Kat Lister
@katlister.bsky.social
Stay afraid, but do it anyway / words: Guardian, Observer, i paper, the Quietus / lecturing: City University / agent: http://blakefriedmann.co.uk/kat-lister / book: https://blakefriedmann.co.uk/news/kat-lister-fragile-bodies-auction-weidenfeld
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Kat Lister
@katlister.bsky.social
· Jul 4
Kat Lister’s beguiling exploration of art, FRAGILE BODIES, won at auction by Weidenfeld & Nicolson — Blake Friedmann
Kat Lister’s new non-fiction book FRAGILE BODIES: Art Born of Bodily Trauma, exploring the impact of physical adversity on the lives of seven extraordinary artists who confronted and transformed their...
blakefriedmann.co.uk
Hello everyone, I have exciting news! (📣):
An extraordinary night with the extraordinary Yiyun Li. Thank you Folkestone book Festival for having me & Sophie Haydock for curating so thoughtfully. I am left holding Yiyun's words: "there is only now and now and now”…
November 17, 2025 at 9:39 AM
An extraordinary night with the extraordinary Yiyun Li. Thank you Folkestone book Festival for having me & Sophie Haydock for curating so thoughtfully. I am left holding Yiyun's words: "there is only now and now and now”…
A reminder for anyone in & around the Folkestone area that I will be in conversation with Yiyun Li tomorrow night at 8pm. £12 standard, & £5 cost-of-living tickets still available, although not many by the looks of the seating plan (hurrah!) – link here: www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/whats-on/yiy...
In just a few weeks I will be in conversation with the extraordinary Yiyun Li about her remarkable book Things in Nature Merely Grow – with thanks to Folkestone Book Festival for inviting me, more info and tickets below:
Yiyun Li: Language After Loss - Creative Folkestone
www.creativefolkestone.org.uk
November 15, 2025 at 5:42 PM
A reminder for anyone in & around the Folkestone area that I will be in conversation with Yiyun Li tomorrow night at 8pm. £12 standard, & £5 cost-of-living tickets still available, although not many by the looks of the seating plan (hurrah!) – link here: www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/whats-on/yiy...
I watched Howards End last night – a film I’ve returned to again & again & yet it moved me so much more deeply this time. I suspect it intensifies with age: watching Ruth’s dress trailing in the grass, & Leonard charge through the bluebells with such a sense of loss. But yes, what a masterpiece.
November 14, 2025 at 9:48 AM
I watched Howards End last night – a film I’ve returned to again & again & yet it moved me so much more deeply this time. I suspect it intensifies with age: watching Ruth’s dress trailing in the grass, & Leonard charge through the bluebells with such a sense of loss. But yes, what a masterpiece.
Apropos of nothing, but I'm having one of those writing days where every sentence reads like a random and irrelevant body part in a game of exquisite corpse
November 13, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Apropos of nothing, but I'm having one of those writing days where every sentence reads like a random and irrelevant body part in a game of exquisite corpse
Channel 5 relaunches Play for Today tonight – & I'm really intrigued to see what the do with it. Incidentally I watched one that my dad directed for the 1st time this week (Baby Talk, 1981) – with a young Pauline Quirke no less! – & boy, they really went for it. I hope this new incarnation does, too
November 13, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Channel 5 relaunches Play for Today tonight – & I'm really intrigued to see what the do with it. Incidentally I watched one that my dad directed for the 1st time this week (Baby Talk, 1981) – with a young Pauline Quirke no less! – & boy, they really went for it. I hope this new incarnation does, too
Reposted by Kat Lister
I wrote one of the episodes for the newly relaunched Play For Today, which starts tonight (my episode is on in a couple of weeks). This is an article about that .
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
Play for Today: The revival hoping to save British TV from a class crisis
Play for Today’s one-off films were a seminal moment in television in the Seventies and Eighties, writes Hannah J Davies. Decades later, Channel 5 is bringing them back, and aiming to diversify small-...
www.independent.co.uk
November 13, 2025 at 8:32 AM
I wrote one of the episodes for the newly relaunched Play For Today, which starts tonight (my episode is on in a couple of weeks). This is an article about that .
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...
"There are soiled sheets, unvoiced fears, missed doses of morphine. The hard truth, in short, about underfunding palliative care is that people who are at their most vulnerable – the dying – suffer more pain, more indignity, less choice & less autonomy than they might have." Please read this piece:
"We would never tolerate a government that chose to defund 70% of neonatal services, gambling that charities would fill the gap. Yet this is exactly the situation for end-of-life care."
Please read my piece on the travesty of NHS palliative care underfunding 🙏
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Please read my piece on the travesty of NHS palliative care underfunding 🙏
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
As a palliative care specialist, I’ve witnessed the human tragedy of our end-of-life care crisis | Rachel Clarke
While the government debates assisted dying, palliative care is an afterthought. And many more people face death without the care and support they need, says Rachel Clarke
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:06 AM
"There are soiled sheets, unvoiced fears, missed doses of morphine. The hard truth, in short, about underfunding palliative care is that people who are at their most vulnerable – the dying – suffer more pain, more indignity, less choice & less autonomy than they might have." Please read this piece:
I am biased of course, but I am here to tell you that my favourite record by The Clientele has been reissued on vinyl this week & it is a rather beautiful thing: ffm.bio/theviolethour
November 8, 2025 at 4:07 PM
I am biased of course, but I am here to tell you that my favourite record by The Clientele has been reissued on vinyl this week & it is a rather beautiful thing: ffm.bio/theviolethour
Happy Birthday to the one & only Bonnie Raitt, the only interviewee who has ever cried tears of joy – & disbelief – when I told her what her music has meant to me over the years. Genuinely one of the most humble & altruistic people I’ve ever had the privilege to profile:
‘I’m living for the ones who didn’t make it’: Bonnie Raitt on her unquenchable thirst for music
As she wins a lifetime achievement Grammy at 72, the US singer who crossed blues with pop is still determined to support artists who never got their dues
www.theguardian.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Happy Birthday to the one & only Bonnie Raitt, the only interviewee who has ever cried tears of joy – & disbelief – when I told her what her music has meant to me over the years. Genuinely one of the most humble & altruistic people I’ve ever had the privilege to profile:
In just a few weeks I will be in conversation with the extraordinary Yiyun Li about her remarkable book Things in Nature Merely Grow – with thanks to Folkestone Book Festival for inviting me, more info and tickets below:
Yiyun Li: Language After Loss - Creative Folkestone
www.creativefolkestone.org.uk
November 4, 2025 at 2:54 PM
In just a few weeks I will be in conversation with the extraordinary Yiyun Li about her remarkable book Things in Nature Merely Grow – with thanks to Folkestone Book Festival for inviting me, more info and tickets below:
“But I wondered: By making death—such an intimate exchange of life for non-life—so public, were we honoring the dead? Or ourselves? Who granted us the right to the stories of the departed?”
God, I adore Hilton Als, and this is why:
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
God, I adore Hilton Als, and this is why:
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
November 1, 2025 at 3:54 PM
“But I wondered: By making death—such an intimate exchange of life for non-life—so public, were we honoring the dead? Or ourselves? Who granted us the right to the stories of the departed?”
God, I adore Hilton Als, and this is why:
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
God, I adore Hilton Als, and this is why:
www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
Told my dental surgeon I TOTALLY wanted to keep my wisdom tooth while spangled on IV sedation…and now what do I do with it? Under my pillow for the big bucks?
October 27, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Told my dental surgeon I TOTALLY wanted to keep my wisdom tooth while spangled on IV sedation…and now what do I do with it? Under my pillow for the big bucks?
Thank you to the Betsey Trotwood & Travis Elborough for having me yesterday. What a delightful crowd, what a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon…& Street Legal sounded pretty damn good on the record player, too.
October 26, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Thank you to the Betsey Trotwood & Travis Elborough for having me yesterday. What a delightful crowd, what a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon…& Street Legal sounded pretty damn good on the record player, too.
Reposted by Kat Lister
'Get rid of the migrants or I'll become a migrant' is quite the argument
October 22, 2025 at 12:59 PM
'Get rid of the migrants or I'll become a migrant' is quite the argument
Alright Bobcats, just a little reminder that I will be joining Travis Elborough at my fave pub on Saturday to talk all things Street Legal, an album I've loved since I was 17. I will be bringing my Dylan encyclopedia! I may even recite some Sam Shepard! There will definitely be beer! Join us!
October 22, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Alright Bobcats, just a little reminder that I will be joining Travis Elborough at my fave pub on Saturday to talk all things Street Legal, an album I've loved since I was 17. I will be bringing my Dylan encyclopedia! I may even recite some Sam Shepard! There will definitely be beer! Join us!
Carrie Fisher would have turned 69 today, which as her daughter pointed out in her tribute, still feels far too young. I wrote about her gift for words a few years ago. Sharing again now. If you haven’t already read Postcards From the Edge, now’s the time, it’s wildly brilliant – as was she:
Postcards from the Edge at 35: How Carrie Fisher’s fiction put her back in control
In the late Eighties, Carrie Fisher went to rehab for drug addiction – a few years later, she turned her experiences into a celebrated debut novel. Kat Lister looks back on how the Star Wars legend ch...
www.independent.co.uk
October 21, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Carrie Fisher would have turned 69 today, which as her daughter pointed out in her tribute, still feels far too young. I wrote about her gift for words a few years ago. Sharing again now. If you haven’t already read Postcards From the Edge, now’s the time, it’s wildly brilliant – as was she:
I’ve just watched a tribute that Meryl Streep gave to Diane Keaton in which she said that Keaton had “a stream of consciousness like a hummingbird” & my goodness that’s it, that was her entirely.
October 12, 2025 at 7:28 AM
I’ve just watched a tribute that Meryl Streep gave to Diane Keaton in which she said that Keaton had “a stream of consciousness like a hummingbird” & my goodness that’s it, that was her entirely.
Reposted by Kat Lister
I still remember the machines that sat idle due to a lack of staff to operate them when Pat was going for radiotherapy nearly a decade ago. It was as appalling then as it is now. A six month wait for radiotherapy is a shocking state of affairs:
More than 60,000 cancer patients in England ‘not getting necessary radiotherapy’
Exclusive: Analysis of NHS data by Radiotherapy UK also shows some patients face waits of up to six months
www.theguardian.com
October 3, 2025 at 1:16 PM
I still remember the machines that sat idle due to a lack of staff to operate them when Pat was going for radiotherapy nearly a decade ago. It was as appalling then as it is now. A six month wait for radiotherapy is a shocking state of affairs:
“…& all the world is mind.” Virginia Woolf wrote this passage about the expansive interconnectedness of reading (in her diary) when she was 21 years old. Extraordinary.
October 3, 2025 at 8:42 AM
“…& all the world is mind.” Virginia Woolf wrote this passage about the expansive interconnectedness of reading (in her diary) when she was 21 years old. Extraordinary.
Reposted by Kat Lister
Same shit, different church! we have added a second violet hour show as the first one sold out immediately.
Thur 27 November - St Matthias Church, Stoke Newington
tickets go on sale on Friday at midday UK time
link.dice.fm/I94a007793e0.
wegottickets.com/event/677968/
Thur 27 November - St Matthias Church, Stoke Newington
tickets go on sale on Friday at midday UK time
link.dice.fm/I94a007793e0.
wegottickets.com/event/677968/
October 1, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Same shit, different church! we have added a second violet hour show as the first one sold out immediately.
Thur 27 November - St Matthias Church, Stoke Newington
tickets go on sale on Friday at midday UK time
link.dice.fm/I94a007793e0.
wegottickets.com/event/677968/
Thur 27 November - St Matthias Church, Stoke Newington
tickets go on sale on Friday at midday UK time
link.dice.fm/I94a007793e0.
wegottickets.com/event/677968/
Hello everyone, I wrote about the extraordinary lives of Lee Miller ahead of a major retrospective of her photography at Tate Britain – which opens tomorrow. And it's looking beautiful in the i Paper today! Read online here: inews.co.uk/culture/arts...
October 1, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Hello everyone, I wrote about the extraordinary lives of Lee Miller ahead of a major retrospective of her photography at Tate Britain – which opens tomorrow. And it's looking beautiful in the i Paper today! Read online here: inews.co.uk/culture/arts...
Reposted by Kat Lister
Oasis stadium jaunt ends (for now), it has been odd seeing how massively they’re loved, and also odd that it is seen as churlish to critique it. For me, they inescapably represent the worst of the 90s, the banterous homophobia, the conservatism. It made life miserable & I struggle to get over that.
September 30, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Oasis stadium jaunt ends (for now), it has been odd seeing how massively they’re loved, and also odd that it is seen as churlish to critique it. For me, they inescapably represent the worst of the 90s, the banterous homophobia, the conservatism. It made life miserable & I struggle to get over that.
As today is International Translation Day, I thought I'd share this piece I wrote about one of my favourite writers, Natalia Ginzburg, a few years back. As @alexanderchee.bsky.social says in it: “How do we write about evil, especially when everything feels so wretched?” A writer that speaks to now:
The most exciting new voice in fiction is a woman who died 32 years ago
The Italian author has been mostly undiscovered in the UK. But new translations prove her work is more vital than ever
inews.co.uk
September 30, 2025 at 9:43 AM
As today is International Translation Day, I thought I'd share this piece I wrote about one of my favourite writers, Natalia Ginzburg, a few years back. As @alexanderchee.bsky.social says in it: “How do we write about evil, especially when everything feels so wretched?” A writer that speaks to now:
Reading about Rolling Thunder era Dylan & particularly tickled by his 4am phone call to Allen Ginsberg before they hit the road. “What’re you writing? Sing it to me on the telephone…” The original When Harry Met Sally split screen scene.
September 28, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reading about Rolling Thunder era Dylan & particularly tickled by his 4am phone call to Allen Ginsberg before they hit the road. “What’re you writing? Sing it to me on the telephone…” The original When Harry Met Sally split screen scene.