Exploring literary visions of greener, fairer ways of being
Next week I m heading to the Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2026 conference to talk about change-the-world literary criticism. I got the idea of change-the-world criticism from an open letter Nisi Shawl wrote to Octavia E. Butler. The letter was written on the occasion of the publication of Shawl s novel Everfair, several years after Butler s Continue reading What would a change-the-world…
As autumn turns to winter it’s time for me to summarise what I’ve read and thought about fungi this season. I started off from the current trend for fungal fiction. I found myself asking whether fungi are being used to think about better ways of being, and this made me wonder about the relationship between Continue reading The Fungal Utopia: Seeing Utopia in Mushrooms and Mushrooms in Utopia The…
I ve been reading a lot about fungal fiction and the fungal turn recently. It gets to a point where it s weird to be inside reading about mushrooms when there are actual mushrooms outside. Accordingly, I ve been fungi spotting whenever I ve been out, and even going on mushroom walks specifically to look for them. I started Continue reading Mushroom Diary: Autumn 2025 in Photos of Fungi The post…
The CRSF annual conference took place on 3-4 July 2025. It was a hybrid event and I joined remotely. The official theme of the conference was ‘boundaries’. However, I felt there were two other themes that emerged from the event. Firstly the global prevalence of SF, which the hybrid format supported as it allowed for Continue reading Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) 2025 conference…
Mushrooms are a big thing right now in speculative fiction. I’ve enjoyed putting together this glossary of terms relating to fungi and the trend for fungal fiction. I wrote this in response to Jasmin Kirkbride’s keynote on mushroompunk at the Current Research in Speculative Fiction conference in July 2025. Funga The kingdom of fungi, like Continue reading Fungal fiction: a field guide to the…
What’s the crossover between land work and utopia? I feel there is one, although it’s hard to articulate. Isn’t utopia science fiction, set in not-real places with fictional technology? How can that relate to working the land? Well, increasingly utopian fiction is earthbound, with characters whose physical connection with the earth go beyond our own. Continue reading “The constellations were at…
Let me take you behind the scenes on the video I recorded this morning for the upcoming Current Research in Speculative Fiction conference. It looks like this: a phone mount, attached to a GorillaPod, attached to some ivy, attached to a tree. With the requirement to film my presentation in advance, I decided to film Continue reading Behind the scenes for an upcoming video The post Behind the…
Last week, in the council chamber within the main building of Cardiff University surrounded by portraits of venerable white men, I attended a day long workshop on decolonial research led by Dr Leon Moosavi. As I embark on my PhD I am interested in what it takes to do the day job in a way Continue reading Decolonial researcher training – some thoughts The post Decolonial researcher training – some…
We went on a family trip to Cheddar Gorge and Caves and I was, like most visitors who have been in the show caves over the past 187 years I m sure, very impressed by the rock formations. What I was particularly impressed by was their semblance to other things in nature I would usually think Continue reading The living rock: dispatches from a cave The post The living rock: dispatches from a cave…
A word at the outset of this report to note there will be spoilers for the Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. Also, this report is not comprehensive. Conversely, it is highly subjective and reflects what I personally found exciting and pertinent to my own areas of interest. This means mostly Jemisin, Nisi Shawl Continue reading Women in the Black Fantastic conference report The post Women in…