On my way to give a talk at @northumbriauni.bsky.social and it feels entirely appropriate to be prepping next week's class on Catherine Cookson on the train!

Did Regency romance mad libs with my students today (from Beyond Heaving Bosoms by @smartbitches.bsky.social) so am I a cool teacher now?

Jilly Cooper: why readers still cherish her ‘fat, fun, frothy novels’ Many of Cooper’s depictions of sex are very funny. However, there is a clear message throughout.

We have been researching her works for a few years now - @jodimca.bsky.social and I wrote about the late Jilly Cooper's work and the readers who loved her for @theconversation.com

doi.org/10.64628/AB....

If you can't access the chapter and want to read let me or @menysnoweballes.bsky.social know and we'll send a pre-print your way, or try this link: research.birmingham.ac.uk/files/278419...

Particularly fond of this line: "If, as Sontag writes, ‘[c]amp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers’ then camp is also Ken wearing three watches and two pairs of sunglasses, or over-naming his house."

Finally received a copy of this from the publisher (although ebook only, and I can't download it?!) and was reminded that @menysnoweballes.bsky.social and I wrote some SMART thoughts (probably all from Rachel tbh).

a close up of a barbie doll with blonde hair ALT: a close up of a barbie doll with blonde hair

Hi Barbies! Pleased that @dramyburge.bsky.social & my chapter, '‘The man behind the tan’: Ken’s Trumpian Absurdity' has been published in the exciting new book The Barbie Phenomenon, Volume 1! www.routledge.com/The-Barbie-P...

This is true, we do! Thanks @lauravivanco.bsky.social

The cover of The Bonkbuster: Women's Popular Romance in the Long 1980s. It's pink leopard print.

Cover reveal! @dramyburge.bsky.social and I revealed the cover of our new academic book, The Bonkbuster: Women's Popular Reading in the Long 1980s, at the @iaspr.bsky.social conference today. Out January 2026! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bonkbuste...

I wrote a blog post about my book!

Want some ramblings about fairy ladies, magical princesses, and serpent women (and how we should feel about them)? Or just curious about how reading medieval romance is like watching Star Wars??

It's all here, folks (and also a 35% discount 👀)!

The promotion trajectory of Wrexham AFC (3x in 3 years) is *literally* the plot of Jilly Cooper's book Tackle!, so which owner is secretly Rupert Campbell-Black: Ryan Reynolds or Rob McElhenney?

Sign any petitions you can, write to your MP about the AI and Copyright consultation - ALCS has published their response here: www.alcs.co.uk/about-alcs/c...

Find out if Meta has used your work: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

And sign up for ALCS if you've published work in the UK!

Organisations like ALCS exist to make sure that authors are paid when people print, copy, or access their work.

You can bet Meta hasn't paid any authors for use of their work.

Today was @alcs.co.uk payment day! Always a delightful surprise, and a reminder authors should be paid for their work.

A less delightful surprise this week was finding out that 8 things I've published, including the monograph based on my PhD research, have been used by Meta to train their AI.

Screenshot of the transcript of the episode

There I was, minding my own business, reading my Jackie Collins (technically work as @jodimca.bsky.social would attest) when I was asked about what I was reading for Read This podcast! Always delighted to talk about bonkbusters (I'm on at 7:20).

open.spotify.com/episode/31Er...

Rivals: the highs and lows of adapting a 1980s 'bonkbuster' for a 21st-century TV audience The bonkbuster receded into the background of popular culture in the 21st century. So why is it having a cultural moment in 2024?

Mine and @jodimca.bsky.social's piece on the Rivals TV show for @uk.theconversation.com has been picked up by RNZ!

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Two books on a desk, Faludi Backlash and Wolf, Fire with Fire

Today is a reading day at the State Library of Victoria 📖

This is tomorrow!! @dramyburge.bsky.social and I will be presenting our keynote on bonkbusters first up, from 10:15-11:15am. If you're in Melbourne, come along and let us tell you about some truly bonkers books.

Couldn't find her handle before but this article partly looks at @brijbautista.bsky.social's novel You, Me, U.S. (2019)

Now that it's fully open access, happy to share this article of mine that was recently published in Literature, Critique, and Empire Today (formerly Journal of Commonwealth Literature) on marriage migration in romance novels by Helen Hoang and Brigitte Bautista!

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

You too! Welcome 😁

Two heart shaped cookies that read "love studies" and "love @ecu"

I had an absolutely wonderful time at Edith Cowan Uni in Perth talking all things Love Studies with Madalena Grobbelar, Elizabeth Reid Boyd and Debra Dudek! Dream collaboration team - and there is TONS of exciting research coming out of the ECU network.

ICYMI, Melbourne! @dramyburge.bsky.social and I are psyched to be giving this keynote to talk all about the books and readers of Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conran and Judith Krantz.

I will join you on this hill, friend.

Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan Romance Fandom in 21st-century Pakistan offers the first major study of English-speaking romance fandom in South Asia, providing a new reader-centric model that…

Hi everyone!

Happily resharing that my little book will be out in the world on 28th November. It is about the anglophone romance reading fandom in Pakistan, book history, & some bits of postcolonialism.
#AcademicChatter #AcademicSky #Romancelandia

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/romance-f...

Had THE BEST time chatting about Rivals and mine and @jodimca.bsky.social's research on Ireland AM this morning!

This is my in-the-office-before-8.15am face 😂

Rivals: the highs and lows of adapting a 1980s ‘bonkbuster’ for a 21st-century TV audience Even those unfamiliar with the genre will no doubt enjoy the adaption of Jilly Cooper’s frothy novel. But how will the TV version approach the less savoury attitudes that were prevalent in the 1980s?

For anyone else watching the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals, released today, @jodimca.bsky.social and I wrote a piece for @uk.theconversation.com!

theconversation.com/rivals-the-h...

How To Make Gravy | Official Trailer | BINGE YouTube video by BINGE

I learned enough on my last trip to Australia to understand what this film is about (and also why it should have been released on the 21st December)
youtu.be/K_Fwe9Q6NB0?...

Flyer text: CFP: Nostalgia and Popular Culture Symposium "Nostalgia is always complicated - complicated in what it looks like, how it works, upon whom it works, and even who works on it." Sean Scanlan (2004, p.3) Cohosted by Deakin's Reading Writing Futures and the Reading & Screening the Fantastique Research Network, this one-day symposium will facilitate robust discussions on the role of nostalgia in the production and reception of popular cultures. Spanning disciplines, forms and genres, this event aims to think beyond clear-cut conceptions of nostalgia and towards more nuanced understandings of it as simultaneously limiting, comforting, provocative and powerful in the context of popular culture. Please submit a 250-word abstract for 20-minute papers or panels and a 100-word bio-note to r.fetherston@deakin.edu.au by Friday 11 October 2024.

Hey Australian scholars! Do you have some thoughts on nostalgia and popular fiction? Deakin's having a symposium on November 21!

@dramyburge.bsky.social & I are delighted to be the keynotes, presenting some of our work on bonkbusters. Full CFP link here (goes to a PDF): bit.ly/3ZidjRJ

The CoHo boom: How Colleen Hoover’s trauma-filled novels became such a global phenomenon A young woman sits on her couch, an open book in her hands, its partially obscured pastel pink cover immediately recognisable as Colleen Hoover’s global sensation It Ends with Us (IEWU). While a mourn...

It's behind a paywall, but I was quoted in a piece on Colleen Hoover in the Irish Sunday Independent's Life magazine this weekend!

www.independent.ie/entertainmen...