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jonathangibbs.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at City St Georges, Uni of London. I curate the short story project apersonalanthology.com. Novels are Randall or The Painted Grape and The Large Door. Poetry is Spring Journal. https://linktr.ee/jonathangibbs
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🔥 Dostoevsky 🧵 full of writhing and self-flagellation. Get in!

submitted 2 hours ago • 0 comments

A thing about loss. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 1 day ago • 83 comments

W.G. Sebald‘s writing table now sits in my study. It was a gift from my neighbour Gordon Turner, a longtime friend and UEA colleague of “Max”. Gordon remembers stripping the pine top with Ute, Sebald’s wife, in the 1970s. The rather battered legs are still painted in a chipped black gloss.

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

Copying this from a post on twitter: We're into the last few days to respond to the UK government's consultation on AI & copyright. If you care about British creators, please respond 🙏 Draft responses here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

We watched Wings of Desire. I did the ironing, had a lil snooze (Nick Cave woke me up) and a cup of tea. So much to admire, and even love, but the utterly creepy way the angels are presented benignly snuggling up to and basically stalking the poor unknowing mortals mean it can't get more than 3.5*.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

My question for the AI bros is, the average person will be more productive than the most productive person in the world today, but they’ll be producing… what exactly? AI can *produce*, alright. It’s a producing machine. That’s what it does. But it produces dreck.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

On vinyl this is a pleasant enough listen. Live, Personal Trainer are another prospect entirely. I’d encourage you to catch them on tour right now if they’re near you.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Brilliance from @privateeyenews.bsky.social !! @bas.ac.uk ❄️🥼🧪🌊

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

A nice surprise to be on this bestseller list a day after publication. Thanks to all who pre-ordered the book! www.hive.co.uk/books/bestse...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Ever since I first heard this gorgeous track from the Rachel's album Systems/Layers ('Last Things Last') it's been nagging away at me that it sounds like something else. Any suggestions gratefully received! youtu.be/2FGL9V1HE_4?...

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

And off it goes, Jayne Marshall’s Personal Anthology, rambling about the Moorish halls, following Camille’s departure as intently as a human being, fishing up a magazine from the floor and idly opening it, phone pressed to its dirty ear, playing the shy boy, trying to be something, anything else…

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

It's Thursday already and I haven't told you about tomorrow's Personal Anthology! It comes from Jayne Marshall, and it's a doozie. I was going to send it last week cos it's got love stories in it (and non-love stories) but I forgot. You get it tomorrow. You'll love it. Sign up 👇

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Hate that the epigraph to Glamorama is now something other than a sly, squint-eyed piece of provocation.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Maki Namekawa played Philip Glass like a beast at Wigmore Hall this evening. One of those performances – actually Personal Trainer were the same – that puts a county mile between itself and its recorded version. Nothing mechanical, nothing inhuman, here. The mechanics were all superbly human.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

A superb metaphor

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Happy Birthday to Ghost Town, 5 years old today - a bumpy start just as the pandemic kicked in but it did ok! Thank you to everyone who read it, reviewed it, got in touch to talk about it. Above all, thanks to the mighty @littletollerbooks.bsky.social who made it happen. X

submitted 6 days ago • 12 comments

Did they ever figure out why broken glass tastes like blood

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Always want the BAFTA to be called “BEST FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FOR SOME REASON”.

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

It me. Talking about me. And my Sunday Times Audible Short Story Prize shortlisted story ‘A Prolonged Kiss’.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

this letter in the LRB on Karl Polanyi is a useful quick explainer of the present moment—helpful framing for talking to relatives etc @londonreview.bsky.social

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

Nice to see my colleague Jessica Andrews’s excellent novel Saltwater lauded in Alex Niven’s The North Will Rise Again.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Personal Trainer live at The Grove in Newcastle were great great fun, so much so that I’m considering seeing them again in London. The only way I can think to describe them is: imagine LCD Soundsystem infused with the spirit of They Might Be Giants and, frankly, at times, The Muppets.

submitted 10 days ago • 2 comments

“Couleur est-il?” asked the French synaesthete, looking at the clock.

submitted 10 days ago • 3 comments

Wild at Heart at the Tyneside cinema. First rewatch, I think, since it came out, 35 years ago, by Christ. *Not* my favourite Lynch movie. boxd.it/8PPUGn

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

Wild at Heart at the Tyneside cinema. First rewatch, I think, since it came out, 35 years ago, by Christ. *Not* my favourite Lynch movie. boxd.it/8PPUGn

submitted 11 days ago • 2 comments

And off it goes, Clare Reddaway’s Personal Anthology, lying awake in the wagon-lit, drinking half a glass of white wine in the kitchen, cooking pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil, tapping its fingers to some unheard tune, taking phosphates or phosphites, raising its eyes to see the sea above...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

There's still time to sign up to Clare Reddaway's somewhat love story-themed Personal Anthology - her pick of and introduction to a dozen favourite short stories. It hits inboxes after 3pm today. Sign up here to get it. RT if you get it already! apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Instead of a Valentines card I just got my wife a loyalty card that she stamps for me every year.

submitted 12 days ago • 3 comments