I wanted to think practically about strategies for maintaining a creative life in difficult circumstances, building networks of mutual support, and re-evaluating what a written work can be.

In-person only @irishwriterscentre.bsky.social 30 May, details here:

irishwriterscentre.ie/courses/mast...

Joanna Walsh masterclass on unmastery at the Irish Writers' Centre 30 May

1/2 When @irishwriterscentre asked me to do a masterclass I realised I'm not at all sure about mastery. Instead I wanted to think about the roles of doubt, risk, opposition, destruction and refusal, which can also be kinds of confidence, enthusiasm, construction and curiosity.

A poster with title’Artist Talk’ and images of artists’ work. It also includes details about the talk which can be found by following the link posted.

Giving a talk and reading from my text ‘In a Sandy Matrix’ on Saturday in Westport, on Mesolithic shell middens, mollusks, and the thoughts on what it means to consume and absorb the flesh of another animal. www.customhousestudios.ie/exhibition/e...

i was there the week before and it was FREEZING and rained almost every day!

at « Georges Perec, archives d’une enfance » at the Archives de Paris today with huge Perec & Ellen Dillon...

minor impromptu
w/ @badaude.bsky.social @benlibman.bsky.social Tim MacGabhann & Alice Blackhurst

Today I'm wearing linen lemons in #Frigiliana. Here's an ickle piece I wrote about lemons as a creative writing exercise on a @badaude.bsky.social course some moons ago. I do really love 🍋 🍋 🍋 lespritliteraryreview.org/2022/04/13/l...

an impromptu reading orgainised by @minorlits.bsky.social tomorrow (tuesday 31st) at www.8litheque.com/fr paris, with me Alice Blackhurst @benlibman.bsky.social & Tim Mac Gabhann. doors open 19h15. we'll be talking about autoficition/personal essay/memoir whatever you like to call that thing...

When the Wind Blows (comics) - Wikipedia

raymond briggs' when the wind blows en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_th...

I have two jokes about Trotsky, but you gotta pick

FAR too cold to use this balcon tho!

i've got one too but it's obscurer...

Paris le jour Paris la nuit…

On 29th May I'll be talking with Jan Carson, Conor Kostick, and Derek O’Connor about AI and writing at @projectartscentre for @bealtainefestival https://projectartscentre.ie/events/faict-or-faiction/

book early - on 29th May I'll be talking with Jan Carson, Conor Kostick, and Derek O’Connor about AI and writing at @projectartscentre for @bealtainefestival projectartscentre.ie/events/faict...

looks like I'll be in Brussels around 18 April: does anyone know a bookshop/gallery/university/whatever that might like me to come & talk about Amateurs!?

next week ... Alice, @benlibman.bsky.social and Tim will also be joined by @badaude.bsky.social (!)

dreamt i successfully rehoused a colony of white mice under a bridge in London's South Bank Centre

Nothing Ever Happens: “Mister Squishy” and the Year of the Sentence Diagram | Los Angeles Review of Books Hannah Smart writes about her attempt to diagram a 900-word sentence in David Foster Wallace’s “Mister Squishy,” and what the efforts taught her about human inertia and meaningless language.

thx to @saintsoftness.bsky.social's substack (avmarraccini.substack.com/p/a-list-of-...) for alerting me to this very smart essay by Hannah Smart, on David Foster Wallace's sentences @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social

lareviewofbooks.org/article/noth...

(this is also research for my next book)

How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing

celebrating #IWD by reading a book about how women were forced out of tech in the late twentieth-century programmedinequality.com

Who Can Afford to Fail? Vivienne Westwood, Malcolm McLaren and the Class Politics of Art School

love this, by Andrew Groves: fashion, feminism, finance, failure...

profandrewgroves.substack.com/p/who-can-af...

omg this is all in the last 3d?

publishing of the future (seen from 1989)

The 2026 Prize is judged by Claire-Louise Bennett, Ottessa Moshfegh and Joanna Walsh.

For a chance to get your work in front of their eyes, enter at: desperateliterature.com/prize

5/

I'd quite like to do some teaching... I miss it

i'm bored: suggestions for applications, residencies, new careers pls...

“Most people are still scrolling because there’s nowhere else to go”: An Interview with Joanna Walsh — Cristina Politano Joanna Walsh’s Amateurs!: How We Built the Internet and Why It Matters was recently published by Verso Books. In it, Walsh charts the ascendancy of a new kind of digital creative, one who mud…

“Most people are still scrolling because there’s nowhere else to go”: An Interview with Joanna Walsh — Cristina Politano minorliteratures.com/2026/02/10/m...

Monthly Dispatch #32 — ft. @yanisiqbal.bsky.social Michael Templeton, @niamhmaccabe.bsky.social @farsouthproject.bsky.social @djamelbouchenaki.bsky.social @kentkosack.bsky.social @stuhennigan.bsky.social @badaude.bsky.social @raviddice.bsky.social & more ...

out now:

minorlits.substack.com

gorgeous cover!

#gorse12 (Language is a virus) has just arrived in the house from the printers and I flick open on this illustration by @badaude.bsky.social! Lord, it must be a sign that the world will survive after all 😃