Anna Woods
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annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Anna Woods
@annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
130 followers 220 following 180 posts
Writer of short and long fiction, and occasional poems

Recent work on Newsroom, adda and in Landfall

Debut novel coming 2026

www.annawoodsauthor.com
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annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Check out the 250th issue of Landfall, packed full of essays, poetry, fiction and reviews. And a new story by me.
Hand holding up the new issue of landfall journal, with a painting of a tui on the front cover
October 16, 2025 at 4:12 AM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Excited to start on my Mother’s Day present. Heard so many good things!

#booksky #litfic #pukapuka #nzbooks
Hand holding The Book Of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey. Cover shows 50s style graphic of a woman and boy running on a beach
May 10, 2025 at 10:55 PM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
This absolute beauty by my friend Yvette Thomas is available now in select bookshops and online. Featuring her Caselberg International Prize winning poem, ‘Not What You Wanted’, Ten Thousand Nights is a thoughtful, finely wrought collection.

castlestreetpress.com

#booksky #poetry #pukapuka
Hand holding up cover of Ten Thousand Nights by Yvette Thomas: black with a blurred prismatic lens detail
May 6, 2025 at 3:16 AM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
From my newsletter this week. So many sentences I wanted to highlight in Chelsea Girls, but this one felt most prescient
#booksky #litfic #poetry
Chelsea Girls, Eileen Myles Vivid vignettes This is one of those books I’ve been aware of for a long time, and I wish I’d read sooner. A queer stream of concious remembering, it paints a very different NYC than Primates. Sex, drugs, art, and poverty are rendered with an aliveness that is impossible to replicate. I knew of Myles as a poet, and this is a poet’s novel: fragmentary and strange. Reading like a book of short stories, it’s crammed full of painful observations. Just check out Myles on Woodstock: But Jimi Hendrix was the best. It spelled destruction, it was so sour and noble. His Star Spangled Banner was the end of America for me. We were through with it. It was the most ironic end of an empire song any culture ever played for itself. My favourite read of the month.
April 25, 2025 at 9:31 PM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
So thrilled to attend the launch of my friend Rachel Paris’ new novel, See How They Fall last night. Billed as Succession meets Big Little Lies, this is a debut to watch.
#booksky #nzbooks
A stack of books, See How They Fall, by Rachel Paris, in a brick-lined room.
March 25, 2025 at 11:22 PM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Lil snippet from my monthly newsletter that went out yesterday. Sign up if you enjoy mini #litfic reviews. I always forget to mention it’s free!
#booksky

eepurl.com/cXlbmX
All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toewes Grief, but make it hilarious Loved this book and its voicey narrator. Sad, yes, but funny and hopeful and full of heart. There’s a beautiful image early on, when one of the characters describes her depression as a glass piano inside her (she’s a world renowned concert pianist) that she is in constant fear of shattering, lest the sharp pieces make her bleed to death. The image makes this story sound incredibly dark, which it is, but the voice is so strong that you can’t stop reading. Loved.
March 19, 2025 at 11:52 PM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Lil snippet from my newsletter, where I talk about what I’ve read this month, and get all fan-girly over Lauren Groff.

eepurl.com/cXlbmX

#booksky #litfic
What I read Florida, Lauren Groff Not Trump’s Florida I hadn’t read Lauren Groff’s short stories before, but I’m not surprised they are so brilliant. She is perhaps one of the greatest writers of our generation, and this is a collection for people who don’t think they like short stories. Every finely wrought story is a revelation about the state she ambivalently calls home. Though published in 2018, it feels oddly prescient, with devastating observations such as: “She can't stop the thought that children born now will be the last generation of humans. Her sons have known only luck so far, though suffering will surely come for them. She feels it nearing, the midnight of humanity. Their world is so full of beauty, the last terrible flash of beauty before the long darkness.”
February 19, 2025 at 1:32 AM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Hey #booksky which #litfic should I read next: Arcadia, by Lauren Groff or All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews?
Holding up two books: in the background All My Puny Sorroes by Miriam Toews and in the foreground Arcadia by Lauren Groff.
February 15, 2025 at 5:49 AM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Is there anything this woman can’t make interesting? I’ve read her books on alcoholic writers, a meandering river, the loneliness of cities, and now gardening. Not my forte, as my withering house plants can attest, but I think I’d read anything Olivia Laing writes
#booksky
Book: The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, held up against a beach. The cover has brightly painted flowers on a yellow background with red typography.
February 7, 2025 at 9:43 PM
annawoodsauthor.bsky.social
Just finished Immediate Family, by Ashley Nelson Levy. Takes the form of a long address from the narrator to the brother her family adopted. The story is mostly summary, which I enjoyed but I’m sure many readers would hate. Tell me #booksky, have you read this #litfic and what did you think?
Cover of novel Immediate Family, by Ashley Nelson Levy, illustration is four graphic silhouettes
February 7, 2025 at 12:57 AM