Vicky MacKenzie

Proof copies of Each Leaf, Each Curve of Stem, my second novel, have arrived! I call it my second novel, but in my heart it's my first - thirteen years in the writing, baby. Yep, feeling quite emotional! 🌱💚✒️

My new favourite description (taken from a review of Alan Baker's poetry collection): 'Godless but not profane'. And the book sounds great.

‘Cecil Beaton, Self-portrait as King Cnut.’ #Photography (c. 1915).

Two brilliantly uncanny stories from @nightjarpress.bsky.social: Alison Moore's 'Bloom' and John Saddler's 'The Troubles'. Thank you @nicholasroyle.bsky.social for continuing to publish this series.

This is the tonic I needed... 'Timothy's Book: Notes of an English Country Tortoise' by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a novel from the point of view of Gilbert White's tortoise and my god, the prose is immaculate. A tortoise-eye view of the hubris of human beings.

The brilliant @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social is looking for your help to publish more poetry next year. If you can donate, that's more wonderful words out in the world: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-broke...

We are open for submissions! 💌 This submission window closes at midnight on Sunday 8 November. Full details here: tolkajournal.org/submit-to-to...

Find it just so typical that rather than Scotland's media explore what public ownership of busses means to the public, or how it works outside of Scotland - or even how it works in our own capital city - the amplified central voices are reactionary businessmen.

Justified praise for a superb book about an all-time-great band. www.graemethomson.net/post/in-anot...

When I wrote FOR THY GREAT PAIN it was definitely beyond my wildest dreams that it would be included in a university course! How cool does #TheMedievalNow look, co-taught by the ingenious @drlauravarnam.bsky.social! And everyone should read CUDDY btw, it's incredible.

I’m currently offering 50% off an annual subscription to Notes from the Margin! wendypratt.substack.com/p/50-off-an-...

Very sorry to report that Douglas Dunn has passed away. He was the finest Scottish poet of the post-war period. Dougie was also someone we knew and loved as a dear friend, mentor and teacher, and he will be deeply missed.

Issue Twelve 🕶 Delighted (even if we don't look it) to unveil our Issue Twelve cover featuring 'For Me' by the brilliant @molliedouthit.bsky.social Cover design by Sarah McCoy This issue is available to pre-order now via our website 🧣Link below

You know it. The pleasure of being left alone www.themarginalian.org/2024/06/13/r...

Amazing news London people Persephone is coming back! 🥳

You have until midnight tomorrow to get 25% off ANYTHING on the Carcanet website. Go poetry mad: www.carcanet.co.uk Code: POETRYWEEK ✒️

Announcing the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Longlist 2026! The list of 13 titles from 12 languages includes novels, poetry, short fiction, and memoir. The prize is judged in 2026 by Arifa Akbar, Véronique Tadjo, Boyd Tonkin. For the full list and announcement: tinyurl.com/394cypw6

Book here for @gregchthomas.bsky.social 's lunchtime lecture in Edinburgh at @nationalgalleries.bsky.social on Tuesday 6 October. You can book to watch online too. Free but ticketed. festival.forarthistory.org.uk/event/a-home-in-space-edwin-morgans-concrete-visual-and-sound-poetry/

This (alternatively) storied landscape… great piece from @patrickbarkham.bsky.social on Nick Hayes’ beautiful & fierce new book #TheMedicineTree. It’s a book that shares a few references with mine (I grew up here too) & I’m delighted to have a small cameo in it! It’s a really great book.

Our books are well-constructed, good and useful things, and if you buy one, it will enable us to make more. Recent titles include Matthew Clegg's 'Have You Always Been Here?', Fay Musselwhite's 'The Gleaning', and Steve Ely's 'Eely'. You can order them here: longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...

The most disappointing video you’ll see today.

Have a lovely weekend 🐑🐏

Poetry as a form of attention practice. Three pamphlets exploring how careful noticing can deepen our relationship with place, time and the more-than-human world. Have You Always Been Here? @longbarrowpress.bsky.social longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2026/08/28/p...

Ruskin's 'The Stones of Venice' changed how I see architecture. That passage about Gothic ornament being the worker's joy still gives me chills.

Genre categories may help the selling of a book but they hinder the reading of it.

Join founding editor Kate Knowles as she sits down with @lukekennard.bsky.social to unpack the madness, heart, and romance behind one of 2026's most talked-about books.

This will be a thread of essays I recommend to students in my creative nonfiction workshop:

For those with young aspiring writers (family, class) the 2026/7 Junior Orwell Prize has launched www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-y... They also need reviewers to provide feedback to entrants and help with long and shortlisting… it’s a fantastic experience

A selection of fabrics and wallpapers from the Festival of Britain exhibition, 1951, published in 'Design from the Festival', one of the many digitised resources available on our website - designarchives.brighton.ac.uk/resources/do... @designcouncil.bsky.social archive DCA/32/2/1/78

Literature Live — next episode of my monthly radio books programme is Monday 12 October 2026, 8:00–9:00pm. My guests this month are @lukekennard.bsky.social and @judecook.bsky.social — readings and chat with the emphasis on writers reading from their fiction. @resonancefm.bsky.social — don’t miss!

Franz Schoenberner was beaten and left paralyzed from the neck down by a couple of New York thugs. You Still Have Your Head: Excursions From Immobility is his attempt to understand the good and bad that could come from the experience and his slow recovery. neglectedbooks.com/?...

Also, Alan Warner's Morvern Callar. My god, what a book. "He’d cut His throat with the knife. He’d near chopped off His hand with the meat cleaver. He couldnt object so I lit a Silk Cut. A sort of wave of something was going across me. There was fright but I’d daydreamed how I’d be."

You can buy BROKEN BISCUITS direct from HarperCollins with 40% off using the code AUTUMN40, which is what I’d do if I didn’t already know what happens at the end*. harpercollins.co.uk/products/bro... *it’s memoir, so what happens at the end is me posting this link and urging you to buy it.

A reminder that I’m giving a free writing workshop for paid Substack subscribers on the morning of Saturday 3rd Oct 10-12 noon. A subscription is just £4 per month or £40 per year, and entitles you to two free online writing workshops every year. victoriamackenzie.substack.com

A great interview, full of bookish treasures...

‘In a rather moving way, each of Anita Brookner’s later novels could be titled “The Following Day”; they are small, sometimes perfect treatises on unfathomable longing and the pressure of imminence.’ Andrew O’Hagan: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

There's still time to sign up for today's Personal Anthology, which comes courtesy of @davidcollard.bsky.social. A dozen favourite short stories, picked and introduced. Hitting inboxes 2pm. Sign up below. RT to spread the word if you're already subscribed! apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

If you needed another reason to oppose AI data centres, George Osborne is now batting for them: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Really liked this. Deliciously offbeat and I loved how Perry brought the scenes together at the end. Quiet, meditative, thoughtful and sensual. 🍏🍗🧀Thanks @wendypratt.bsky.social for recommending it to me, you were right! 😉#BookerPrize2026

"Of course I miss the water, but at least I don't have to think for myself anymore ..." #HigherEd #EduSky #Edtech #PhdChat #learning#datacentre #AI

Duane Keiser Water and Lemon Oil on Canvas - 9 x 7.5 inches 2022

Loveliest signing photos ever! And you DO want a signed copy because @cclarklewes.bsky.social is a wonderful writer and this book of essays, WHAT LIES AHEAD, is incredibly generous and thoughtful and will enrich your life. Out now from @blackheraldpress.bsky.social

I spoke to the @independent.ie about my new book, Setting the Land Free, and the desperate need for rewilding on both land and at sea in Ireland. Both nature and people are crying out for what has the potential to be utterly transformative. www.independent.ie/videos/autho...