Sarah Turner
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Sarah Turner
@scturnerfiction.bsky.social
3.1K followers 2.9K following 270 posts
Short-story writer. Work in: Sonora Review,
J Journal, Shooter Lit Mag, London Magazine, Fictive Dream, LEON, Litro & others | SL Bridport SS 2023 www.scturnerfiction.com
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scturnerfiction.bsky.social
Today’s walk - bright sun and falling leaves. My favourite kind of autumn day!
Trees in the woods - some evergreen, but most with yellow and orange leaves, surrounded by fallen leaves.
November 8, 2025 at 4:44 PM
scturnerfiction.bsky.social
New bookcase! It’s going to be such a relief to get all the piles of books off my floor!
Small wooden bookcase, almost empty - just a few books in the middle of the top shelf.
November 5, 2025 at 5:27 PM
scturnerfiction.bsky.social
I went to a really interesting exhibition about John le Carré at the Bodleian (Weston) Library in Oxford today. I really recommend it if you’re in the area before April

#BookSky #WritingCommunity
"I am not a spy who writes novels, I am a writer who briefly worked in the secret world." Quotation from John le Carré at the Bodleian exhibition. Typed John le Carré manuscript page, showing his handwritten corrections.
October 12, 2025 at 6:00 PM
scturnerfiction.bsky.social
The faraway, blissed-out expression of a cat who’s just discovered beanbags

#caturday
Sleepy black cat curled up on a dark blue beanbag, looking very relaxed.
October 11, 2025 at 12:42 PM
scturnerfiction.bsky.social
Wisdom from the National Trust bookshop in Avebury 💙📚
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of £2 must be in want of a second-hand book’: written on a small chalkboard in Cobblestones, the second-hand bookshop in Avebury. Bookshelves visible in the background.
September 6, 2025 at 11:49 AM
scturnerfiction.bsky.social
I’m loving this memoir about writing and running by Haruki Murakami

💙📚 #BookSky #WritingCommunity
Cover of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
August 31, 2025 at 7:46 PM
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Stratford yesterday, in the evening sun. I saw an incredibly powerful performance of A Winter’s Tale, which I still think is my favourite Shakespeare play
#Shakespeare
#Stratford-upon-Avon
#AWintersTale
View from the street Shakespeare lived on in later life. The building shown is now a hotel. Shops in the bottom of medieval buildings. The River Avon. Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
August 30, 2025 at 8:58 AM
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Morning!
Pink rose, with blue sky and leaves behind it.
August 27, 2025 at 7:38 AM
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I just came across the house in Marlborough where #WilliamGolding grew up. I’ve read that as a child it scared him, because it backs onto a graveyard and he thought it had been built on a medieval burial plot, but it looked beautiful in the sun today

#WritingCommunity 💙📚BookSky #LordoftheFlies
The house on The Green in Marlborough where William Golding lived as a child. The blue plaque on the front reads: ‘William Golding 1911-1993, author and Nobel Literature Laureate lived in this house. "Our house was on the green, that close-like square, tilted south"’.
August 25, 2025 at 2:24 PM
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‘But she was interested in us because children, like eccentrics, are unusual people’: Vita Sackville-West’s son Nigel on Virginia Woolf’s early conversations with him

💙📚#BookSky #VirginaWoolf
Text from Nigel Nicolson’s biography of Virginia Woolf. ‘It was at this period that I first came to know her. In 1924 I was seven years old, and my brother Ben was nine. She often came to Long Barn for a night or two, and we greatly looked forward to her visits, being ignorant of their cause. (A woman, who should have known better, once said to me, 'You realise that Virginia loves your mother, to which I innocently replied, 'Yes, of course she does: we all do.) Virginia was not particularly fond of children apart from Vanessa's, and except for James in To the Lighthouse, they do not figure largely in her novels. But she was interested in us, because children, like eccentrics, are unusual people, and under the guise of amusing us she would amuse herself: 'Tell me, what have you done this morning?' "Well, nothing much. No, no, that won't do. What woke you up?' "The sun, coming through our bedroom window. Was it a happy sun or an angry sun?’
August 22, 2025 at 9:29 AM
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Back in the city I grew up in, visiting family, and thinking all over again how beautiful the centre is. The destinations displayed outside Victoria Station used to seem so glamorous to me - London, Scotland, Belgium, Harrogate, Scarborough …
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, seen from the St Ann’s Square side. Large sandstone building, with shops and steps up to a theatre. Timbered medieval building, used as a pub, with the Corn Exchange, a large sandstone building beside it. Victoria Station - destinations are listed on signs along the outside of the building. London and Scotland are both visible. Wooden ticket booths at Victoria station.
August 10, 2025 at 10:48 AM
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I found this in a second-hand bookshop this lunchtime - a biography of Virginia Woolf by Vita Sackville-West’s son, Nigel Nicolson. It starts with a conversation between them when he was 9 and she was looking for material to base James Ramsay on. Very excited- can’t wait to read the rest

💙📚#BookSky
Cover of ‘Virginia Woolf’, by Nigel Nicolson, showing a portrait of Virginia Woolf in profile.
July 30, 2025 at 7:22 PM
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Provence 💙
Lavender field, with view of the village of Lacoste on the hill behind it.
July 20, 2025 at 1:03 PM
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The river this afternoon
View across a river, with cattle visible on the opposite bank, one at the water’s edge, drinking. White clouds and sky are reflected in the water.
June 29, 2025 at 2:55 PM
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I’m reading Jenni Fagan as well!
Cover of The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan.
June 8, 2025 at 12:25 PM
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I love my local Oxfam bookshop - I only had five minutes there before it closed this evening, but still managed to find these

💙📚 #BookSky #books
Second-hand copies of The Life of Graham Greene, vol 1, by Norman Sherry, The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald, and Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield, all in good condition.
June 5, 2025 at 7:35 PM
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Happy #Caturday! It’s six years today since this beautiful, incredibly affectionate three-legged cat turned up crying on our path a few weeks after her owner died. I’m still feeling lucky that she decided to move in!

#CatsofBlueSky #cats
Relaxed black cat, seen in profile, sitting on cushions.
May 31, 2025 at 12:52 PM
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Stopping to admire the poppies
Footpath, with poppies on one side, in front of a stone wall.
May 21, 2025 at 7:19 PM
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I’m reading and loving ‘Theft’ by Abdulrazak Gurnah this weekend. It’s the first novel I’ve read by him - I think I’m definitely going to be looking out for some of his others afterwards.

💙📚 #Booksky #books #reading
Cover of ‘Theft’ by Abdulrazak Gurnah.
May 17, 2025 at 6:00 PM
scturnerfiction.bsky.social
Knowing that ‘Mrs Dalloway’ was published 100 years ago yesterday has got me reaching for it on my shelves again. I first read it at 16 and it’s still one of the novels I reread and think about most.
💙📚#books #reading #VirginiaWoolf
#MrsDalloway
Extract from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: ‘Somehow it was her disaster - her disgrace. It was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress.’
May 15, 2025 at 5:28 PM
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The woods this evening
Huge rhododendron bush, with vivid pink flowers, growing in woodland, with trees in the background. Intense yellow and pink rhododendrons, growing next to each other, with trees in the background.
May 5, 2025 at 6:10 PM
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Bluebells!
Huge expanse of bluebells in woodland.
April 27, 2025 at 4:34 PM
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A purring cat for #Caturday

#cats #CatsofBluesky
April 19, 2025 at 10:53 AM
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‘He suddenly jumped from his chair and rushed to a mirror ...
He returned rapidly to his desk, wrote furiously for a few moments, and then went again to the mirror.’

Jane Smiley in ‘Charles Dickens’, quoting Dickens’s daughter on watching him write

#CharlesDickens #books #WritingCommunity 💙📚
Jane Smiley on Dickens, quoting Dickens’s daughter: ‘His daughter Mamie once reported having an illness as a child and spending the day in his study while he was working: “He suddenly jumped from his chair and rushed to a mirror which hung near, and in which I could see the reflection of some extraordinary facial contortions which he was making. He returned rapidly to his desk, wrote furiously for a few moments, and then went again to the mirror. The facial pantomime was resumed, and then turning toward but evidentl not seeing me, he began talking in a low voice.”’
April 17, 2025 at 1:30 PM
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Spring. I love this time of year so much!
Apple tree covered in blossom.
April 16, 2025 at 4:59 PM