Thank you :)

This is a thorough and eye-opening article

💙📚

"We’re not interested in congratulating Baillie Gifford for profiting less from human rights abuses than other asset managers...We are interested in stopping human rights abuses as urgently as possible...as governments refuse to intervene, investments worth billions become very significant indeed"

This is a hugely important read, especially if your labour contributes in any way to the books industry

#booksky

Today @tribunemagazine.bsky.social publishes a vitally important, highly personal and urgently necessary piece by Yara Rodrigues Fowler on the history of the FFB campaigning around literary festivals:

Writers Unbound As another literary festival season draws to a close, a writers’ group is highlighting the connections between publishing, the fossil fuel industry, and the genocide in Gaza.

I’ve written a long read for @tribunemagazine.bsky.social about happened with Baillie Gifford, @fossilfreebooks.org and all the festivals. A lot of fake news circulated at the time so, whatever side you came down on, I’d be grateful if you read and shared it. tribunemag.co.uk/2025/09/writ...

Fair Event, with Jen Calleja - Tuesday 17th June 2025 Join us in the bookshop to hear Jen Calleja in conversation with Camilla Grudova about Fair: The Life-Art of Translation . 6.30pm on Tuesday 17th June at Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5...

Tonight in Edinburgh with Camilla Grudova @goldenharebooks.bsky.social! Event is SOLD OUT apparently but always worth getting in touch with the bookshop for returns. goldenharebooks.com/products/fai... @prototypepubs.bsky.social

It also touches on the work @fossilfreebooks.org does in solidarity with Palestine and for climate justice: bsky.app/profile/foss...

A year has passed since the original publication of my review essay on Isabella Hammmad's Enter Ghost and @yararf.bsky.social's there are more things - very happy to be able to share it in open access now, too: research-portal.uu.nl/ws/files/262...

(Hopefully) needless to say also, but the fault here lies with the anti-trans movement, not everyone who fights for trans rights, for us all being divided and consumed by this!

GC politics fails on its own terms: it does not materially help cis women.

I’ve been reading Marx (yes) & I think this is the argument we need to make, we need to say what is it you want? Is it no poor women? Is it no domestic violence? Because your not fixing that this way; this is a distraction.

I do not care what jk Rowling thinks a woman is. i do care that she poured £70k into a campaign that harms cis women (as well as trans women) when she could have funded every single abortion the Abortion Support Network did last year.

*whatever your definition of woman*, you should not want the state policing this for you & you should not want to strengthen the evangelical anti-abortion movement. Because this only harms cis women. But this what GC lawfare achieves.

The anti-trans/GC movement is one of the most successful divide & conquer, distraction techniques ever.

It has consumed and divided three generations of feminists while women around the world get poorer, our access to abortion is threatened and it becomes harder to escape domestic violence

Yara Rodrigues Fowler & Xani Byrne | Freewheeling | 11 June @ 7pm Join authors Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Xani Byrne to discuss their contribution to the cycling memoir anthology Freewheeling. It tells the story of Yara and Xani's two-day tandem bike ride from Edinbu...

📢Event alert! GLASGOW friends, the wonderful @yararf.bsky.social and Xani Byrne will be at Mount Florida Books discussing their contribution to🚴🏼‍♂️FREEWHEELING: Essays on Cycling🚴🏼‍♀️Join them!
📅11 June @ 7:00pm
📍Mount Florida Books, Glasgow
mountfloridabooks.com/products/yar...

📣PSA: translations, authors, illustrators 📣

Have you joined your union, the @societyofauthors.bsky.social? Join before weds 30th April to vote in this year's elections.

Claim £50 towards membership from @fossilfreebooks.org's mutual aid fund: opencollective.com/fossil-free-...

Announcing an #IndieBookshopWeek event with Xani Byrne & Yara Rodrigues Fowler! They’ll both be here to discuss the latest @dauntbookspub.bsky.social anthology Freewheeling: Essays on Cycling on Wed 18th June. 🚲

Sign up here (in-person/online): www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/freew...

Pregnant offenders in England and Wales could be spared jail under new guidelines Changes to sentencing guidance will also apply to mothers of children under one year old

🎉CAMPAIGN WIN: Sentencing Council announce new Imposition guideline that acknowledges prison is high-risk for pregnant women and tells courts to avoid sending women there! 📣🎉✨

This is so, so hard-won & would never have happened without the power of MOTHERS 🎉💞

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

How it started How it’s going

Pregnant in prison: 'When I thought my baby had died nobody seemed to care' Pregnant women in prison are seven times more likely to suffer stillbirth and twice as likely to give birth prematurely.

The number of pregnant women being held in prison on remand (before trial or sentence) has increased by 36%

metro.co.uk/2025/02/22/p...

A liberdade é um lugar Uma conversa com Ruth wilson Gilmore sobre Du Bois, marxismo negro e capitalismo racial

revistacult.uol.com.br/home/liberda...

We actually don’t have to convince ppl what a women is or isn’t to take the air out of the trans panic - we just have to show them the two sides, and ask which side they are on.

There are two sides: one is fighting trans women in women’s prisons; the other is fighting the incarceration of pregnant women, the death of babies born in prison, the rape and abuse of women who are mostly working class, disproportionately woc, and survivors by the state.

On the left we do a lot of TELLING people why they’re wrong… what’s more effective is SHOWING we are on their side by fighting for improvements in their material conditions (or, in the case of GCs, the ppl they say they care about)

AND, by comparison, we show that their “wins” are all notional / emotional, not material - often in fact materially damaging for the rights of cos women eg to abortion access by weakening legislative precedent on bodily autonomy

every time trans inclusive feminists win real & universal changes for women, like ££ for domestic violence services, abortion access & prison abolition, we *show* the GCs up on their own terms, which is (ostensibly) rights for cis women

Fighting for materials changes for all women is how we deflate “gender critical” claims to the feminist moral high ground.

Eg The GCs say: leave cis women - mostly abuse survivors - in prison - where they are further abused - as long as it’s not with trans women; we say: no women in prison.

Today’s HMI report is such harrowing reading — and this is just a snapshot of what goes on inside women’s prisons.

Prisons inflict violence and trauma on women who have already experienced more than enough violence and trauma in their lives.

🍉💚Giller Prize drops Scotiabank! 💚🍉

A victory for the Canandian writers, for worker organising and for common sense!

Whether it’s Baillie Gifford or Scotiabank, however many op/eds call for nuance for the bomb-makers! most writers want nothing to do with companies involved in genocide.