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novelniche.bsky.social
Poet, Essayist, Ungovernable. She/Her/Hers.
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January Reads: A Knife in the Heart of Being Known A detailed, non-review-related, personal public diary of the books I've read the month previous. I talk about what it feels like to be revealed, utterly, to yourself -- and how one January book above all has shown me how much I've left to learn.

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

I know. It’s not what you expect from me. Herein, I unearth a poem that's almost a decade old, talk about two of my major tells, and ask you to join me for a week of love and relationships at @arvonfoundation.bsky.social with @ellafrears.bsky.social novelniche.substack.com/p/flank-and-...

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

In a ragged, treacherous world, I'm giving thanks for Han Kang and Deborah Smith. How astonishing, the gift of Kang in her own language. How remarkable, the conduit of Deborah Smith to bring her to so many of us, in English. I don't think I can ever stop being grateful. Not ever.

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Writing romance is such a skillful navigation of desire + restraint, I remind myself as I reread passages across @joannachambers.bsky.social's Enlightenment series. There's something so clear + propulsive about Joanna's prose that makes holding its intensities of m/m love truly heady, irresistible.

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

You should read A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand if you are ready for your life to change. This is history. This is Black imagination. This is radical cartography. These are, as the book’s subtitle says, ‘notes on belonging.’

submitted 58 days ago • 1 comment

My poem "Plumeria", selected by Rajiv Mohabir and published in MANOA Journal, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In many ways, it's not an easy poem to take. I'm so grateful it found a home here.

submitted 72 days ago • 3 comments

Ten Days of 2025 Caribbean Books I'm Wildly Excited to Read - Day Three! I adored, without restraint, @claireadamwriter.bsky.social's Golden Child. Love Forms, her next, is *the* intense novel of 2025 I need. No one does emotional difficulty and distress like this. www.faber.co.uk/journal/fabe...

submitted 72 days ago • 1 comment

Ten Days of 2025 Caribbean Books I'm Wildly Excited to Read - Day Two! @camilleuadams.bsky.social's How to be Unmothered feels like it already has my heart. I know I'll be hurt *open* by this memoir, by its truth, and I welcome it. I want its uncompromising weight: restlessbooks.org/bookstore/ho...

submitted 78 days ago • 2 comments

Ten Days of 2025 Caribbean Books I'm Wildly Excited to Read - Day One! @laurenfsharma.bsky.social has written one of the most beautiful, moving novels I've *ever* read, so believe me when I say I can't wait for her Casualties of Truth, @groveatlantic.bsky.social: groveatlantic.com/book/casualt...

submitted 80 days ago • 1 comment

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's made me. @dboodoofortune.bsky.social's Doe Songs are poems I return to over and again, not because I use them to define the world, but because the world can be read *through* them, their feral eloquence, their greenheart.

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's made me. Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris taught me how to read without borders. How to obey no prescription or directive but the hinterland. When I need to account myself wild and unknowable, I come here again. 🇬🇾

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's made me. The Best of All Possible Worlds by @drkarenlord.bsky.social is visionary work, asking the largest of questions through the most intricate, devoted means. Lord is a true weaver of myths, realities, imaginings. 🇧🇧

submitted 94 days ago • 2 comments

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's shaped me. Golden Child, by Claire Adam, harrows me. An unsettling, achingly real novel about two young boys born into a society that prizes education to deathly ends, this is Trinidad on the page that hurts, blisters. 🇹🇹

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

From now til the end of November, each day I'll share a Caribbean book that's shaped me. I no longer view Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys with the uncritical adoration I felt for it in my teens, but it remains rooted in my understanding of a primordial defiance, a bone-deep revolt against tyranny. 🇩🇲

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

*slides into your d(angerous) m(issive)s* Won't you join @ellafrears.bsky.social, Daniel Sluman + I on this Arvon online Love Poetry course? Weird, wondrous, wild - all types of poems, on all kinds of love, are welcome here. We can't wait to read your raw hearts. 🫀🫀🫀 www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

submitted 100 days ago • 0 comments

Reading the Caribbean means you read the world. I'm reflecting on what this mantra of mine means, especially now, when so many Caribbean writers occupy global favour. If we ever fall out of it, I want us to remember we are the centre of our worlds. We reside within us, and have always made story.

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

Here's "Matikoor", written in honour of the deep love I have for wild, ungovernable desire, in secretly dangerous-safe spaces. The matikoor was one of the first sites in which I became aware of women loosening their obediences, channelling their hips, tongues, hearts towards their own true freedom.

submitted 505 days ago • 0 comments

I have another book of poems firing within me.

submitted 510 days ago • 2 comments