShetlandWitch #Folklore

Check these three books from @kateem.bsky.social along with a potted history on Shetland Witches

gnofhorror.com/the-shetland...
February 13, 2026 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
A reminder that my book on the history of protest is now published. It is superbly produced with a great cover. Buy it now from @reaktionbooks.bsky.social
October 27, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
Fantastic funded PhD opportunity here in the School of Humanities at Reading - please share widely! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Young Refugees to Britain in the early Twentieth Century at University of Reading on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Young Refugees to Britain in the early Twentieth Century at University of Reading, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
February 13, 2026 at 10:17 AM
This seems unecessarily cruel and unfair for the vulnerable at their most vulnerable.
New School Guidance announces:

Full bathroom ban.
Full PE ban.
Full school trip accommodation ban.

Trans kids will not go to the bathroom, do PE or go on any school trips. 1/
February 13, 2026 at 10:34 AM
A postcard from Japan for @everyheron.bsky.social A blue heron at Ueno Pond, Tokyo.
February 13, 2026 at 5:53 AM
Very rare vegetarian meal in Tokyo (actually vegan). My chopsticks game is quite good. And then we shopped for dessert to take back to the hotel.
February 12, 2026 at 10:33 AM
Who's the most famous former pupil of my school?

Lord Byron.
Who's the most famous alum of your high school?

I'll go first: David Draiman of Disturbed
guys i just found out i went to the same high school as howard lutnick. please respect my privacy at this time.
February 12, 2026 at 5:48 AM
Post a banger that's not in English. Go Gaelic.
music.youtube.com/watch?v=OBeQ...
February 10, 2026 at 11:32 AM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
⚡️ BREAKING: International Olympic Committee has banned Vladyslav Heraskevych from using a custom helmet featuring images of Ukrainian athletes killed by Russia at the 2026 Olympics.
February 9, 2026 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
I hope Nigel Farage gets an intact cardamom pod in every mouthful of rice he eats from now until the day he dies
The thing is he's not pitching this to people who work, he's pitching this to retired people who are furious that other people might get marginally better working conditions than they had.
BREAKING: Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home and the focus on work-life balance

"People aren't more productive working from home - it's a load of nonsense”

Whatever you do JUST DON’T VOTE REFORM!
February 9, 2026 at 7:21 PM
Off to Japan tomorrow. Packed. Kitchen cleaned and in order. Plants watered. Nothing else to do except play a ridiculously good and very long board game: Luthier.
February 9, 2026 at 7:04 PM
I admire Madeline Miller immensely so this just goes to show that there will always be ... something.
February 8, 2026 at 3:11 PM
Reposted by Kate Macdonald 📚 🧶
"you might stumble over a whole collective of people resisting in ways you didn't think of. There's a crew of carpenters just going around fixing kicked-in doors. There are tow truck drivers taking cars of detained people away for free...."
message from MN
February 8, 2026 at 2:12 PM
I wrote about considering leaving Substack. Haven't done it yet (moving a subscription site needs careful financial untangling work). But the POV that throwing the Nazi sites off Substack might be a better way redress the damage to very encouraging.
open.substack.com/pub/katemacd...
Should I go or should I stay?
Is staying on Substack supporting the people who tolerate Nazis?
open.substack.com
February 8, 2026 at 7:23 AM
Witches and Sylvia Townsend Warner literary fantasy conference coming up in May, and registration is now open!
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lolly-will...
Lolly Willowes at 100
An international conference to mark the centenary of the publication of Warner's first and still her best-known novel, Lolly Willowes.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
February 7, 2026 at 7:37 PM
Murder in the garden while I was out: feathers are still quite dry. Pigeon's head was torn off (pic not shown, you're welcome) and feathers are still in 4 ripping-apart locations. Raptor? Fox? Both quite likely. Saw a buzzard on my way home.
February 7, 2026 at 11:12 AM
Won't let my handknitted socks go in a machine wash set up by my husband again. Suggestions for repurposing hopelessly shrunk and felted wool socks? 🧶
February 7, 2026 at 8:58 AM