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An image of a sign pointing the way towards the Camino Frances route

How I decided to walk 100 miles across Spain

The long journey to the Camino Frances, and the first couple of days along the way…

Every year, I devour things and love them hard. The ones that stick with me most get shared in my newsletter throughout the year, and the loved list is a collection collaged together from there. In this edition, you’ll find the books and essays that had the most impact on my head and heart as I moved through 2022.

Image of laptop with stickers via Svetlana Romashenko on Pexels

We had a time, didn’t we?

Somehow it’s been an entire year since I stepped back from For Books’ Sake, the non-profit I founded and ran for over a decade.

I’m in love with a monster: 3 books about monsters I loved in 2022

Samhain is coming closer, nights are getting longer, things are lurking in the shadows. And a time of embracing darkness seems the perfect moment to share a trio of books about monsters that I read and loved this year.

It’s been a year since I got onstage

For several years pre-pandemic, August and the months leading up to it meant only one thing: Edinburgh Fringe.

Latrinalia

There are many reasons rock pubs, queer clubs and dive bars will forever have my heart, but I’ve always loved the sexy, sad, political or downright surreal scrawls on their toilet walls.

Poster from queer clubnight Crossbreed in London reading 'we believe in queer utopias'

Queer utopias and mutual care

In the little box room study where I do my writing hangs a banner from Black Lodge Press. QUEER UTOPIAS ARE NOT FANTASIES, it says. QUEER UTOPIAS ARE NECESSITIES. And at a time when things feels far closer to dystopia than utopia, that’s something that’s been playing on my mind. I’ve been thinking a lot about the necessity of mutual care, and how we look after each other when times are tough.

Lack of daylight

The nights are long. The days are dark. Times are weird, and traumatic, and the news has become a post-apocalyptic sci-fi parody of itself. Which seems like perfect timing to share our latest short film…

Loved list: 2021 💖

Here we go again. End of another year, and — as in 2020 — I’ve been back through my newsletters from the past twelve months and collaged together the things I read, watched or listened to that stuck with me the most. It’s far from definitive, it’s not themed beyond being vaguely chronological, but it nevertheless forms a messy picture of where my head and heart were and went during 2021.

Jane Claire Bradley