Sandi Toksvig is one of the UK’s most beloved presenters. I’m a fan. She often has me giggling because of some witty remark on Q.I. or at her antics with co-presenter Noel Fielding on The Great British Bake Off. As soon as I could get my hands on a copy of her memoir I did.… Read More Book Review: Between the Stops – The View of my Life from the top of the Number 12 Bus by Sandi Toksvig
After reading Claire Rudy Foster’s new short story collection, Shine of the Ever, I was truly stunned. Foster short stories were full of people grappling with situations that I had lived through. On the pages were characters dealing with unrequited love, repressed sexuality, strained friendships and other wonderfully mundane or fantastically chaotic moments that you… Read More “I wanted my characters to inhabit spaces outside what’s expected for queer and trans people—especially joyful spaces.” Talking to author Claire Rudy Foster about their new book – Shine of the Ever.
It’s weird to think of buildings and places making equality harder. In Feminist City, Leslie Kern talks about the difficulties that we have using the environment that has been made around us. Most of the challenges we face in navigating both urban and rural domestic settings is because it is literally man-made. A cis white… Read More Book Review: Feminist City: A Field Guide by Leslie Kern – Intersectional Feminism and living in a city not built for you
There is no better time of year to set a ghost story than at Christmas. The nights are long and dark. The death of the year looms over us. With the crackle of the logs burning in the fire place (or as in my case, a 10 hour long YouTube video of Christmas ambience being… Read More Book Review: Sherlock Holmes and The Christmas Demon by James Lovegrove – A spooky festive mystery to curl up with on a dark winter’s night
Earlier this year the incredible TV series Gentleman Jack was brought to our screens by HBO and BBC one. Set in Halifax and York, the show explored the life of Victorian lesbian Anne Lister. Now, Diva Destinations, a travel company for lesbian women gives you a chance to explore the world that filled the pages… Read More The Gentleman Jack Tour Weekend – A Sapphic literary getaway inspired by the diaries of Anne Lister
The horror of this book will creep over you and surround you like the mist that haunts the residents of the small Australian town from its pages. Soon by Lois Murphy tells the story of Pete, an ex-cop living in the town of Nebulah with his dog, Gina. The town was never hugely populated before… Read More Book Review: Soon by Lois Murphy – Old school horror set in small town Australia
The delight of reading as a child is being able to image yourself as the hero. Looking at the adventurer on the page and seeing yourself in them can really spark a child’s creativity. Having characters that children can identify with in books is a powerful form of representation. It says to them that there… Read More Diversity in Children’s Literature: How Imagine Me Stories shines a spotlight on black characters in children’s books
In Frankissstein, Jeanette Winterson uses a two narrative telling different stories to reanimate the questions once illuminated by Mary Shelley’s classic literary creation Frankenstein. In the first narrative, Winterson gives us the voice of Shelly during the gloomy vacation in Geneva, 1816 in which she first put pen to paper to bring her novel to… Read More Book Review: Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson – The novel I wish I could love
Have you ever imaged what it must be like to hear the tales of a coven of incredible women? Editors Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering have conjured up just that. Inside the pages of Hex Life are a collection of enchanted tales from the pens of eighteen fantastically talented female authors. Within these stories… Read More Book Review: Hex Life edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering – Wicked New Tales of Witchery
We Have Always Been Here is the fantastic queer Muslim memoir of editor and photographer Samra Habib. In the book she details her life so far starting with her birth and early childhood in Pakistan. There are some beautifully written snapshots of her early life in the first part of the book. Her memories of… Read More Book Review: We Have Always Been Here – Samra Habib’s Queer Muslim Memoir
Istoria Lit 