Ben Tufnell

Out today: Best British Short Stories 2026, edited by Nicholas Royle. Sixteen years on, the annual guide to the very best new fiction includes a Graham Greene discovery, ‘Reading at Night’. £10.99. www.saltpublishing.com/products/bes...

This is a wonderful thing. Everyone should have a copy….

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On my blog today, my review of the excellently creepy gangster hideout novel Paradise by @bentufnell.bsky.social @influxpress.bsky.social @annerandomthings.bsky.social blog tour annabookbel.net/paradise-by-...

I’m being inundated by scammers pushing fake reading clubs, authir promos, amazon optimisation schemes etc etc. It’s tiresome. But I just got one from ‘Isaiah Archibong’, who sounds like a character from a Thomas Pynchon story, which made me smile…

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

Dear story readers and writers, if you don’t know about this wonderful project, check it out!

Issue 15 of The Lonely Crowd will be published on September 7th. Featuring new work from @elfodongo.bsky.social @pcevans.bsky.social @eleanorhooker.bsky.social @jonathangibbs.bsky.social @katefeld.bsky.social @tomvowler.bsky.social @bentufnell.bsky.social & more thelonelycrowd.org/online-shop-...

My story ‘Unhomely’ is included in the new issue of Interzone, alongside some brilliant writers. A funny one this (funny peculiar, not funny ha ha). I took an aside by Freud in his essay ‘Das Unheimliche’, in which he describes reading a ‘thoroughly silly story’ in the Strand Magazine, as a prompt….

artplugged.co.uk/curator-ben-...

#OwlishMonday The dust jacket of Woodland Birds by Phyllis Barclay-Smith (King Penguin 1955) Art by Peter Shepheard.

Pip says hello!

On 4 June I’ll be at The BookHive in Norwich, chatting to @oldweirdalbion.bsky.social about ‘Paradise’ and ‘Dead The Long Year’. I imagine a conversation about landscape, thresholds, Modernism, art, magic and much more. Come join us! It’s free - reserve your place at www.thebookhive.co.uk/evebnts/

I’m heading west this week, for studio visits, meetings, an exhibition opening AND a book event at The Bookshop in Helston. Looking forward to talking about my weird tomes, The North Shore and Paradise. Come and say hello! Reserve your space at www.ticketsource.co.uk

I’m heading up to King’s Lynn…. If you love Norfolk’s wild coastline and fiction that gets under your skin, this is for you. An evening with Ben Tufnell, exploring his two extraordinary novels: The North Shore, a gothic, unsettling tale rooted in the Norfolk coast, and new eco-thriller, Paradise…

Today’s book post. New stories by @andrewhook.bsky.social @dancoxon.bsky.social and Aliya Whiteley. These are from a very handsome new series of single-story chapbooks called ‘ Infidelities‘, from the excellent @salopress.bsky.social….

bookshop.org/lists/50-boo...

When the ‘omnilingual’ Anthony Burgess met Jorge Luis Borges, they apparently ‘chatted in Anglo-Saxon’! From ‘Visiting Mrs Nabokov’ by Martin Amis

New episode of Uncanny Landscapes is out now. On alls the platforms. Ben Tufnell discusses his new novel Paradise - a brilliant slice of pastoral-noir fiction inspired by his decades as a curator of contemporary landscape art in London.

www.patreon.com/posts/six-bo...

This is a great initiative by @uncertainstories.com - a series of beautiful little chapbooks each containing a single short story, given away for free in independent bookshops. I picked up this spooky tale by the great @daveyfrankel.bsky.social in @goldenharebooks.bsky.social in Edinburgh….

Any writers currently feeling less than productive can thank themselves they're not in the shoes of pulp author Alfred J Burks, who at his peak in the 1930s set himself a target to write 18,000 words a day. A day.

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

I was just wondering what to read next when this popped through the door. Will read straightaway! @bentufnell.bsky.social @influxpress.bsky.social

'Poppy' c.1852 by Anna Atkins, UK pioneer in botany and photography whose photographs created by the cyanotype process were the first ever to be published #womensart #WomensHistoryMonth

Enikö Eged

@bentufnell.bsky.social chooses six books that influenced the upcoming PARADISE for Interzone www.patreon.com/posts/six-bo...

THE NORTH SHORE TO PARADISE @bentufnell.bsky.social will be appearing at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival in May, in conversation with Tracee Findlater about his two books, THE NORTH SHORE and his brilliant new novel, PARADISE. Thursday 14 May 6pm 🎟️ £15 nnfestival.org.uk/whats-on/the...

PARADISE, the new genre-defying eco-thriller combining elements of noir, folk horror and nature writing by @bentufnell.bsky.social, is published early March! Interested reviewers please get in touch. Pre-order here: www.influxpress.com/shop/paradis...

Excited to have a story in the new issue of @the4facedliar.bsky.social Thanks to Roisin and everyone at the magazine!

We asked Aliya Whiteley for her best books of 2025, a book she'd love for Xmas & her anticipated reads of 2026. Read the full article https://geni.us/SolarisBks2025 to find out why she picked @vajra.me @bentufnell.bsky.social & @annecharnock.bsky.social ! https://geni.us/misheardw

Great piece by @chuckwendig.bsky.social

PARADISE by @bentufnell.bsky.social is published March 2026 www.influxpress.com/paradise

Many thanks to @charlieratpig.bsky.social for these words…..

Avoid Amazon. Shop Small! Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday. We hope you can get down to a brilliant local indie bookshop. If not, snap up a book and support indie booksellers with us - and you're in with the chance of winning a £250 Bookshop.org gift card. Support bookshops, not billionaires.

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Salvador Dali, ‘Portrait of Luis Bunuel’ (1924), Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid