Emma Parker

I genuinely thought you're pulling my leg, until seeing a picture of you + recording equipment + a copy of That Awful Whale. Anytime! My only insights are the baby's reaction to key passages (mostly 😭)

Are you reading The Big Whale, Pete?! I've spent the past 2 months of mat leave with it (why) and have no one to share my newfound knowledge of rigging/blubber/sails with.

Amazing 40% off sale by @manchesterup.bsky.social means that paperback editions of our essay collection British Culture After Empire are just £15! A veritable bargain!

@liamliburd.bsky.social

This means you can get 'Imperial Nostalgia', which I wrote, for less than a tenner! That works out at about 0.014p per word, which is the kind of bargain only a fool would miss: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526146205/

Isn't it wonderful! I'd love to know who selects the poems

Last week my partner texted "I've just seen Janet Frame on the tube!" Slightly disappointed that a ghostly Frame isn't cruising the Piccadilly Line but equally delighted to catch a glimpse of this

Twenty experts on the book that got them through their 20s – part one Many of us turn to literature to guide us through the highs and the lows of this formative time

An interesting selection on this list of “books that got you through your twenties” for @theconversation.com

There was only ever one choice for me: Joe Sacco’s Palestine.

What would yours be?

theconversation.com/twenty-exper...

📚 A STATE OF SIEGE by Janet Frame, with an introduction from Chris Kraus, is now available from our website 📚

‘She is a singular writer. No one is quite like her.’
— Eleanor Catton, author of BIRNAM WOOD

Read an excerpt and order a copy here: bit.ly/3X7fm97

The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco review – a masterclass in visual reportage The author of Palestine turns his attention to the legacies of Indian partition in this brilliant portrait of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots

I reviewed Joe Sacco's latest book, the Once and Future Riot. It's as good as anything he's done, and that is a high bar.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Thank you so much Elleke!

Thank you so much Saima!

Emma Parker holds a copy of her 2024 book Life Writing and the End of Empire

Over the 🌙 that Life Writing & The End of Empire is joint winner of the 2025 @bacls.bsky.social Monograph Prize 🎉

Congrats to co-awardee @drdominicdean.bsky.social & brilliant shortlistees @olihaslam.bsky.social @gabriele-lazzari.bsky.social. I can’t wait to read your books!
bacls.org/news/187/

My own article on A State of Siege (repub soon with @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social) asks all the important questions for this spooky season:

🎃 Why are white ladies so afraid of the sea in #NZlit?
👻 Did Frame predict man-made climate change?
🌊 Who owns 'a view'?

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Our special issue, Janet Frame at 100, is here!

To mark Frame's centenary we commissioned 10 new essays on her glittering oeuvre, from discussions of working-class cultures to her writing as southern modernism. Out now with Literature, Critique, and Empire Today

journals.sagepub.com/toc/jclb/60/3

Wasafiri remembers Zoë Wicomb, who passed away recently on 13 October, 2025. In celebration of her life and work, we are making her short story, 'In Search of Tommie', from our 25th anniversary issue, free to access until the end of the month.

Read now: buff.ly/CdQQOLF

The first in our new TTiN podcast series of interviews with academics and artists working on infrastructure is now live!

In this episode, Nicola Kirkby discusses her new book, Railway Infrastructure and the Victorian Novel. Listen on your usual podcast platform!

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Journey to the Heart of Whiteness: An Interview With Cato Pedder Published in Wasafiri (Vol. 40, No. 3, 2025)

For the latest @wasafirimag.bsky.social I talk to memoirist Cato Pedder about apartheid, her family (including Jan Smuts), and encountering #DorisLessing in a public bathroom. Her brilliant book, Moederland, is out now with @johnmurrays.bsky.social.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

This looks great! New novel?! Many, many congratulations Elleke

Elleke Boehmer ICE SHOCK with Lara Feigel Join us for a discussion chaired by Lara Feigel with Elleke Boehmer, author of the new book 'Ice Shock'

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1810363990...

[HUMS Bicentenary PhD] A reparatory history of the Manchester Royal Exchange in collaboration with the Royal Exchange Theatre at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - [HUMS Bicentenary PhD] A reparatory history of the Manchester Royal Exchange in collaboration with the Royal Exchange Theatre at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

This PhD on a reparatory history of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, exploring the legacies of empire is open for applications. It features a great supervisory team (moi, Kerry Pimblott, and Sadia Habib) and fabulous public history opportunities. Please share.
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Solidarity — I’m really sorry you had to experience this. So many women have told me that they longed for this distinction.

“Life is hell, but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought. ” — Janet Frame

In all seriousness, how lovely to see my book in such excellent company, alongside work by @maebhlong.bsky.social, Matthew Hayward, & Wan-Chuan Kao.

Janet Frame on prizes: www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Emma Parker’s Life Writing and the End of Empire: Homecoming in Autobiographical Narratives (Bloomsbury, 2024) has been shortlisted for the 2025 Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize! www.litencyc.com/book-prizes/...

LSE Collaborative Studentship with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew LSE Collaborative Studentship with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

This collaborative PhD project with the LSE and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on Planting Decolonization: Plantation Science and Empire in the Twentieth Century, sounds amazing.

I’m sure many of you might be interested.

#STS #HPS #HistSci

www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse...

Thanks to the conference organisers and @bodleian.ox.ac.uk for facilitating this work, esp while I stagger through the first months of maternity leave.

Joyous to give my 1st keynote @ the postgrad forum of @gapsnet.bsky.social, sharing research on #SouthAfrican & #British women writers

Despite the terrors of British HE, this event proved how doctoral research (inc at @bristolunienglish.bsky.social) can illuminate new paths for postcolonial studies

Janet Frame’s A State of Siege, in the standard Fitzcarraldo Editions livery: white text on International Klein Blue card

The blurb for the novel, as well as a quote from me: “[Frame's| writing is engaging and idiosyncratic - full of a character that proves that the best way to strike deep with the reader is not to do what everyone else is doing, but to grasp your distinctive vision of the world and hammer it hard." - John Self, The Times

New old Janet Frame coming from Fitzcarraldo Editions in November: her 1966 novel A State of Siege.

Wise words from the chap on the back cover.

The canal in Oxford

Image of Drum magazine, South Africa 1959

Anti apartheid cartoon in the left wing newspaper New Age, South Africa 1958

A bright end 🌞 to my visiting fellowship in women’s history @bodleianlibraries.bsky.social, mapping women’s literary contributions to the anti-apartheid movement.

Offering free College lunches to a heavily pregnant lecturer was risky, and I mourn my lost access to the daily dessert trolley. 🍰 💔

Israel kills innocent Palestinians. Activists spray-paint a plane. Guess which the UK government calls terrorism | Sally Rooney If Palestine Action becomes a proscribed group, writing these words of support could become a serious offence. It’s vital we fight this alarming attack on free speech, says writer Sally Rooney

“Law-abiding protest has so far failed to stop the genocide. More than 50,000 innocent children have been killed or injured. In what circumstances could civil disobedience ever be justified if not now?”