Gentle reminder that if you're looking for a nonfiction book about a long walk with "wild camping" in Cornwall in which the author politely paid at all the campsites he used and didn't make anything up, there's this thing called #TheGraniteKingdom by some bloke called Hannigan...
The only motivation should ultimately be finding the best *practical* mechanism for improving access in the particular landscapes of Wales and England (and I think it can be convincingly argued that R2R actually *isn't* that). A fantasy of triumph over a mythical enemy is *not* a good motivation.
I've similar thoughts. No objection to R2R itself on principle, but I do think a cause can potentially be invalidated by the motivations and rhetoric around it - and I *do* think there are problems there with the current campaign. And yep, Patrick's interventions are a really useful corrective.
I appreciate your sacrifices, I really do...
I still haven't managed to bring myself to do so. Was in the bookshop the other day and picked up the paperback, then thought to myself, "No, Tim, that's what Richard Smyth is for..."
Great - thanks! Mainly looking for precedents for how an existing "body of work" is assessed as sufficient at application stage. It's in our policies as an option but no one's ever used it. I'm trying to get guidelines in place so if we get a candidate we won't be making it up as we go along!
Thanks Adrian. It exists in principle in our policy documents around PhDs, but it seems that no one has ever actually used the route. One or two other Irish universities openly offer it, but again, I haven't actually been able to find anyone hereabouts who's actually done it.
#Academic folks of Bluesky! Has anyone done - or indeed supervised - a "PhD by prior publication"? In particular one in which the "prior publication" was a body of creative practice? (No one's ever done it at my institution, but am looking into the practicalities for future reference...)
One thing I'm keen to look into is precedents for what constitutes a sufficient "body of work" to present for a PhD by prior publication. Also, has anyone successfully argued for a body of, say, a body of journalistic work, as well as books? I'll keep you posted!
#Academic folks of Bluesky! Has anyone done - or indeed supervised - a "PhD by prior publication"? In particular one in which the "prior publication" was a body of creative practice? (No one's ever done it at my institution, but am looking into the practicalities for future reference...)
Might go along and ask Nige about his famous "Indonesian fishermen" who he spent a year insisting were responsible for the wipe-out of Indigenous Tasmanians, before blocking everyone who'd ever politely asked him to provide so citations. I mean, "free market of ideas", right?
On the home-cliff this evening. Penwith, #TheGraniteKingdom, Cornwall
Our final-year Writing & Literature students at ATU Sligo produce a beautiful annual literary journal, Scrimshaw. Here's current Scrimshaw social media manager Gemmaclaire Haverty, from our online cohort, in a fascinating conversation with my brilliant colleague Alice Lyons:
youtu.be/X0jsBPhpKsw?...
A hefty groundswell, nicely combed by the strong southeasterly but with a certain unruliness still, thumping in at the fracture-point between the granite and the killas in good light yesterday afternoon.
I'll be running a three-day #travelwriting workshop at West Cork Litfest this summer. Loads of other great workshops too, if travel writing isn't your thing...
Thanks Shafik!
If anyone's interested in a deep dive into #TravelWriting, I'll be leading a 3-day workshop on Whiddy Island as part of West Cork Literary Festival in July. (I'll also be doing an event at the festival, an early preview of my forthcoming book, #ThePathlessLand.)
www.westcorkmusic.ie/events/2026/...
Happy to have this one judged by it's cover!
At the proof stage now. The new book - #ThePathlessLand - is inching towards tangible existence. Due out early September. (Cover art again by the brilliant Matt Johnson.)
Good to know we're all making "deep impressions"!
Ha! And they are always "deeply impressed"...
And in today's incoming author spam-scam-mail, I am being "invited to the Frankfurt Book Fair" to promote my not-very-good debut, which appeared 15 years ago! Yay! Finally the chance to earn out on that one, maybe...
Ah, great stuff! I'm usually on my annual migration to Cornwall at summer school time, but I've to do a bit of back and forth this year so do give me a shout just in case. You'll definitely meet some of our students there though...
Thanks Cathryn!
One for the #TravelWriting scholars. Samia Ounoughi and I seem to have been working on this book forever, but it's out at last! It features a great range of contributions. If you have access to an academic library and an interest in travel writing scholarship, please request a copy!
It's the best thing ever, isn't it? (I'll confess that I do "The Red Wheelbarrow" with my students mainly just to be able to show them this the following week...)
Up there with Mary Ruefle's "Red"...
Reader, they replied to apologise for the fact that their "tailored book positioning" service was not applicable in my case... (The initial AI-generated personalised pitch was particularly cringey.)
Prompting people to go off and read other related books is always a key aspiration for me in my writing, so I'm delighted by this! (And Rowse is very readable...)
A nicely circuitous route! I'm genuinely delighted to hear this - the idea of writing books that encourage people to read other books is very important to me!
