“I don’t believe in ordinary people. Everyone is extraordinary.” Kit de Waal reading to us and speaking about her work at Keele this evening! @kitdewaal.bsky.social @lisablowerwrite.bsky.social

Striking today to protest compulsory redundancies in my faculty. We ARE the University! ✊

We hit Reeth (Morfe) too!

Having a bookish weekend break! Here’s a picture of Haworth church, with the parsonage in the background, and one of St Mary’s Church, Arkengarthdale, also with its vicarage in the background. The latter is the setting for Sinclair’s novel The Three Sisters. We walked the moors as Gwenda would have.

Damn right Co—Star

Have yourselves a postmodern little Christmas

Last night Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah came to Keele and read for us and answered questions. He also spent time with our creative writing students and signed books and was wry and humorous and wise. What an absolute legend.

We have a fabric advent calendar that we bring out every year, and we have filled it with Lindt balls!

Sutton Scarsdale Hall is hauntèd. Built by the fourth Earl of Scarsdale in 1724 and bought by the Arkwright family in 1824. Falling apart and sold in 1919; bought by Osbert Sitwell, already a ruin, in 1946.

My partner’s ancestor was ladies’ maid there, for the Arkwrights!

I knew I shouldn’t have read the last few chapters of this. I should have stopped somewhere around the anecdote of the ‘ellipsis bell’.* Absolutely gut-wrenching, painful and honest.

A break in the rain. Went out to Silverdale to see all the warm browns and yellows.

I heard we were posting cats. I don’t have my own cat (booooo) so here is my mum’s cat Coco. She’s a QUEEN and she knows it.

Spent my Saturday in a park with family, charming squirrels and drinking hot chocolate. Highly recommend as a reset activity!

Festive pizza 🎄🍕

We be brunchin’

The CFP for Ephemeral Modernisms, BAMS International Conference, 2024, is here! We’ll be at the University of Leeds. We welcome proposals for papers, panels, or for something more innovative if the spirit moves you! wordpress.com/page/bams.ac... @modernistudies.bsky.social

Jesus, what happened to Duo?

Open Day 🐿️ 📚

Frank Swinnerton on Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage. He says yes, yes, she is innovative, it IS a feat, but: ‘somewhere between volume one and volume ten there comes a moment in which one wishes that Miriam had died young’.