This year I smashed through all my previous records for number-of-books-read. How did I manage that? Well, I joined the jury for The Kitschies Awards along with Leila Abu El Hawa, Nick Mamatas and Molly Tanzer. Not surprisingly, my best reads of 2024 can be summarised by reminding you of the shortlists. It was such […]
Earlier this year I had the great pleasure to read this anthology in manuscript. This month AMANAT is published! In the fall of 2018, the Kazakh writer Zira Naurzbayeva agreed to meet me, an English traveller and writer, to discuss her work of nonfiction “The Beskempir,” which I had read online though only in the […]
2022: The Halfway Point! So far this year, my reading has been overwhelmingly dictated by research for my current manuscript — I am surrounded by piles of pretty dense non-fiction. When I have found time for fiction, I admit I’ve mostly opted for ‘safe bets’, novels I hope and expect to fall in love with. […]
Looking back on this second pandemic year, it appears I took a scattergun approach to my book reading — fiction and non-fiction, variously set in contemporary, historical and futuristic times. I took some surprising turns. In the latter half of my reading year, for example, I found myself deliciously embroiled in all-things-Tudor, as though I […]
This comes as wonderfully cheering news during a long spell of grey days on the Isle of Bute. My short story “All I Asked For” is shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association’s Best Short Fiction Award 2020. It’s in grand company, and here’s the full shortlist: Eugen M. Bacon, Ivory’s Story, Newcon Press. Anne […]
