Rekha Valliappan
@silicasun.bsky.social
4.6K followers 3.8K following 95 posts
Author - Poet Award-winning Pushcart & Best of Net nom. Writer & Poet- Nature Nomad, Science Scarab, Art Aesthete -Stories, Poems, CNF, Flash Fiction, Haiku, Published in Over 100+ Literary & Genre Journals & Anthologies https://www.silicasun.wordpress.com
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Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
silicasun.bsky.social
Thank you, Hope, Stuart, you're both right. I for one am not 'indie.' Never have been. I'm traditionally published. Always have been! But we're all #authors just the same. Thanks #writingcommunity 4 your kindness many times over 4 #writerslifts reciprocated likewise in full by me 📚 #silicasun 🍂📙❤️
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
pigeonpagesnyc.bsky.social
“Who ever said, that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style, has poor knowledge of Indian art indeed.”

Oscar Howe’s art accompanies poetry by @allisonfieldbell.bsky.social and Sean Glatch this week: pigeonpagesnyc.com/poetry

(🎨: Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art)
Oscar Howe’s Retreat (1968). Casein on paper. Oscar Howe’s Eagle Dance (1960). Casein and graphite pencil on paper.
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
exacteditions.bsky.social
The Sphere was created to rival the ILN and The Graphic during the Boer war.

Explore the issues published in 1925, from images of the world's highest waterfalls to the discovery of a 1350 B.C. bust of the Egyptian king Akhnaton in Karnak:

👉 http://exacteditions.com/historic/sphere 👈
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
dintywmoore.bsky.social
Someone once told me that every writer has a subject that underlies everything they write. It can be love or death, betrayal or belonging, home or hope or exile. I choose to think my subject is love, and most specifically love for the glittering world of non-human life around us ~ Helen Macdonald
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
catapultbooks.bsky.social
Happy pub to @kaychronister.bsky.social's THIN PLACES and THE BOG WIFE in paperback! Just in time to add to your spooky season TBR...🎃

✨ “Chronister’s writing is beautiful . . . But there is a clinging dread and mystery in these stories that will stay with you.” — @literaryhub.bsky.social
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cynthiayoderauthor.bsky.social
It’s such a great story! 🐞🛌
silicasun.bsky.social
Thank you, Hope, Stuart, you're both right. I for one am not 'indie.' Never have been. I'm traditionally published. Always have been! But we're all #authors just the same. Thanks #writingcommunity 4 your kindness many times over 4 #writerslifts reciprocated likewise in full by me 📚 #silicasun 🍂📙❤️
silicasun.bsky.social
#WyrdWednesday scarecrows long considered mock humans blowing in cornfields invoking terror by their undead demonic monster look. From ancient Egypt to ancient Greece, England to Kansas, Defoe to Hawthorne scarecrows have perpetuated #horror of menacing entities of death and decay 👻 #silicasun ☠️🎃📙❤️
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
asls.org.uk
“It all started in the playground – the word was there was a vampire and everyone was going to head out there after school”

For three nights in September 1954, over 200 children hunted a 7-foot-tall vampire through Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis
#WyrdWednesday
dangerousminds.net/comments/the...
The Gorbals Vampire: The child-eating monster that terrorized Glasgow in the 1950s
For three nights the children came to the "City of the Dead." They carried knives, clubs and stakes--even a crucifix. Two hundred or more children came to the Gorbals Necropolis--a large cemetery situ...
dangerousminds.net
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
evelynkoch.bsky.social
On this week's undead theme for #WyrdWednesday: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (14thC) mentions a story of a monster begotten by the dead that comes to haunt a vile rapist. (The full story's quote is in the Alt-Text.)
The undead monster as depicted in a 1582-edition.
Woodcut from The Voyages and Trauailes of Sir John Maundeuile Knight (1582), fol. Cii.v, depicting a horned and beaked monster with an additional face on its back rising from a tomb and attacking a man standing next to the tomb who seems unfussed by it all. 
The accompanying story is:
"[...] and as men passe that way by a place where was wont to be a great cittie that men call Sathalay, for all that country was lost through the folly of a young man, who had a faire Damsell that hée loued well, and shée dyed sodainely, and was buryed in a graue of Marble, and for the great loue hée had to her, hée went in a night to her tombe and opened it, and went and lay by her, and a while afterward returned home againe, and when it came to the end of ix. monethes, a voice came to him and said in this manner, as in the next Chapter followeth. [...] GOE vnto the tombe of the same woman that thou hast lyen by, and open it, béehold well that which thou hast béegotten on her, and if thou let it goe, thou shalt haue a great harme, and hée went and opened the Tombe, and there flew out a monster right hidious for to sée, the whiche monster flew about the cittie and country, and soone after the cittie and the country sanck downe, and there are many perillous passages." (Cii.v-Ciii.r)
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
melissae.bsky.social
E. Nesbit’s “From the Dead” features a reanimated body that is both terrifying and incredibly tragic. The story appears in her collection Grim Tales (1893). #wyrdwednesday

www.gutenberg.org/files/40321/...
Cover to E. Nesbit’s Grim Tales. It features a disembodied hand over the title. Both the title and hand are red against a tan background. Sepia-toned photo of Edith Nesbit.
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
silicasun.bsky.social
#MythologyMonday #autumnequinox 🍁 #HappyNavratri First day of #autumnfall 🍂 Legend has it today marks the start of the nine day battle by the powerful deity in one of her many manifestations over the demon accompanied nightly by vigorous dance moves claps sticks #DandiyaRaas #Garba 💃 #silicasun 🪔📗❤️
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
davetait.bsky.social
Came across this NYT story about what looks like a fascinating exhibit of travel books from between 1200 and 1550 at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York…where I'm not.

The article is a bit like an NYT story about a museum exhibit, so don't fret if you can't get past the paywall, because… /1
‘Book of Marvels’ at the Morgan, Oddities From Cannibals to Giant Snails
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
arthistoryanimalia.bsky.social
For #ManuscriptMonday and #MedievalMonday :
a hill full of #rabbits from The Lutterell Psalter, 1325-40, British Library Add. MS 42130, folio 176v.
www.bl.uk/manuscripts/...
"Several rabbits on a hill riddled with their tunnels. A white hunting animal, perhaps a dog, enters one of the tunnels. The two rabbits on top of the hill appear to be having a conversation.
Marginal illustration from a psalter." (description via https://bestiary.ca/ beasts/beastgallery4483.htm)
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
medmilmedicine.bsky.social
“Everybunny up for a Conga Line !” - 14th century, British Library, Add. 36684, f. 24v
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readalittlepoem.bsky.social
Today’s poem is selected by Ajanaé Dawkins (@moonsatdusk.bsky.social) as part of the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry.
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
poetbex.bsky.social
Delighted to hear that my poem 'Moeritherium' has received a Best of the Net nomination!

Published by the wonderful @whaleroadreview.bsky.social, it was inspired by this model in the Natural History Museum 💙
Moeritherium

After walking beneath blue whale bones
and following the loops of mammoth tusks,

I linger near an unsuspecting model:
the squat, shapely form of a moeritherium.

Indirect ancestor of elephants and sea cows,
all Eocene curves with soft, painted eyes.

The grey egg of her body is dwarfed
by stockier relatives, but she seems

to float in front of me, goddess of buoyancy,
the spirit of the semi-aquatic. I admire her

womb-shaped face, her stubby trunk, which
is touch-whitened from decades of petting,

but resist the urge to reach out. I am content
with our closeness, the shared beauty

of those without descendants.
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan
kamulengaauthor.bsky.social
Honoured to be shortlisted for the 2025 African Writers Awards & Wakini Kuria Prize
• The Flame of Ubuntu (Short Story)
• The Song of the Lost Garden (Children’s Lit)
Winners announced at the African Writers Conference
www.africanwritersawards.com/announcing-t...
#AWA2025 #AfricanLiterature
Announcing the 2025 African Writers Awards Shortlist
We are immensely proud to unveil the extraordinary talents shortlisted for the 2025 African Writers Awards. These remarkable writers have captivated our judges with their brilliance and creativity, re...
www.africanwritersawards.com
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silicasun.bsky.social
The recent corn moon blood moon lunar spectacular coincided with the potent ancestral rites of passage pitru paksha purnima #fullmoon performed for departed souls where food is offered rice, corn grains in plenty #FairytaleTuesday 💐
silicasun.wordpress.com 🌹📘💙 #silicasun 📚
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lrb.co.uk
‘The difficulty is how to be a person who goes to work, and also a father and a husband, when work is in many ways hostile to real human connection, a place where language is “messaging’”and emotions are unprofessional.’

Emily Berry reads Ben Pester’s new novel: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Emily Berry · I am entirely made of wood: Ben Pester’s Surreal Scrutiny
One could say that Ben Pester’s Expansion Project is about a man who loses his mind at work, but that’s not really...
www.lrb.co.uk
Reposted by Rekha Valliappan