What It Costs: Women Speak Out
Women writers and artists speak out about loss to their creative, personal and professional lives due to trans activism
Read More What It Costs: Women Speak OutWomen writers and artists speak out about loss to their creative, personal and professional lives due to trans activism
Read More What It Costs: Women Speak OutIt’s the time of year to draw breath, reflect, and clarify intentions for the new year ahead. This morning was exceptionally quiet in my noisy house, so I looked back through my long list of half-finished, unpublished blog posts. I may publish some of them, as they are a first draft of history. My preoccupations […]
Read More On reflection: a woman’s place is anywhere but home?This was not a year for devouring high volumes of newly-published books. I’m ultra-picky about what I spend my time reading, so here are five books that moved me, and that I would wholeheartedly recommend as worth buying, or making sure your library has a copy. Widowland – CJ Carey This page-turning dystopian thriller perfectly […]
Read More 5 best new books of 2021In December 2019, I received an invitation to a Christmas publishing party. Though in no fit state to attend, I wanted to meet with my illustrator, so I made the extra effort. After experiencing a panic on the underground, and after several false attempts to reach my destination, I exited at the nearest station and […]
Read More RACHEL ROONEY’S EXIT INTERVIEW FROM PUBLISHINGAs I’ve mostly given up on the only newspaper I used to read regularly, thanks to how it has treated women opposing gender identity ideology (read: the patriarchal Emperor in New Clothes), I nearly missed this story about some Spanish men who scooped a women’s book prize. I’m loathe to give them any further publicity, […]
Read More On literary fraud: men lying to appropriate women’s resourcespaperback, £12, Salt This remarkable, disturbing work of literary fiction is like Heart of Darkness meets The Tempest. Revisiting the Animal Groom fairytale, it is set in the not-too-distant future, when humans are clinging onto existence by their fingernails thanks to environmental devastation. The human and environmental costs of violent, dominating masculinity are inescapable. At […]
Read More Review: dreamtime by venetia welbyI was privileged to speak with novelist, essayist, columnist and human rights campaigner Joan Smith about her fiction and non-fiction writing, long walks, and combating men’s violence against women. It was the non-fiction bestseller Misogynies(1989) that brought me to Joan’s work after she spoke up for women’s free expression in the summer of 2019, when a […]
Read More In conversation with Joan SmithThis morning is a very special one for those who cherish women’s rights, because one very impressive woman–supported by many other impressive women–has won a landmark stage of a vital test case. While it was never credible or defensible to compare the terven to racist war criminals, it worked for a while to maintain No […]
Read More What rights should ‘trans people’ have?Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock, Fleet, hardcover, £16.99 I’ve been eagerly anticipating the publication of this book for over a year, and hoping that it would make it through the clashing rocks of the cancel crew in the book industry. The women who brought it to market have shown real […]
Read More Review: Material Girls by Kathleen StockAn anonymous writer sent a three-page screed to the Bookseller which it duly published. While the letter drips with insinuation, it seems to be a response to David Shelley and Clare Alexander’s statements to a Lords committee on free expression. It also seems to be about some children’s authors’ objections to Onjali Rauf’s appointment as […]
Read More On “transphobia in the book industry”Here are the things that happened since we published our open letter to the Women’s Prize on 6th April 2021. Have a read and make up your mind who was attempting to “malign or bully” whom. — while we expected the silent treatment, the opposite happened: — 30,000 views of the letter in 24 hours […]
Read More Who’s the bully, again?