The #WimbledonBookFest is 🔥🔥🔥 this year. Been to sold-out talks with Nussaibah Younis, Sanam Mahloudji, Julea Kim, Ela Lee, Park Seolyeon, Nikita Gill, Elodie Harper, Matthew Teller and Mahmoud Muna. All absorbing, thought-provoking & enriching! Bravo to the team! 👏🏽👏🏽

Indie presses in ‘existential crisis’ call for trade support

ICYMI: More than 20 independent publishing houses – including Bluemoose Books, Tilted Axis Press and Influx Press – have written an open letter calling for the trade to “work together to ensure the longevity of the UK’s independent presses” as they face an “existential crisis” 👇

Zack on Bold Politics podium

I'm Jewish. I'm also Mancunian.

Every other national party leader was interviewed by Laura Kunesberg during their conference.

Maybe the BBC thought as someone who also supports Palestine - I had nothing to say?

Let's keep growing: join.greenparty.org.uk

‘They’d allowed me to enter realms of darkness, guiding me through and showing me beauty where my fears once lay.’ - @monisharajesh.bsky.social on the gift of night trains, in her new and lovely book, Moonlight Express. #travelwriting

Please don’t succumb to hopelessness over Palestine. Your voice can still make a difference | Arwa Mahdawi As the war gets livestreamed to our phones, it is easy to be overwhelmed and feel helpless. But even small acts of activism add up, writes Arwa Mahdawi

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Continuing my summer reading, just finished Wanderland by @jinireddy.bsky.social . Brilliant book.

Thank you so much! I’m so pleased you enjoyed it. 😊

Fundamentally by @nussaibah.bsky.social is brilliant!

My feature on central Montenegro, strikingly beautiful and often overlooked by visitors, is in today’s @theguardian.com ! Many thanks to Jane Dunford for commissioning.

Montenegro - views on a bike ride down to Lake Skadar, a bird paradise.

Such a moving celebration of powerful new work by Gazan artist Malak Mattar at Central St Martins yesterday eve.
🇵🇸🇵🇸

‘Why travel didn’t bring the world together’ Interesting piece by columnist Janan Ganesh in @ftweekend.com

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wins Pulitzer prize for commentary Renowned poet and author wins prize for series of New Yorker essays on suffering of Palestinians in Gaza

‘His essays portrayed the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience…’
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Not to be missed! In aid of @medicalaidpal.bsky.social

Cannizaro Park, Wimbledon. Peak flower!

Sand, sea, and sky, Ilha da Armona

Brave and principled and inspiring

Great to see spine-stiffening example of @harvard.edu; refusal to bow to Trump's demands for staggering federal interference. Others following suit.
Assault on universities =
* assault on public purpose of education
* on freedom of thought
* on life-saving research
www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Cycling in the Rio Formosa Natural Park near Olhão, Portugal

Jini did the most wonderful reading for us at our launch - lucky us!! And lucky us to have her writing, and that of these other brilliant writers, in our latest anthology 🚲

‘Gaza, it breaks my heart to see you in this state’: three stories from young Palestinian writers Authors from the We Are Not Numbers project on their dreams of becoming architects or artists, and a report on how a young woman found fulfilment in fast food

"If still-living souls, crying out from Gaza to the outside world, are barely heard, how will ancient stones fare any better before they erode away, taking with them the history of a city and a people?"

Three powerful stories by young Palestinian writers in Gaza.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

😊😊

For Freewheeling, a collection of essays published by @dauntbookspub.bsky.social I wrote about
an unlikely blind date on two wheel, one that unfolded over 400 km and 10 days, + cycling as a kid in Montreal. Some marvellous contributors including the late, legendary Dervla Murphy. Out now!

I have heard from people in Gaza, and they are starving. There is a genuine fear too that this escalation is about taking the land forever.

I urget the gov't to recognise the state of Palestine because at some point it just won't exist anymore.

with Andrew Marr on LBC:

‘Meta has stolen books’: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’ Writers will gather at the Facebook owner’s King’s Cross office in opposition to its use of the LibGen database to train its AI models Authors and other publishing industry professionals will stage a demonstration outside Meta’s London office today in protest of the organisation’s use of copyrighted books to train artificial intelligence. Novelists Kate Mosse and Tracy Chevalier as well as poet and former Royal Society of Literature chair Daljit Nagra will be among those in attendance outside the company’s King’s Cross office. Continue reading...

‘Meta has stolen books’: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’

The most beautiful book cover on my shelf, me thinks. Picasso’s Guernica, no less. (Was reminded of it in a piece about Pierce Brosnan in the FT. He spoke of his work as an artist and and how he adored the Dali cover on Sartre’s Nausea.)

Not yet !

Gary Lineker among 500 media figures urging BBC to reinstate Gaza documentary Exclusive: Film and TV stars among those writing to corporation after it pulled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone

“At the heart of this film are children surviving a war zone & as documentary-makers we have a sacrosanct duty to protect them. The campaign to discredit this film has dehumanised them & shamefully risked putting their lives& safety in danger.” www.theguardian.com/media/2025/f...

Pics from the fascinating ‘Tarot: Origins and Afterlives’ exhibition at @warburginstitute.bsky.social