Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
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kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
@kitwhitfield.bsky.social
3.2K followers 1.4K following 3.9K posts
Novelist ‘as tart, dark and juicy as a summer pudding’. World Fantasy Award finalist. She/her.

Timeline cleanse queen.

The Gyrford series: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj

Horror reviews: https://tinyurl.com/5cyf7x5v

Agent: Sophie Hicks.
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kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer @kitwhitfield.bsky.social · Nov 22
Art by my husband illustrating one of the creatures of my IN THE HEART OF HIDDEN THINGS. (tinyurl.com/nvvetupj)

The brambles had been talking to themselves for a while, but it’s only when someone uprooted one that they started to get really stroppy…
Pen sketch. Spindly bundle of spikes with a blackberry for a head rears up like a mantis. Text caption: ‘Scratchity GOWAY!’ Pen sketch. Skeletal bramble bushes all over spikes hunch like spiders.
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Let's play a game: if you were picking the perfect Wuthering Heights director, who would it be?

I'll start: Stanley Kubrick.

I'm serious. That book is the Full Metal Jacket of its day. A gaze into a culture dominated by violent people so culturally segregated their rule goes unquestioned...

1/9
February 13, 2026 at 9:56 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I like to feel that if it came to a knockdown drag-out style-off between me and my notebook, I’d stand at least some chance of winning.
Photo; two notebooks on a wooden table. The higher, labelled ‘The notebooks people give me’ in ‘Elegant’ font, is a V and A notebook with a beautiful Japanese print in midnight blue and shining gold. The lower, labelled ‘The notebooks I use’ in ‘Typewriter’ font, is a plain navy A4, cheap and basic as possible.
February 13, 2026 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
robheighton.bsky.social
A warning to always keep me well away from the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon Franks Casket, because it just looks too delectable and I can't be held responsible for what happens next
One face of the Franks Casket, showing an intricate whale's bone carving Speculoos biscuits, whose moulded decoration looks vaguely similar to the carvings of the Franks Casket More of the biscuits More of the casket
February 12, 2026 at 11:20 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I didn’t watch the war between the People of Thompson’s field and Gillam’s ditch, but looking at how crestfallen the fairy-mounts are looking in Thompson’s field I’d say the ditch has it.

#AskAFairySmith

Books here: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj
bealeiderman.bsky.social Bea Leiderman @bealeiderman.bsky.social · 1d
How about a rare Colombian moth photographer? 😏

Genus Symphlebia, not very rare but look at that punim!
A moth on a twig, facing the camera. The moth has dark gray eyes and is very furry. The fur is mostly orange around the eyes and fades to yellow. The legs are also orange and yellow. The antennae are mostly hidden, also dark gray
February 12, 2026 at 1:08 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Middle-aged feminism is when you don't correct doctors who mistake your baby for a girl because they'll be gentler with him, and don't correct officials who write to you as 'Mr' because they'll listen to you more carefully.
February 12, 2026 at 11:45 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Morning all.

Artist: Yu Chengyou
Print: two graceful little brown pheasants picking berries off the white snowy ground. Above them, the ground becomes so thick with black berry-stalks and tiny red berries the image has a Jackson Pollock look.
February 12, 2026 at 7:48 AM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
lyndseycroal.bsky.social
A woman befriends a sea witch at the end of the world, in The Loneliness of Water, first pubbed in @hexagonmagazine.bsky.social hexagonmagazine.ca/wp-content/u...
hexagonmagazine.ca
February 5, 2026 at 12:49 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Bluesky has supposedly added a 'drafts' function, but I'm finding that if I try to save more than one draft, it eats either one or both of them. Anyone else getting that?
February 11, 2026 at 10:28 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
#booksky #bookqw word today was 'unbelievable', which stumped me. Went with UNLIKELY.

Sometimes the People dance in an oak grove. The fairy-smiths of Gyrford would be happy to leave them alone, but sometimes the customer insists.

Buy here: tinyurl.com/nvvetupj
To deal with a grove, you must first place iron bands around the trees, and fell them only after they are shackled. This will hold for a while, but iron rusts and must be maintained. If you can keep the People out of the grove for seven years and seven days, they generally take the point, but if you let the iron fail before then, you can expect worse than thorns in your bed and blood in your porridge: you can expect the People after you with all the fury of a stolen home, and they will seize you so thoroughly that it’s a matter of priestly speculation whether even your soul will be able to escape to Heaven. Certainly your body is unlikely to be found, at least in any form your own mother would recognise.
February 11, 2026 at 8:36 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
My husband swears this:

He once dreamed he was a noir detective teaming up with a female sleuth. She would have been a more typical dame, except she was, I quote, ‘spending a year in the body of Barry White for tax purposes.’

Their crime fighting was SMOOTH.
February 10, 2026 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
jeremycshipp.bsky.social
Today's a great day to support some creators.

Writers and artists and creatives of all sorts: reply with a link to one of your works, if you'd like. And feel free to tell us about it.

Everyone: let's check through the replies and buy some creations and support some human beings.
February 10, 2026 at 8:24 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
There’s owls can talk in the woods this season. Look wise as you please, but it turns out all their insights are about mice.

#AskAFairySmith

tinyurl.com/nvvetupj
February 10, 2026 at 8:28 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
One for the ‘pictures Jane Eyre might have painted’ collection.

Artist: Friedrich Hechelmann
Painting: a giant crescent moon towers over a lake between mountains, being drawn along by a team of white figures skimming over the water. The scale is so monumental you can’t clearly see what they are.
February 10, 2026 at 8:50 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
I need a light backpack and can’t find one I like.

There are, however, plenty of nice tote bags, and I have a sewing machine I want to get the hang of. Has anyone got a beginner-friendly pattern for converting a tote bag into a backpack?
February 9, 2026 at 2:58 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Just saw the first cover mock-ups of THE SNAKESTONE GIRLS!

It's always a head-bender to see covers because it makes something entirely imagined suddenly tangible. But they put a big smile on my face, so that's definitely good news.
February 9, 2026 at 10:21 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Mornington Crescent: a rant.

Or: how a goofy word game about train stations is the key to how devout causes can ruin people's ability to have a conversation.

Stand clear of the closing doors, let's begin.

1/18
White-tiled wall with a London Underground sign, a blue centre bar in a red circle. The centre bar reads 'MORNINGTON CRESCENT'. Source: https://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2014/12/30/mornington-crescent-still-peculiar
February 9, 2026 at 8:51 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
An entirely excellent point.

O’Bannon was a way better draftsman than me though. The designer made sense of it, but it took me about five tries to draw this rubbish.
Very crude sketch on printer paper headed ‘Family Emblems.’ On the left, labelled ‘Smith’, a five pointed star with hammer and tongs above. On the left, labelled ‘Mackem’, an anvil with hammer and tongs above, encircled in seven horseshoes. It would take worse spelling than I’m capable of to communicate how rubbish the drawing is. The same emblems rendered with neat professionalism atop a well-laid-out family tree.
February 8, 2026 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
inkybat.bsky.social
Neolithic Faerie Cauldron
February 8, 2026 at 7:38 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
There's music on cold days if you listen for it, sure enough. Just keep your hands in your pockets and your step light; it's a shame to shake such fine work.

#AskAFairySmith

Artist: Arthur Rackham.
Watercolour illustration. A cool, misty day, and we're looking closely at some scrub grass and tattery clover. Resting against a stem is a tiny cello played by a grasshopper; a miniscule woman in drifting clothes dances along a single spiderline between grass stems. Below her stretches a spiderweb, like a net to catch her if she falls.
February 8, 2026 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
athanaca.bsky.social
The wildest dream of a Cormorant🫧

#bird #birdart #illustration #digitalart #fish #bitterling #animalart #creature #artist
An illustration of a great cormorant standing in front of buttering
February 7, 2026 at 4:49 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Here's a fun fact: when you're writing about a fossil-witch in the Jacobean era, she can't say the word 'fossil' because she wouldn't know it.

At most people said 'fossilia' in Latin, meaning 'dug-up thingy.'
February 8, 2026 at 9:46 AM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
You actually can translate ‘gladiator’ as ‘sword guy.’ Nobody can stop you.
February 7, 2026 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer
cpdinosaurs.bsky.social
Yes, yes - we know - Iguanodon, Iguanodontid, etc - but we couldn't help ourselves

(original reconstruction by Fabio Manucci)
illustration of the newly described iguanodontid Haolong dongi, with the Crystal Palace sprawling Iguanodon head digitally (not AI) superimposed on
February 7, 2026 at 3:39 PM
kitwhitfield.bsky.social
Old Ladybird endpapers.
Illustration over an endpaper spread. A leafy tree with daisy-like blooms and blue butterflies against a pale blue sky. In the fork sit a boy and a girl, each reading. In the branches are figures and images from multiple fairy tales: Billy goats gruff, a castle, Rapunzel, an enormous turnip, a little red hen, a red-hatted dwarf, a candle in a holder, a cat and fiddle, a shoemaker, Cinderella’s coach, three bears, a dove, a copper kettle, a wolf, a crown, a porridge pot, a giant, a glass slipper, Red Riding Hood and granny, a fox, Goldilocks sleeping in a bed, a running gingerbread man, Dick Whittington, a fox, and a witch with an apple.
February 7, 2026 at 9:01 AM