"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Pride Month 2022 – Aphra Behn

Undervalued as an author till the 1970s, Aphra Behn is not only a feminist icon but her works around women’s sexuality are an exquisite example of sapphic poetry.

240 years after her death, Virginia Woolf will remember Aphra in her independence manifesto A Room of One’s Own:

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

She’s today’s profile on my Patreon.
Summertime

Omeros in the Caribbeans

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

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August 9, 2026 6:00 am
books and literature

Ioanna Papadopoulou’s The Castaway and the Witch

I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”. This maybe has something to

Read More »
August 8, 2026 9:00 am
Summertime

The Path You Have to Sing

Alexis Wright‘s Carpentaria, an epic work set in a fictional town called Desperance, opens before there are any people in it at all: an ancestral serpent, “a creature larger than storm clouds,” descends from the stars and drags itself across the wet clay of the

Read More »
August 8, 2026 6:00 am
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Omeros in the Caribbeans

August 9, 2026

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

Read More

Ioanna Papadopoulou’s The Castaway and the Witch

August 8, 2026

I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”. This maybe has something to

Read More

The Path You Have to Sing

August 8, 2026

Alexis Wright‘s Carpentaria, an epic work set in a fictional town called Desperance, opens before there are any people in it at all: an ancestral serpent, “a creature larger than storm clouds,” descends from the stars and drags itself across the wet clay of the

Read More