Clare Bullock
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clarerbullock.bsky.social
Clare Bullock
@clarerbullock.bsky.social
110 followers 140 following 36 posts
Well, let's see, shall we?
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clarerbullock.bsky.social
Happy publication day to Dur e Aziz Amna, whose mesmerising novel A SPLINTERING is out today. The narrator, Tara, had me hooked on p. 1 with the line: 'So let my story begin with rage...'

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...
She’s a horrible character — but you’ll root for her anyway
A Pakistani woman rebels against social restrictions in the pursuit of wealth in Dur e Aziz Amna’s novel A Splintering
www.thetimes.com
September 4, 2025 at 9:20 AM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Come and work with Duckworth! Excellent books and one of the nicest teams I've ever worked with!
jobs.thebookseller.com/career/28001...
Marketing Manager, Duckworth Books - Duckworth - Richmond-on-Thames
Marketing Manager, Duckworth Books - Duckworth - Publisher - Marketing - Salary range: £34,000-£38,000 pro rata, depending on experience.
jobs.thebookseller.com
July 14, 2025 at 11:36 AM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Look, I'm biased, but this really is one of the best books I've ever read about the natural world and the way we interact with it
July 10, 2025 at 7:35 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Working on @elliechan.bsky.social's extraordinary DUET includes not only the joy of making of the book itself, but hearing music I thought I knew, and understanding it in an entirely different way...
June 12, 2025 at 3:35 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Absolutely extraordinary piece in The Times, on the role of the 'Essential grandparent'

www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...
When my sister was murdered, it was my grandmother who saved me
The birth of her first grandchild was joyous for Helen Kirwan-Taylor — but it also brought back memories of childhood trauma and the role her ‘Babuskha’ played at that time
www.thetimes.com
June 10, 2025 at 12:14 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
'My toddler is going through a phase of being very suspicious of the first mouthful of any food he is presented with, as though he is a medieval king who has heard rumours of a poisoning plot. I, his lowly jester, must therefore perform the dance of the seven spoons.'
May 21, 2025 at 1:46 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
A bookish weekend in Lewes: dropped into the Lewes Speaker's Festival to see Terri Apter's brilliant talk about GRANDPARENTING (& the queue for signed copies afterwards); walked round a Medieval Fayre with @elliechan.bsky.social talking all things DUET; & bumped in comics supremo Hannah Berry!
May 11, 2025 at 11:46 AM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
I've been obsessed with this brilliantly dark debut, since I read the opening lines at my desk a few days after after I started at Duckworth. Couldn't be prouder to be publishing @lcwinter.bsky.social next spring!
lcwinter.bsky.social L.C.Winter @lcwinter.bsky.social · May 8
My book Spider, Spider is coming in March 2026. Revenge takes root as poison blooms.
A book cover of Spider, Spider by LC Winter. 'Revenge takes root as poison blooms.' The cover has a black background and plants around gold text.
May 9, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Clare Bullock
rsmythfreelance.bsky.social
Frog maths. However you run the numbers, it turns out bad for the frogs.
"Genevieve does not need to know about this. Danny does not need to know about this. When we go up to Heaton Woods and peer into the pond, we'll look at the tadpoles nuzzling the pondweed and I won't say, hey guys, approximately two per cent of frog eggs become tadpoles, zero-point-eight two per cent of tadpoles become baby frogs, and zero-point-one per cent of baby frogs become grown-up frogs, and all the rest die. "That is, however, how all this beauty is made. " Wasteful, Darwin called it: The clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature! Darwin, who saw it all first, who figured out the mechanics, totted up the numbers. was right, of course. The scale of the waste is beyond our comprehension."
May 1, 2025 at 4:22 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Bound proofs are in for these two stunners. Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett's brilliantly incisive take on modern parenthood, illustrated by Pia Bramley, and Eleanor Chan's extraordinary DUET, which will forever change the way you think about music
April 28, 2025 at 5:24 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
I am Very Excited about this one. I'LL BE THE MONSTER by the ludicrously talented Sean Gilbert, coming from Duckworth in time for Valentine's Day 2026:
www.thebookseller.com/rights/duckw...
Duckworth snaps up I’ll Be the Monster by debut novelist Sean Gilbert
Duckworth has acquired I’ll Be the Monster by debut novelist Sean Gilbert.
www.thebookseller.com
April 28, 2025 at 11:02 AM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
I haven't been able to stop thinking about WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN since I read it a month or so ago. An extraordinary book.
lavietidhar.bsky.social Lavie Tidhar @lavietidhar.bsky.social · Apr 22
I'm reading EJ Swift's - genuinely extraordinary - forthcoming new novel, WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN. It's the sort of work I'd like to see show up on the Booker, rather than Clarke, shortlist, full of wonderful moments, beautiful writing, message and heart. You should go order it, I'm saying.
book cover showing a wolf, with text: when there are wolves again / ej swift
April 23, 2025 at 5:16 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · Apr 20
going to ask for my GRC and start identifying as a man because I'm rubbish at keeping the flat clean, feministly
April 20, 2025 at 7:24 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Happy publication day to @paulmmcooper.bsky.social, whose magisterial FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS is out in paperback today. Don't just take my word for it: ‘Cooper is a phenomenon’ Max Hastings, Sunday Times
April 3, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Reposted by Clare Bullock
john-self.bsky.social
“When all the books are gone, there will be
nothing to remember but a single
porch light at the far end of the road…”

‘As If From The End Times’ by John Burnside

(from his forthcoming final book of poetry, The Empire of Forgetting)
AS IF FROM THE END TIMES (Homage to David Garnett) When all the books are gone, there will be nothing to remember but a single porch light at the far end of the road, where something live is moving in the snow, a woman, or a fox, it's hard to say. Last day of birdsong; salt rain in the trees; the echo of someone going about their business, making good or making hay – you never know for sure, although you know that something here is coming to an end: last day of weather, lanternlight crossing the yards, last of those stories our kinfolk used to tell of woman into fox, fox into deer, deer into shadow and, always, the darkness-to-come.
March 29, 2025 at 5:31 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
'I don’t really run in spiritual circles... Broaching this subject at all had the whiff of something faintly embarrassing, a bit like publishing a sex manual while hanging out exclusively with prudes'

Really enjoyed Abi Millar's latest substack.

abimillar.substack.com/p/an-update
An update
Because it's been a while!
abimillar.substack.com
March 13, 2025 at 10:41 AM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
“This is the first abortion centre in democratic Poland.”

It's been one of the strangenesses of my life to know that I've always had rights that my Polish cousins, whom I share so much with, haven't. Time for change...

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
‘There’s no other solution’: Polish abortion centre opens in challenge to strict laws
Frustrated by government’s failure to ease rules, an NGO is opening a centre a stone’s throw from parliament in Warsaw
www.theguardian.com
March 7, 2025 at 12:51 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
A brilliant piece by Terri Apter about how 1 in 3 women (me included), have only been able to return to work after parental leave because of the childcare provided by grandparents.

community.thefemalelead.com/p/grandparen...
Grandparents are secretly fuelling women’s careers
A staggering one third of working mothers in the UK rely on grandparents for childcare.
community.thefemalelead.com
March 5, 2025 at 10:05 AM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
En route to Manchester and, predictably, the sky is a pearly grey. Ah, the north, how I've missed you.
March 3, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Clare Bullock
olibasciano.bsky.social
Back in Kyiv after three years, and sending a reminder of the reality: Maidan, earlier today.
March 2, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Clare Bullock
okwonga.bsky.social
I will never forget the photo of Zelenskyy’s face after he saw Russia’s war crimes in Bucha in 2022. He seemed to age years in an afternoon. Watching him constantly cross the world asking for aid that should have been thrown at him is one of the deepest shames of our age.
Zelenskyy’s face after he saw Russia’s war crimes in Bucha in 2022. The agony in his face…he looks overwhelmed with disbelief at the sheer cruelty.
February 28, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by Clare Bullock
lyndseystonebri.bsky.social
If you're in the UK you'd like a pause from banging your head on the table in agonised despair & belief, there's this petition.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...
Petition: Grant automatic visa extension and ILR for Ukrainians after 5 years
Since Feb 2025, Ukrainians and their eligible family members in the UK have been able to apply for further permission to remain for up to 18 months. We would like the extensions to be automatic and fo...
petition.parliament.uk
February 28, 2025 at 6:55 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Watched the full Zelensky/Trump exchange and I feel physically sick about what this means for Ukraine's safety and the future of Eastern Europe
February 28, 2025 at 8:25 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Bookish hive mind: suggestions of books for my friend's clever, sensitive 9 yr old who has a reading age of 16? I was on a winning streak last year with Anne of Green Gables and sequels, but I tried a Katherine Rundell at the weekend but she's already read them all
February 26, 2025 at 3:02 PM
clarerbullock.bsky.social
Fantastic interview in @thetimes.com with Terri Apter today, on how not to fall out with your parents when you become a parent yourself

www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...
How to be a good grandparent without falling out with your children
Psychologist and writer Dr Terri Apter shares her expert guide to being a modern grandparent
www.thetimes.com
February 8, 2025 at 9:32 AM