Vanessa Peterson
@vanessapeterson.bsky.social
Senior editor at frieze magazine and writer. London via Manchester and Accra.
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
The future of UK Independent presses hang by a thread. Supporting the sector is vital: this is where ALL the bravery lies. The big houses are risk averse, but copycat small press successes to revitalise their lists. Small presses are the motor!
www.thebookseller.com/comment/open...
www.thebookseller.com/comment/open...
Open letter on the future of small press publishing in the UK
The industry must work together to ensure the longevity of the UK’s independent presses.
www.thebookseller.com
October 10, 2025 at 8:42 AM
The future of UK Independent presses hang by a thread. Supporting the sector is vital: this is where ALL the bravery lies. The big houses are risk averse, but copycat small press successes to revitalise their lists. Small presses are the motor!
www.thebookseller.com/comment/open...
www.thebookseller.com/comment/open...
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
Tomorrow presents an ideal opportunity for you to hear readings of works-in-progress from some wonderful new writers!
Come and see the work of the other students in the School of Arts and Humanities! Sit back in our air-conditioned lecture theatre and listen to our readings! Go to the park after!
Come and see the work of the other students in the School of Arts and Humanities! Sit back in our air-conditioned lecture theatre and listen to our readings! Go to the park after!
June 20, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Tomorrow presents an ideal opportunity for you to hear readings of works-in-progress from some wonderful new writers!
Come and see the work of the other students in the School of Arts and Humanities! Sit back in our air-conditioned lecture theatre and listen to our readings! Go to the park after!
Come and see the work of the other students in the School of Arts and Humanities! Sit back in our air-conditioned lecture theatre and listen to our readings! Go to the park after!
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
An insufficient number of English voters care about working class black people because if they did then the Windrush scandal alone would have destroyed the Conservative Party. The fact that it didn’t, now that’s a legitimate concern.
Enraging to have grown up around working class black people who came to the UK and broke themselves for it only to be told that their host nation still has “legitimate concerns” about them being there.
May 12, 2025 at 11:16 AM
An insufficient number of English voters care about working class black people because if they did then the Windrush scandal alone would have destroyed the Conservative Party. The fact that it didn’t, now that’s a legitimate concern.
Today's weather in Navrongo, a town in northern Ghana: 40 degrees ("feels like 45 degrees"). Unfathomable.
HISTORIC HEAT IN AFRICA
44.0c Mango
TOGO HOTTEST DAY IN HISTORY tied !
Thousands and thousands of records are being smashed allover the world like never before but it's nothing to what 's coming next week:
The most insane spree of heat records the world has ever seen.
44.0c Mango
TOGO HOTTEST DAY IN HISTORY tied !
Thousands and thousands of records are being smashed allover the world like never before but it's nothing to what 's coming next week:
The most insane spree of heat records the world has ever seen.
April 8, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Today's weather in Navrongo, a town in northern Ghana: 40 degrees ("feels like 45 degrees"). Unfathomable.
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
When you're the chief political correspondent of the BBC and treat blatant oppression of minorities in the US like a big budget mini series on Netflix.
February 3, 2025 at 10:24 AM
When you're the chief political correspondent of the BBC and treat blatant oppression of minorities in the US like a big budget mini series on Netflix.
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
The next edition of Frieze New Writers – in collaboration with @bergenkunsthall and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway – will take place in Bergen later this spring. If you know any emerging art critics residing in the Nordics, please send this open call their way: www.frieze.com/article/frie...
Apply to the 2025 Frieze New Writers Programme in Bergen, Norway
Deadline for applications is Tuesday 18 February to attend our free art-writing course, in collaboration with Bergen Kunsthall and Office for Contemporary Art Norway
www.frieze.com
January 16, 2025 at 6:38 PM
The next edition of Frieze New Writers – in collaboration with @bergenkunsthall and the Office for Contemporary Art Norway – will take place in Bergen later this spring. If you know any emerging art critics residing in the Nordics, please send this open call their way: www.frieze.com/article/frie...
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
This paragraph… Every time…
John Berger, most beloved, passed away on January 2, 2017.
"What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried...With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”
#everynightapoem #ofsorts
"What reconciles me to my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried...With you I can imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.”
#everynightapoem #ofsorts
January 3, 2025 at 1:35 AM
This paragraph… Every time…
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
Really, the only thing I want to read about the upcoming Trump administration is the newest Eliot Weinberger in @londonreview.bsky.social. There will still be art during what is to come.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Eliot Weinberger · Incoming!
They vow to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget – five times the combined annual salaries of all federal...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 16, 2024 at 9:28 PM
Really, the only thing I want to read about the upcoming Trump administration is the newest Eliot Weinberger in @londonreview.bsky.social. There will still be art during what is to come.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
"I never think of myself as going to heaven." Rest In Peace to the iconic Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024), last interviewed here in 2019 by Patrick A. Howell: lareviewofbooks.org/article/nikk...
Nikki Giovanni: In Her Revolutionary Dream | Los Angeles Review of Books
Patrick A. Howell interviews poet Nikki Giovanni.
lareviewofbooks.org
December 10, 2024 at 10:38 PM
"I never think of myself as going to heaven." Rest In Peace to the iconic Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024), last interviewed here in 2019 by Patrick A. Howell: lareviewofbooks.org/article/nikk...
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
🚨🏴 Scotland’s cultural landscape is at risk of collapse.
Ahead of the draft Budget on Weds 4 Dec, please sign the Campaign for the Arts petition to urge ministers to deliver on their arts funding pledges now.
www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/sc...
Ahead of the draft Budget on Weds 4 Dec, please sign the Campaign for the Arts petition to urge ministers to deliver on their arts funding pledges now.
www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/sc...
Scottish Government – deliver on your arts funding pledges
Scotland’s cultural landscape is at risk of collapse, due to continued inaction and backtracking from the Scottish Government on key arts funding pledges.
www.campaignforthearts.org
November 26, 2024 at 3:52 PM
🚨🏴 Scotland’s cultural landscape is at risk of collapse.
Ahead of the draft Budget on Weds 4 Dec, please sign the Campaign for the Arts petition to urge ministers to deliver on their arts funding pledges now.
www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/sc...
Ahead of the draft Budget on Weds 4 Dec, please sign the Campaign for the Arts petition to urge ministers to deliver on their arts funding pledges now.
www.campaignforthearts.org/petitions/sc...
heart and mind is still in beautiful Torino. 10/10 ✨
November 10, 2024 at 11:28 AM
heart and mind is still in beautiful Torino. 10/10 ✨
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
England still scratching its head over this complex mystery.
August 20, 2024 at 9:43 AM
England still scratching its head over this complex mystery.
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
Dayanita's dinner for her brilliant new show last night was pretty much my dream dinner party guest list in many ways.
May 17, 2024 at 9:53 AM
Dayanita's dinner for her brilliant new show last night was pretty much my dream dinner party guest list in many ways.
Back in the best city for the next few days (Manchester) and there is a beautiful Dürer display at the Whitworth. Overwhelmed by seeing so many works up close with these details.
January 10, 2024 at 7:19 PM
Back in the best city for the next few days (Manchester) and there is a beautiful Dürer display at the Whitworth. Overwhelmed by seeing so many works up close with these details.
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
‘In Mukasonga’s telling, the outbreak of ethnic violence seems inevitable. The penultimate chapter is called “1994: The Genocide, the Long-Awaited Horror”.
Kevin Okoth on Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary reckoning with the Rwandan genocide.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Kevin Okoth on Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary reckoning with the Rwandan genocide.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Kevin Okoth · Paper Grave: On Scholastique Mukasonga
The Hutu authorities in Rwanda, Scholastique Mukasonga writes in The Barefoot Woman, portrayed the Tutsi as ‘...
www.lrb.co.uk
December 12, 2023 at 3:06 PM
‘In Mukasonga’s telling, the outbreak of ethnic violence seems inevitable. The penultimate chapter is called “1994: The Genocide, the Long-Awaited Horror”.
Kevin Okoth on Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary reckoning with the Rwandan genocide.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Kevin Okoth on Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary reckoning with the Rwandan genocide.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
"Dr. King was condemned by virtually every major media outlet in America for taking this stand [on Vietnam]. Even within the civil rights movement, many imagined that he was a traitor to the cause.
And yet, we now know — deep within us we know — that he was right."
hammerandhope.org/article/mich...
And yet, we now know — deep within us we know — that he was right."
hammerandhope.org/article/mich...
Michelle Alexander on Palestine
Our liberation depends upon us breaking our silences.
hammerandhope.org
November 19, 2023 at 1:40 AM
"Dr. King was condemned by virtually every major media outlet in America for taking this stand [on Vietnam]. Even within the civil rights movement, many imagined that he was a traitor to the cause.
And yet, we now know — deep within us we know — that he was right."
hammerandhope.org/article/mich...
And yet, we now know — deep within us we know — that he was right."
hammerandhope.org/article/mich...
Really glad to have Bluesky because I can come on here and see my feed is filled with quotes and thoughts from @hystericalblkns.bsky.social’s Alchemy Lecture yesterday.
November 3, 2023 at 1:22 PM
Really glad to have Bluesky because I can come on here and see my feed is filled with quotes and thoughts from @hystericalblkns.bsky.social’s Alchemy Lecture yesterday.
Reposted by Vanessa Peterson
"'Editors," [Morrison] said, turning to her day job, 'are now judged by the profitability of what they acquire rather than by what they acquire, or the way they acquire it. Acceptance of the givenness of the marketplace keeps us in ignorance.'" She resigned from Random House two years later.
"Beloved is... terrifying + beautiful.... One of the things it does is allegorize the publishing industry for a black woman who worked as an editor @ a major house for 16yrs, who fought for black writers in a sea of whiteness, who was... accused by other black editors of being a race traitor."
Why Toni Morrison Left Publishing
Commercial book publishing was (and is) unbearably white. In 1971, when Toni Morrison became a trade editor, about 95 percent of the fiction published by the big commercial houses was by white auth…
lithub.com
October 25, 2023 at 2:06 PM
"'Editors," [Morrison] said, turning to her day job, 'are now judged by the profitability of what they acquire rather than by what they acquire, or the way they acquire it. Acceptance of the givenness of the marketplace keeps us in ignorance.'" She resigned from Random House two years later.