It’s a big year for Creative Writing @uoyenglishrl.bsky.social, with new UG curriculum, our first cohort of CW PhDs finishing, a new creative research school, and our CW MA launching in Sept. I look forward to celebrating that history & future later today.
Lot of feelings today, after working on this book for so long. Mostly I hope people find it useful for thinking and talking about this often still unthinkable and unspeakable topic.
Publishing today!
A profound exploration of the connection between poetry and suicide, drawing from the lives of poets, and his own experience, by @jtwelsch.bsky.social.
Available now from all good bookshops & online.
Head to our Events page (link in bio) to find a book launch near you. #booksky
So sorry you’ve had to deal with all this, Sophie, and really hope you’re starting to feel better and get the treatment you need soon!
Join us as we mark the launch of 'The Poetry of Suicide: Lessons in grief from the lives and deaths of poets' by @jtwelsch.bsky.social.
Reflecting on poetry’s long engagement with suicide, interwoven with the personal history of suicide within his own family.
Tickets are on sale now. #booksky
In his new book, 'The poetry of suicide', poet and author @jtwelsch.bsky.social weaves stories of poets who took their own lives with the history of suicide in his family, searching for a new way of understanding these difficult deaths.
Pre-order from your local bookshop or online today. #booksky
#EnglishCreates: Futures
Today, Dr JT Welsch (University of York) re-examines the so-called 'death of reading':
'Like most clickbait, these rants rest on a false opposition. There’s no real war between print and digital media.'
universityenglish.ac.uk/death-of-rea...
#EnglishStudies
Did you know that My Fair Lady was never meant to be a love story?
We had a great event yesterday discussing aromanticism, love stories, and the aro/ace origins of My Fair Lady with @jtwelsch.bsky.social and @kristin-kaeuper.bsky.social!
Only a few tickets left, for what should be a very fun #AroWeek event @thebookishtype.bsky.social with my talk on My Fair Lady, then conversation about aro/ace representation with @kristin-kaeuper.bsky.social, founder of @aroaceresearch.bsky.social
For this in and around Leeds, it’ll be love(r)ly to see you for this fun talk at the queer indie bookshop @thebookishtype.bsky.social to celebrate LGBT+ History Month & Aro Awareness Week! thebookishtype.co.uk/products/sho... organised with @kristin-kaeuper.bsky.social & @aroaceresearch.bsky.social
It's National Grief Awareness Week in the UK, so I put down some thoughts about the poetry of grief and accepting grief's absurdity. open.substack.com/pub/jtwelsch... #NGAW #grief #bereavement
To mark National Grief Awareness Week (December 2nd - 8th) we're proud to share the cover for @jtwelsch.bsky.social's forthcoming book, The poetry of suicide: Lessons in grief from the lives and deaths of poets, which is publishing April 2026.
#nationalgriefawarenessweek #booksky
Also genuinely moving to see the students reading through debates around specialisation and interdisciplinarity in the earliest planning for @york.ac.uk uni and campus - knowing they embody and finally bring that vision full-circle as our first Liberal Arts cohort.
Brilliant time in the archives @uoyborthwick.bsky.social with Liberal Arts students today, going through old planning documents, prospectuses, and press clippings around the origins of @york.ac.uk - from a failed 1647 bid to more radical ideas for learning & student life when it launched in 1963.
40 years ago today, the first Calvin & Hobbes comic strip was published. I honestly don’t know if any writer or artist has given me more lasting joy and wonder than Bill Watterson.
Saw a provocative presentation the other week about assessments where gen-AI is *required*, but yeah, it’s been weird discovering which tasks I’ve assigned are inadvertently AI-friendly or AI-proof. I really don’t want a full retreat to exams.
Introducing: Dr JT Welsch
@jtwelsch.bsky.social is Director of Liberal Arts and Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Industries at the University of York. He works on asexuality, creativity studies, creative industries, creative writing, queer history, and creative-critical practice.
I agree, Four Quartets pamphlets are so lovely! Took me a while to get a decent set, and I still get a thrill from spotting one in the wild.
Weekend book foraging! Perks of living in York, the UK’s rare book capital. It’s not a Hogarth but glad to add a 1940 Faber Waste Land to the Eliot collection and complete my set of Faber Berrymans with a pristine His Toy, His Dream, His Rest.
We're delighted to share with you our brand-new Spring / Summer 2026 Trade Catalogue.
Featuring new titles publishing March-August 2026, including @jtwelsch.bsky.social, @johnrobbofficial.bsky.social, @arghkid.bsky.social and others.
Browse here: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/catalogues #booksky
Thrilled this network now exists & thrilled to be part of it. Please share with anyone researching aro/ace things. Happy Ace Week indeed!
I don’t really understand Substack, but I needed a place to work through some thoughts about my new book. For a cheery first post, I’m grappling with how to avoid ‘selling your trauma’.
open.substack.com/pub/jtwelsch...
So pleased with the cover MUP came up with for this tough book. In it, Ophelia’s offstage death is an exemplar of the poetry-like ambiguities around every suicide.
Out in April, but pre-order-able now from the usual places & @manchesterup.bsky.social: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526191991/
A presenter at the Queer Data Showcase in front of a slide that reads: 1% of the population is asexual.
"We need to lead the design of data systems, not the other way round."
📝 A short blog post from the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab on last week's QUEER DATA SHOWCASE in Edinburgh. gensexdatalab.business-school.ed.ac.uk/updates/quee...
Smiths in York Station looking Pride-ready as I head to Edinburgh today for a talk in this very exciting Queer Data Showcase 🏳️🌈 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-queer-...
🎺Announcing the fantastic lineup of speakers for the Irish Studies and Cultural Theory Summer School in Vienna from July 14-18, 2024 (Part 1)!! 🥁
More info: lnkd.in/ged32uZg
#irishstudies #summerschool
Mini-festival today for PhD students @uoyenglishrl.bsky.social - immediately fascinated in a session on careers outside academia to see some actual (rare) data on this, showing Humanities PhDs are most likely to move into ‘other occupations’.
Looking forward to this first-of-its-kind #QueerDataShowcase in Edinburgh, 5 June - a lovely bunch of artists, academics, and activists playing with queer data in different ways. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-queer-...
Thanks, yes, I’ve been playing Chopin forever but he also remains elusive in a way I appreciate. We’ll see how Valldemossa affects that!
Oh, I love this! Thank you. I’m researching something I’ll write about Chopin and ‘Nothing in her books could make him well’ will be fixed in my head now.
