David Lewis

Summer reading ☀️📖

This Coworking Space Runs on Sisterhood and Toxic Conformity - Electric Literature “The Parlor,” a fiction debut by Emma Weisberg

A story about a coworking space whose application features more than a few red flags.

buff.ly/k5zwC6y

Turns Out I'm an Entire Person! - Electric Literature “The Beginning of the End,” flash fiction by Devan Murphy

Read Devan Murphy’s flash story about a child who tries to become everything her parents have lost.

I had a great time at the summer intensive workshop with @stingingfly.bsky.social. The moderator, Mia Gallagher, was brilliant, the group was fantastic and the feedback for my work was so helpful! ✍️ 🪰

NEW: on this month's episode of the podcast, host Nicole Flattery is joined by James Hudson to read from and discuss his story ‘Dog Story’, published in the Summer 2025 issue of The Stinging Fly Issue 52 Volume Two.

Listen 🔗 stingingfly.org/podcast/jame...

Vacation reading 🏖️

The Translated Hugo Initiative Putting the World in Worldcon

Hello, Bluesky! This is a weird day to go live with this project, but: this is an initiative to add a Translated Speculative Fiction category to the Hugo Awards. If you are a fan of global SF, and want to put some more "World" in "Worldcon", check out our site! Lots more to come.
translatedhugo.org

Paul Lynch was at the Irish Cultural Center of Paris last night. His thoughts on the historical rise and fall of rationality was interesting, if bleak. Though his statement on fiction’s ability to inspire empathy, where other information sources fail, was surely inspiring to any writers in the crowd

Waiting to Blossom In a Family of Golden Children - Electric Literature “Late Bloomer,” flash fiction by Valentine Sargent

A story about being the only person in your family who hasn’t blossomed yet.

My pleasure! After your panel, I rushed to the bookseller to get a copy of Long Live Evil for you to sign. But as I entered the shop, a horrible, heroic-looking reader snatched the last one off the shelves and I couldn’t come up with a suitably villainous plan to get it from them in time.

A final thank you to @cymerafestival.co.uk for another inspiring weekend packed with books, music, art, craft, industry advice and hundreds of genuinely lovely, enthusiastic readers and writers! I’ll definitely be stalking your halls again next year! (17/17)

Final obligatory book haul photo. The stands in the Creators’ Hall have helped add more glorious wordy weight to my bookshelves, I’m looking at you @lunapress.bsky.social, @knighterrantpress.bsky.social and Daphne Press! (16/17)

All good things end and the perfectly-named final event was Happily Never After with @sarahreesbrennan.bsky.social and @ryherman.bsky.social. Their comments on the how fairy tales evolve to fit social norms were fascinating, inspiring, sometimes terrifying and sometimes hilarious! (15/17)

After that was the open mic hosted by the wonderful @mkhardywrites.com where it was a massive (and nerve-racking) pleasure to get to read next to a bunch of really brilliant writers! Every year I’m blown away by the vibrancy and diversity of the SFFH writing community in Edinburgh! (14/17)

After that was “Folklores and Other Stories” with @vlatinalondon.bsky.social, @lyndseycroal.bsky.social and @gustaffovargas.bsky.social. The talk on modernizing, adapting, translating and interpreting folklores was so brilliant that the books sold out before I could get to the bookseller! 😱 (13/17)

Sunday was a bit calmer, Started of with an Inside SFFH publishing discussion with @kirstenlaaaang.bsky.social from @zenoagency.bsky.social, who talked about querying agents, the submission process, how agents work with writers and how trends change and repeat themselves in the SFFH market. (12/17)

Finished off this literature marathon with a celebration of ten years of “Shoreline of Infinity” - a great magazine of Scottish speculative fiction! The SFFH inspired music of @pcpq.bsky.social was brilliant and the readings were wonderful! What a way to finish the day! (11/17)

Next was What Blood Buys with @iameeadams.bsky.social and @samkhorton.bsky.social whose books explore Appalachian and Cornish folklore in new contexts. Adams’ thoughts on imperfect protagonists and Horton’s stories of the more “murdery” parts of folklore added two new books to my tbr list! (10/17)

The next panel, License to Write with @vlatinalondon.bsky.social and @clclark.bsky.social , was the filled to the brim with fans! I loved the discussion on writing characters vulnerabilities. Also, my jaw dropped every ten seconds or so at how superhumanly prolific these two writers are! (9/17)

Next was Dark Traditions with @whyiwrite.bsky.social and Andrew Michael Hurley. Their thoughts on how communities cling to harmful traditions in the name of civilization and how memorializing wars has been warped for nationalist ends are a terrifying contemporary issues. (8/17)

Next was the panel discussion on time travel with @bingewriting.bsky.social, @roisinmcd.bsky.social and Adam Oyebanji. Really interesting thoughts on writing as an act of time traveling, advocating for the future requiring dialogue with the past and how memory and time form identity. (7/17)

Then I went to the Inside SFFH publishing panel with @jessgofton.bsky.social, PR and Marketing Manager at Solaris. An informative discussion into how PR and marketing teams work with authors. (6/17)

Saturday was a marathon, starting out with @tiffaniangus.bsky.social’s incredibly useful workshop on writing witches. It was a great balance of exploring historical and contemporary writing techniques in literature about witches and writing exercises. (5/17)

The second panel I saw was on an upcoming @commapress.bsky.social anthology: The Monster, Capital. Editor Ra Page and contributors Sanjida Kay and @bronteschiltz.bsky.social discussed the slippery and terrifying ethics of scientific and cultural movements in a capitalist society. (4/17)

The #Cymera Festival started with the panel featuring T.L. Huchu, J.J. Marr and @emmanewman.bsky.social Their thoughts on genre, politics and writing were brilliant. I also learned about a pirate cocktail called “Bumbo”🍹Is there, I don’t know, a pirate bar in Edinburgh where I can try this? (3/17)

But before the festival, there was Edinburgh’s literary history to explore! First I did a little literary tourism at the place where Arthur Conan Doyle was born. Nearby was Topping & Company bookstore where I made the first of many book purchases this weekend. (2/17)

Another year, another wonderful #Cymera festival! Sapphic pirates, uncanny synthetic meat, time traveling explorations of dementia, terrifying town rituals, explorations of weird and “murdery” folklore, retelling myths and legends, vampires and werewolves and witches! Oh my! (1/17)

Definitely one of my favorite reviews. I solemnly swear I am not planning to start a cult... probably 🤣

Thanks to The Masters Review and @daviddaviddavid.com for the lovely review!

#2025debut

And finally, in these days where the US government has decided to withdraw its support from so many cultural institutions and projects, thanks to @degrootfoundation.bsky.social for supporting this festival and for helping bring writers and readers together! 😍 7/7

The last discussion on the Oulipo collection “Les villes indivisibles” between Daniel Levin Beker and Katherine Frost was a lovely talk about writing collaboratively and writing to stylistic restrictions! 6/7