The whole web is built on a primary grace: that the people visiting you are trustworthy. It costs a little something for me to serve my webpage to everyone who goes there. When the number of scrapers outnumbers the number of humans by an order of magnitude, this grace is fragile.

I haven't had a long enough breath to talk about how AI is ruining the open web. API after API I used to use is closing - literally because paying the $$$ required to feed these impersonation machines is prohibitive.

Yes, the internet will soon be a narrow channel of slightly wrong stuff. I hate ai. So hard to avoid it.

Trump! Journalist on Mussolini at the time: "just because something is silly doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous”.

Heads up. If you’re one of the many many people I’ve tried to convince to come to Belfast for the book festival, now’s the time to make that dream come true. The programme is live and it is cracking belfastbookfestival.com/festival-pro...

✨️ We're thrilled to introduce our new dedicated imprint for the short story. The Infidelities intends to spotlight some of our favourite established and new writers working with the short form. ✨️

Pre-orders are now live.

www.salopress.com

And yes, we're absolutely open to submissions 😊

The New York Times is now blocking The Wayback Machine from accessing its articles.

That means you'll no longer be able to view archived versions of NYT stories published in 2026 and beyond on archive.org.

(All those posts you see tracking changes to NYT headlines and ledes? They relied on WBM).

Toby Jones reads from The Director | The Booker Prize YouTube video by The Booker Prizes

Watch Toby Jones read from The Director, the #InternationalBooker2026 shortlisted book written by Daniel Kehlmann and translated Ross Benjamin.

youtu.be/7B1x_YW7_qQ

Fantastic.

To summarise: in the run-up to national elections, the state broadcaster is relentlessly promoting the agenda of a particular party by by running flimsily evidenced scare stories presented as investigative journalism.

At least Orbán paid his shills.

Photograph b & w fragment of woodland, two trees complexed with bared branches

A work has two levels of meaning: literal and concealed.

Roland Barthes

Conversation: Goatsong by Phoebe Giannisi w/ Brian Sneeden & Clare Pollard Friday 17th April 6.30-9pm The ancient Greek word for tragedy (τραγωδία) is a compound of goat (τράγος) and song (ᾠδή). In Phoebe Giannisi’s Goatsong, translated by Brian Sneeden, the seam that connec...

I’m chairing this tomorrow at Burley Fisher, talking about Phoebe Giannisi’s incredible collection GOATSONG 🐐🐐🐐

burleyfisherbooks.com/products/con...

Late discovery: Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake from 2024. Brilliant, brilliant. M.John Harrison's Guardian review describes it as a 'a lively, timely, satisfyingly rough-grained novel of ideas'. A fantastic book. Cynical, mysterious & funny.

I don't do exactly that, but I certainly hop around. I will read a few early on, then hop to see what's happening at the end. Then I go back.

The International Short Story is Booming In 2002, a friend asked if I would join him for a San Francisco Symphony concert with David Robinson as guest conductor. They were to play Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphonie. I was a bit ambi…

@rabihalameddine.bsky.social and John Freeman consider their new anthology and the appeal of the international short story.

BBC Four - Krapp's Last Tape Harold Pinter stars in Samuel Beckett's acclaimed study of mortality and memory.

And not ONE of you even thought to mention there was Beckett on BBC4 tonight?!
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

The cover of Nicholas Royle's 'Finders, Keepers: the Secret Life of Second hand books' published by Salt: https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/finders-keepers-9781784633417

Author and publisher Nicholas Royle and part of his magnificent Picador collection.

On Thursday (16th April) join me and author @nicholasroyle.bsky.social for a live online conversation to mark the publication of 'FINDERS KEEPERS: The Secret life of Second-hand Books.' Free, and all welcome. If you haven't already been invited contact me via davidjcollard.wixsite.com/my-site

I'm guessing every U.S. citizen or Green Card holder (living in any country) poet knows about this $100,000 award for a book of poetry, but just in case...
arts.cgu.edu/tufts-poetry...

Wow. America - What are you doing to your people??? (Never mind the rest of the world)

What do you use instead? Would like the get away from American tech if possible.

Creative Nonfiction at City Lit: biography, memoir, personal essays. I'll be online from 6-8pm on a Thursday, from 23/4 for 11 weeks, exploring ways to bring true stories vividly alive. Research can be part of the story! Fun & practical. www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/writing-creative-non-fiction

A stack of paperback books on a white table

My haul from today's Alternative Book Fair at Islington's public library.

Submission Guidelines We publish short stories, including translations, of up to 2,500 words that have not previously appeared elsewhere, either in print or online (including your own blog and social media). We offer th…

ICYMI we're open for submissions of contemporary #shortstories #flashfiction #microfiction and #translations #callforsubmissions. Please click on the link below for our guidelines. We're looking fwd to reading your words...

Creative Nonfiction at City Lit: biography, memoir, personal essays. I'll be online from 6-8pm on a Thursday, from 23/4 for 11 weeks, exploring ways to bring true stories vividly alive. Research can be part of the story! Fun & practical. www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/writing-creative-non-fiction

Ofwat warns water companies over executive pay and governance - Water Magazine Ofwat writes to water companies reinforcing expectations that executive pay must be firmly aligned with company performance and customer outcomes.

Ofwat warns England water companies over executive pay & governance.

This is just a PR circus.

Companies have reframed bonuses, customers have no say on exec pay.

For years companies have dumped sewage, fleeced customers, no exec prosecuted, no corporate licence cancelled.

All approved by govts.

Increasingly hard to see how anyone can disagree. Both the US and Israel have been permitted to normalise mass civilian killing, collective punishment, occupation and contempt for international law. If you don't draw the line here, you never will.

Take Four Books - Makenna Goodman - BBC Sounds Makenna Goodman on her new novel, Helen of Nowhere, and its links to three other works.

Here's the link: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Interesting. I heard her talk about it on Take Four Books (R4), which is a programme always worth listening to.