Gosh, I’ve been lax about posting updates. Perhaps I’ve been too busy writing, or enjoying our limited post-lockdown freedoms. Anyway, here is a nice new (ish) thing: Tamarind is an interdisciplinary sci-art magazine recently launched by students at Imperial College (where I used to work, a geological age ago). The editors and I had a […]
Recent publications
Here’s a round-up of some recent pubs: My short story ‘Latent Image’ about obsolete technologies and mental illness was published in issue 23 of Gutter Magazine My essay ‘Thirty-six views of the Berlin Wall’ about wandering through Berlin on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall is published by The Real Story My […]
Studying the Universe from Blackford HIll
My essay about walking up (and down) Blackford Hill in the south of Edinburgh every day for several years is published at Elsewhere: A Journal of Place – a rather lovely online publication that explores place(s).
‘Uncanny Bodies’ anthology
I’ve been working on this project for a few years and I’m thrilled it’s finally published! ‘Uncanny Bodies’ is an anthology of specially commissioned work by literary types and academics, exploring the concept of the uncanny. According to Freud in his essay of 1919, the uncanny is not the strange, but the familiar become strange. […]
Stay at home/Bleib zu Hause!
In January I moved from Scotland to Frankfurt, where I’m living with my partner in a rented flat. Now we’re both working from the kitchen table, which is also the dining table as well as a catch-all storage facility. It’s a curious bubble-like existence. From the windows of the flat we can see the city […]
Recent publications
A few things I’ve had published this year: A review of the film ‘The Invisible Man’ in the TLS. A review of a biography of John Wyndham by Amy Binns, also in the TLS. A flash non-fiction ‘Q is for Quasar’ in Mslexia. An essay ‘Alternative Geometries’ in Litro – about meeting Valentina Tereshkova. Also […]
Arp, Arp and me
Last week I went to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to see Cut and Paste, an exhibition of collages. One of the works included from the early twentieth century is ‘According to the Laws of Chance’, created by the German/French artist Hans/Jean Arp in 1933 when he ripped a sheet of black paper […]
The Moon in Bradford
I’m taking part in an event at the Bradford Literary Festival (on 29 June) to celebrate and examine space exploration 50 years after Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon. I’ll be discussing this with science writer and editor Oliver Morton.
Scotland in Space
I’m part of a project called Social Dimensions of Outer Space and have contributed a short story exploring the notion of a future Scottish spaceport (it’s going to happen, kids) ‘Welcome to Planet Alba’, which will be read and discussed at this event on 23rd May with other SF authors Russell Jones and Laura Lam. […]
Heidelberger Literaturtage
I’m going back to Heidelberg (after being a writer-in-residence there last year) and reading in two events at their ‘Literaturtage’ in May. On 18th May I’ll be reading my essay which examines the meaning of ‘being at home’ in Germany for someone like me, who has German ancestry. Later on that evening I’m reading SF […]