Laura

click for full efect

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Amazon is the invisible backbone of ICE’s immigration crackdown Lobbying dollars and a cozy relationship with the government have given the tech giant an outsize influence in the Department of Homeland Security.

Just a reminder! If you're buying books in support of #BannedBooksWeek buying from Amazon undercuts the broader project of social justice supporting the right to read is a part of. Get your banned books absolutely anywhere else!

A big recommend for Lauren Groff's Matrix

Since I live in a place without colorful leaves or colder weather to make it feel like fall, our fall issues are my favorite harbingers of the season. This Fall 2025 issue is full of earnest language and surprising humor, and these pieces are packed with autumn.

www.whaleroadreview.com/issue-40

Earlier today, I left the house for my ​usual neighbourhood stroll, only to find that the neighbourhood was no longer my neighbourhood. A dozen St George's flags and Union flags, cable-tied to lampposts on Middlewood Road, had appeared overnight. N​o-one asked for them. No-one wanted them. Yet here they are. There are no hotels in Hillsborough for idle, drunken thugs to shout at, or roundabouts to vandalise, so we get this instead, in the dead of night. And this craven UK government seems perfectly happy to allow this campaign of national(ist) intimidation to continue. And it is intimidation; it's intended as a provocation. It's poison (ask anyone who grew up in Northern Ireland in the 80s and 90s). It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise. The people actually fighting for their communities are the people clearing the streets of litter, maintaining the community gardens, supporting local businesses, and looking out for each other. I've written to my local councillor to ask for the flags to be taken down. (Some English - and Scottish - councils have been reluctant to do so in the face of threats and intimidation, which tells you everything you need to know about the motives and character of the people who are putting the flags up.)

Love the way this guy subverts the interviewer's expectations and tells it how it is. Thank you, sir 👏

Greece’s woodlands in the grips of a silent crisis | eKathimerini.com Reports of dead trees started coming in from central and southern Greece this spring, with areas that have undergone artificial reforestation proving especially vulnerable.

“The die-offs we are witnessing in our forests this year may be nature’s final alarm bell – a desperate call for action, cooperation and adaptation in how we live and operate, at the local, regional and global levels."

www.ekathimerini.com/in-depth/127...

I cannot understand why I should be fine with environmental destruction, chatbot-induced psychosis, tanking literacy, theft of artists’ creative output, everyone around me getting stupider, wrong answers becoming just as prevalent/acceptable as right ones, and job losses, but somehow care about…this

Flashback to our Mediterranean crossing: in darkness, 120 miles west of Sardinia, Wrack disturbs a sleeping whale. It slaps the sea, close by the hull, and rolls away, churning the low swell to a white froth while blowing a saline mist and noxious rotting fish smell.

Nearly midnight and dolphins lurk in the darkness, alongside our boat. We hear them breathe but glimpse them only briefly in swirls of black water.

A steal! Treat yourself or someone else to an incredible @longbarrowpress.bsky.social book

“But when we crave power over life—endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality—then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.” —from The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Farthest Shore, the third Earthsea novel, was first published by Atheneum Books in 1972.

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

Because I am angry I will share this again. One of the reasons that Israel is able to target individuals so precisely is that it collects every phone call in Gaza and stores the recordings in Microsoft Azure, then uses AI to analyze and pick targets.

Police arrest 474 people at protest over Palestine Action ban in London Number of arrests was highest recorded in relation to single operation in at least past decade, according to Met police

“I’m holding a piece of paper for goodness sakes, that’s not a terrorist act. A terrorist act is intentionally starving 2 million” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Three little goblins in green robes carry a baby basket that is filled with fire.

A woman, in silhouette, crosses the plains, fleeing from a small white spooky home. There are pink trees around the home.

A figure in a straight jacket sprouts sunflowers where their head should be.

Multiple pink cats heads float below a manhole cover from a sewer. The manhole cover is sprouting ostrich feathers. The feathers all have a flouting eye in them. This is my weirdest book and the image is a great illustration of that weirdness.

My publisher released four of my novels with new gorgeous covers by the great Yuko Shimizu.

They’re calling it the LaValle Quartet though each book stands alone.

Just look at these things!

They’re in bookstores now.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/LVQ/t...

Balkan bounty: the little-known corner of Greece now ripe for walkers and nature tourism Mountains, butterflies, bears and pelicans are among the natural wonders in the stunning Prespa lakes region, which straddles three countries

I wrote about the Prespa lakes region in northern Greece for @theguardian.com today. At the crossroads of three countries and my home for the past quarter of a century, it's a place that continues to surprise me with its wild beauty and rich human cultures.
www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...

Three copies of Steve Ely's 'Eely' against an orange background.

Steve Ely's symphonic poem 'Eely' has been shortlisted for the ASLE-UKI award for a poetry book with an ecological theme. The winner will be announced next week at the ASLE-UKI conference in Galway. Full shortlist here:
asle.org.uk/2025-asle-uk...

Further info:
longbarrowpress.com/current-publ...

World Central Kitchen | WCK Resumes Limited Hot Meal Service in Gaza After 5-Day Pause After a five day pause, limited cooking operations resumed today at World Central Kitchen's Deir al-Balah Field Kitchen in Gaza.  This marks the second time in 2025 our hot meal program has been force...

After a five-day halt due to a lack of supplies, our team at WCK’s Deir al-Balah Field Kitchen has resumed limited hot meal service in Gaza. #ChefsForGaza (1/3)

The cover of the Longbarrow Press anthology 'The Footing', featuring abstract grey and white motifs

'It is the best anthology of new work that I’ve read in years; anyone with an interest in contemporary British poetry should read it.' - Billy Mills

One-day flash sale: pick up our walking-themed hardback anthology 'The Footing' for £10
thefooting.wordpress.com

The world's most famous medical NGO concludes Israel is committing genocide.

It joins a consensus of genocide scholars, including in Israel, and NGOs like Amnesty International.

No politician or journalist can claim "I did not know at the time!" to evade future justice.

I HANDMADE ANOTHER 70 BOOKS THIS WEEKEND. PLEASE GIVE THEM ATTENTION. I'm giving up being subtle. They're great books. I'm very tired.

So grateful for this clear-eyed and insistently cheerful (in the pragmatic, Jamesian sense) talk. Will return to it and share it online and off:

An entire village in Dorset is facing eviction – proof that private money holds all the power in rural England | George Monbiot This scandalous story gives lie to the claim that the biggest threat to country life comes from city dwellers, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

This this this this this

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid IDF officers and soldiers told Haaretz they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, prompting the military prosecution to call for a review into possible war crimes

IDF soldiers have now themselves admitted they have been ordered to murder aid-seekers in Gaza.

Truly an atrocity built on atrocity.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

A beautifully written piece by Niall Campbell 💎

Yellow and green text on a purple background: A Poetry Social, Thursday 3 July, 6.30pm, The Wig and Pen / The Beaten Track, 44-46 Campo Lane, Sheffield S1 2EG

Join Sheaf Poetry Festival and Poets Yield Power for a #poetry social in #Sheffield next Thursday (3 July) at The Wig and Pen / The Beaten Track, 44-46 Campo Lane, S1 2EG, from 6.30pm - all welcome, informal, free, and no need to book. There'll be a bookstall, too.