My friend Mark Pawson has left us - here’s an account of his brilliance: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

The phases of winter:
- Surviving, just - nice glass of wine after a hard day's work
- Distinctly rundown - lovely cocktail is spirit-raising medicine
- Ill enough to need to drink / too ill to be hungover - portioning whisky carefully
- Health is returning - hello, tequila

Solidarity to all at the Gdn & Obs.

They look like they… don’t read

£5000 prize + Curtis Brown representation on offer here 👇🏼

Writing just isn’t interesting to huge swathes of people, is it? I’d say the majority of my (non-pub ind) friends & most of my family haven’t read my books… www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/nov/17/my-wife-glazes-over-when-i-talk-about-my-writing-how-can-i-come-to-terms-with-her-indifference

Love this for her (& literary fiction in general)

Struggling to finish that book? Good news - you’re not useless, inept and lazy, you just haven’t tried ✨COCA WINE✨

This thread is stupendous 👇🏼

An erotic short story in three acts

Have recently moved; my first ever trip to a carpet shop. Refused to countenance *this* brand on the grounds of the shade names which (am I wrong?) make me feel violent, rageful, murderous, insane. I’m thinking of the copywriter who did this, presumably against their will, & how they are doing now

Hark! My favourite literary festival needs your guest recs! I still think fondly of the year with the frozen rosé machine (frozé???) in the green room. I drank it with Tessa Hadley in the sunshine 🌞

Watched FIREBRAND last night, from @lizfremantle.bsky.social’s novel. It’s so hard to find a fresh take on the Tudors but I really loved the understatedness of it, the low-key intimacy of how we watch Katherine Parr, so very closely. The twisted vision of Henry & the revisionist aspects were fun too

Hello, hi.

I’ve made an inexhaustive starter pack of the bookish people I’ve found here so far 📚

go.bsky.app/EeTCv2s

Introduce yourself with some jobs you have done apart from what you do now:
1. Music journalist
2. Club promoter
3. Vintage clothes-seller
4. Fashion editor
5. Wilton’s Music Hall tour guide when people (men) asked me SO MANY Qs abt Victorian toilets & plumbing & no toilets were not part of the tour

My writing process is that I don't write, then for a while I write, then frustratingly I don't write again, then I'm old.

Tip for lecturers - don’t tell your students about your vivid anxiety dream that you were wearing bumsters. - Bumsters are from before they were born. - Now they’re thinking about your bum. - Formal complaint

So proud of my Booker-winning colleague, Sam. Slipping into Orbital is like literary lucid dreaming