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courtenaywrites.bsky.social
Courtenay Schembri Gray ✰
@courtenaywrites.bsky.social
89 followers 74 following 53 posts
Writer • @carouselmag @anthro_poetry etc • THE MAPLE MOON https://themaplemoon.substack.com • Autistic 🧩
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courtenaywrites.bsky.social
Courtenay Schembri Gray ✰ @courtenaywrites.bsky.social · Sep 20
‘The Maple Moon Podcast’ is my podcast offshoot from my Substack, but episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube!

open.spotify.com/show/7s2JU5n...

#Podcast #Literature #Newsletter #Art #Books #Substack
#1: Labour Like a Beast, Die Like a Worm
open.spotify.com
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
‘The Maple Moon Podcast’ is my podcast offshoot from my Substack, but episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube!

open.spotify.com/show/7s2JU5n...

#Podcast #Literature #Newsletter #Art #Books #Substack
#1: Labour Like a Beast, Die Like a Worm
open.spotify.com
September 20, 2025 at 2:50 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
““Perhaps Emerald Fennell has mistaken the Victorian term “ejaculate”, meaning to exclaim, for cumming?!”

open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
The Wuthering of Emerald Fennell
On the 'Wuthering Heights' discourse, to ejaculate v. ejaculation, and the responsibility of adaptation
open.substack.com
September 6, 2025 at 6:02 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
This essay is right! Wayne Holloway-Smith needs to step down as editor of The Poetry Review. The pages of that magazine are bland and exactly the same. Every poem I’ve ever sent has been rejected when it would provide some variety to the noise! open.substack.com/pub/vamoul/p...
What is a poetry magazine for?
Or rather, for whom? A review of "The Poetry Review"
open.substack.com
August 4, 2025 at 9:32 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
On Fiverr, I am offering my beta reading services for SHORT STORIES and POETRY.

Short Stories: www.fiverr.com/courtenaywri...

Poetry: www.fiverr.com/courtenaywri...

#BetaReader #ShortStories #Poetrt #WritingCommunity
Courtenaywrites: I will beta read your short stories for $10 on fiverr.com
For only $10, Courtenaywrites will beta read your short stories. | I will provide feedback on your stories for their; themes, tone, pacing, suited genre, literary devices, word choice, command of lang...
www.fiverr.com
July 27, 2025 at 1:06 AM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
I am also offering my services for poetry COLLECTIONS! Do you need help with cohesion and order? I’m your girl!

#BetaReader #Fiverr #Poetry

www.fiverr.com/s/o8yEyDG?ut...
July 26, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Courtenay Schembri Gray ✰
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
I am now offering my services on Fiverr! I will BETA read your poem(s)! The higher tiers include specific recommendations of where to submit, detailed reports, and thorough analysis.

www.fiverr.com/courtenaywri...

#Poetry #Fiverr #BetaReader
Courtenaywrites: I will beta read your poems for $10 on fiverr.com
For only $10, Courtenaywrites will beta read your poems. | Why should you choose my services?I am a professional writer of eight years (with years of experience before that) who has amassed a grand am...
www.fiverr.com
July 25, 2025 at 8:13 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
What is the point in this website if I can’t use the DM feature?
July 25, 2025 at 9:19 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
I am now offering my services on Fiverr! I will BETA read your poem(s)! The higher tiers include specific recommendations of where to submit, detailed reports, and thorough analysis.

www.fiverr.com/courtenaywri...

#Poetry #Fiverr #BetaReader
Courtenaywrites: I will beta read your poems for $10 on fiverr.com
For only $10, Courtenaywrites will beta read your poems. | Why should you choose my services?I am a professional writer of eight years (with years of experience before that) who has amassed a grand am...
www.fiverr.com
July 25, 2025 at 8:13 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
“Now, I respect the verse of G K Chesterton, but what I cannot abide by is his wretched sonnet to one of the most offensive cheeses of all: Stilton (otherwise known as ‘armpit slough’).”

#Cheese #Humour #OpenLetter #Food

open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
An Open Letter to Cheese Lovers Everywhere
Humour
open.substack.com
July 15, 2025 at 3:07 AM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
“Outside was brutally quiet, pierced only by the tender song of snowdrops falling to the ground. There was a twin to each arm of Mr. Saturn, whose feet were flayed by the tarmac.”

#Fiction #ShortStory #WritingCommunity

open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
The Swallowed
Short Story
open.substack.com
June 17, 2025 at 12:29 AM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
It’s my golden birthday today. I’m turning twenty-eight on the 28th of May!

🎂⭐️🌝
May 28, 2025 at 11:34 AM
Reposted by Courtenay Schembri Gray ✰
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
🎭 Here’s an exclusive clip from my debut as a playwright last year with The Short List MCR. 🎭

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘The Change’ @salfordartstheatre.bsky.social 2024) -

• dir. Amanda Fleming / Jonathon Carley
• Starring Rebecca-Clare Evans and Nikola Bartosova

#playwright #theatre #theatrelife #livetheatre
May 6, 2025 at 10:38 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
🎭 Here’s an exclusive clip from my debut as a playwright last year with The Short List MCR. 🎭

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘The Change’ @salfordartstheatre.bsky.social 2024) -

• dir. Amanda Fleming / Jonathon Carley
• Starring Rebecca-Clare Evans and Nikola Bartosova

#playwright #theatre #theatrelife #livetheatre
May 6, 2025 at 10:38 PM
Reposted by Courtenay Schembri Gray ✰
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
The Ambition Bird: Fiona Larkin and The Poetry Society courtenayscorner.com/2025/03/27/t...
The Ambition Bird: Fiona Larkin and The Poetry Society
Varo’s artwork “Creación de las aves (Creation of the Birds),” from 1957. “I must get a new birdand a new immortality box.There is folly enough inside this one.”—The Ambition Bird…
courtenayscorner.com
March 27, 2025 at 2:37 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
The Ambition Bird: Fiona Larkin and The Poetry Society courtenayscorner.com/2025/03/27/t...
The Ambition Bird: Fiona Larkin and The Poetry Society
Varo’s artwork “Creación de las aves (Creation of the Birds),” from 1957. “I must get a new birdand a new immortality box.There is folly enough inside this one.”—The Ambition Bird…
courtenayscorner.com
March 27, 2025 at 2:37 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
We all (rightly) talk of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but I see barely anyone discuss her other masterpiece, Mathilda. open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
Mathilda by Mary Shelley: Acts of Creation
"...If we were to be for ever doomed to misery."
open.substack.com
March 24, 2025 at 8:54 AM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
Have you read Leduc’s ‘The Lady and the Little Fox Fur’? 🦊 open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
Violette Leduc's 'The Lady and the Little Fox Fur' & the Art of Distance
Book Review
open.substack.com
March 22, 2025 at 11:07 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
With a reading by the author, check out my third-place winning poem, Where Flowers Give Birth to Snow. 🏆⭐️

“I am dragged back into catatonia / eyes bouncing; marbles of worlds.”

#Poetry #WritingCommunity

courtenayscorner.com/2025/03/01/t...
Third-Place Winner: Where Flowers Give Birth to Snow
Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565) Author’s Note: I am delighted to announce that I came third place in London Writer’s Salon Hour Contest on the theme of ‘R…
courtenayscorner.com
March 3, 2025 at 9:42 AM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
I came third in London Writer’s Salon Hour Contest’ ‘Roots’ themed competition with my poem, Where Flowers Give Birth to Snow! 🏆⭐️

open.substack.com/pub/writersh...
[Poetry] Where Flowers Give Birth to Snow
Read the third-place entry for our week of February 9, 2025 prompt, Roots
open.substack.com
March 1, 2025 at 8:03 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
Last year, I wrote an in-depth, academic article on Christina Rossetti’s ‘Goblin Market’. As someone who didn’t go to university (and dropped out of sixtg form), I didn’t have previud experience with citations, but they are included here. #GoblinMarket #Poetry open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
Vampires in the Closet: Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market'
Academic Essay
open.substack.com
February 28, 2025 at 9:19 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
The Lip of Middle Age
Sonnet
open.substack.com
February 16, 2025 at 12:55 AM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
Every Valentine’s Day, I giggle at the fact James Joyce had such a fierce fart fetish. His letters to Nora Barnacle are something to behold! 💨
February 14, 2025 at 1:26 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
On this day, in 1963, we lost one of the greatest minds in poetry. Sylvia Plath’s poem, Elm, featured in a dream I had the other night, so I figured it appropriate.
February 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
“Going back to Imogen Wade’s winning poem, I recognise that the topic is of course terrifying, but that fear is (in my opinion) not shown throughout the poem.”

#LiteraryCriticism #Poetry

open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
Between Fire and Ice
Imogen Wade, The Spectator, and what traditional poetry looks like today
open.substack.com
February 9, 2025 at 9:50 PM
courtenaywrites.bsky.social
Trying to become a famous poet is a lot harder than I thought: open.substack.com/pub/themaple...
The Ghost Apple
January '25 Diary
open.substack.com
February 1, 2025 at 11:04 PM