Half His Age was one of my most anticipated book releases of 2026. When I learned that Jennette McCurdy – whose breakout memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died I absolutely loved – was releasing a novel with female rage as a central theme, I was SAT.

The book's blurb describes Half His Age:

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Hurting. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all? Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher.

Mr Korgy, with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films that she doesn’t? Or are they actually kindred spirits, sharing the same filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does.

Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is an incisive study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles in her effort to be seen, to be desired and to be loved.

I counted down the days to its release, and on the day of I planned my weekend around securing a copy and clearing my schedule to devour it as quickly as possible because I was sure I would love it and be unable to put it down.

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Well...I tried. I really tried.

By the second (short) chapter, I thought I must be missing something, because I was not enjoying it like I thought I would. I started looking up other reviews and thought I was going crazy because everywhere I looked people were raving about it. I kept trying to persevere, hopeful that it would get better and I would finally understand what so many people were loving about it.

But alas, it did not get better. In fact it was so bad I DNF'd it after just 21 pages.

Tyra Banks said it best.

For so many reasons Half His Age is not a good book. I'll go into more detail shortly, but in a nutshell:

It's like if you asked ChatGPT to rewrite My Dark Vanessa in the style of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mona Awad and then ran it through HemingwayApp to knock it down to a Grade 4 reading level.

My main issue with this book is how poorly it was written. In my opinion, there are no excuses for this when the author has been paid a likely eye-watering advance (that would be life-changing for other unknown, debut writers), and has all the resources at their disposal to craft something truly outstanding. A writer of McCurdy's note would have had access to some of the strongest editors who really should have done more to help this book become what it was promised to be. This is actually insane too when apparently she spent two years writing it and worked through more than 20 drafts in the process.

Reading Half His Age reminded me of this quote I saw recently, drawn from the original by Nathaniel Hawthorne: "A book that is easy to read is hard to write, and a book that's hard to read is easy to write."

Let's just say that Half His Age was certainly not easy to read.

There are so many ways Jennette McCurdy shows that she is either a). an incompetent and inexperienced writer, or b). rushed through this novel without giving enough time to editing and rewriting. There are three main points I'm going to cover off below and just a note, I quit this book long before I got to the gratuitous sex scenes (which I've heard are purely vile, based on other reader's reviews), so I will be focusing solely on the GLARING issues I experienced within the very short time I spent with this book before yeeting it into the sun.

The fucking grammar oh my god

Does Jennette McCurdy know that there is a vast array of punctuation options available to choose from in the English language? That full stops are not the only way to show a change in a sentence or indicate a pause?

Take this passage for example:

But this time I actually went to church with them. Borrowed one of Frannie's puffy-sleeved pastry dresses that itched all through Sacrament meeting. Then I attended class with her. And the lecture was on befriending the friendless. And how generous that is. What good charity work it is. How you curry favor with God for doing it. And I looked over and Frannie's eyes were lit up with recognition, hearing herself in the words and she sat at the edge of her seat, almost falling off from the sheer, eager, do-gooder-ness. I realized I was the friendless she had befriended. A hole-punch on her God stamp card. A fixer-upper to her savior. I was charity work.

I see what she’s trying to do here in terms of making Waldo sound blunt, detached and direct, and contrasting that with the starry-eyed feelings of the character Frannie, but repeated throughout the book it makes for painful reading and highlights McCurdy's inexperience as a writer.

You can show that a character is all of those things (blunt, detached and direct), and still have the work be an enjoyable experience for the reader.

A truly skilled writer can demonstrate a fucked up and emotionally repressed character without punching the reader in the face every five or six words. Ottessa Moshfegh is the absolute master of this. Take this excerpt from My Year of Rest and Relaxation:

Nothing seemed really real. Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn't talk to myself in my head. There wasn't much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.

The narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation at face value throughout the novel, can be read to be completely devoid of empathy and emotion, and even cruel in her interactions with her friend Reva. However because of how beautifully and thoughtfully constructed Moshfegh’s sentences are, the reader is also aware of the underlying mental and emotional pain the character endures throughout the novel.

The narrator reads as a complex and layered character with nuance, depth and interiority:

Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I'd slept enough, I'd be okay. I'd be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.

All of this is achieved through carefully crafted syntax that flows seamlessly, with each sentence supporting the next to propel the story forward.

In Half His Age, rather than working as an effective narrative device, McCurdy’s short, blunt sentences are jarring and grating. They stop the reader in their tracks and distract from any potential substance within them. It's a juvenile and cheap tactic that speaks to inexperience, poor guidance from editors, and a lack of understanding on McCurdy's part of the tools available to the writer within the realm of grammar to portray the idiosyncrasies of the character. Perhaps McCurdy should have spent more time reading and studying the works of a wide range of writers to better understand how they use language strategically to convey themes and characteristics. (Ursula Le Guin's Steering The Craft has an excellent chapter dedicated entirely to the art of skilfully selecting punctuation for each sentence, and why it is such a critical – and often overlooked – part of the craft.) I am surprised McCurdy's editor didn't push back on this either.

It's cliched, overwritten, and leaves no room for reader interpretation

In the same way that her rampant overuse of the full-stop reeks of inexperience, Half His Age has absolutely ZERO nuance and relies heavily on telling us what is going on, rather than showing us. I know that writing "rules" are to be taken with a grain of salt, and that the advice to "show, not tell" does not always apply to every scene and every story, but in giving away every single piece of information up front Jennette McCurdy robs the reader of any chance to make inferences or offer any glimpse into the interiority of her characters.

For example:

I order the same shades of cream blush stick that she did, except for Venetian Rose, which is sold out and would've looked too harsh on my pale skin anyway. I know that a blush isn't gonna transform my life, but it's still nice to believe during the three-day shipping time that it could. It's nice to believe that the only difference between me and Margot Robbie is a stick of blush. It's nice to believe promises, even empty ones in cute typefaces on the backs of little cardboard packages. Especially those ones. There's something about how assured they are in the those pretty little fonts that feels more credible than the ones coming out of people's mouths.

This entire passage did not need to make it into the final copy. Or not in its current form anyway. This is a missed opportunity to highlight Waldo's interiority and offer the reader the chance to form an opinion on what the impulse-buy means and says about Waldo as a character.

Mona Awad is the queen of writing about the power of transformation. In her recent short story titled The Chartreuse, published in The New Yorker on July 20 2025, she writes about a woman who misses the delivery of a dress she ordered online and becomes increasingly obsessed with the item as she awaits redelivery. The following passage from The Chartreuse is an excellent example of how Awad expertly demonstrates the desire for transformation within an object/purchase and what that says about the narrator:

Ridiculous to be upset about the chartreuse. Just a delayed delivery. Just a dress. Not even the right color for her, probably. Probably in the end she’d have to send it back. “The truth,” she told the sidewalk, “is that I didn’t even want it.” It had been an impulse buy from Farfetch, one of those sites along with Mytheresa and The RealReal which she’d been haunting with increasing frequency. She’d been in search of a new Mage, a particular type of dress, the namesake design from the label. She’d been hunting those dresses for a few months now. High-end, French, chicly esoteric. Prized for their saturated jewel-toned colors, their impossible falls and cuts. She’d already acquired several lengths and shades: rust, forest, jade, and four more blues beyond sapphire—azure, pigeon, powder, royal.

'It’s the material', she thought as she scoured the web for more. That’s what’s winning me over. Or is it the cut?

She had bought the first one, the sapphire, at an actual shop in New York, just before she left her job, set her life on fire. When she tried it on in the dressing room, she’d felt a shiver as she looked at herself in the mirror. Yes, she’d murmured to her reflection. This.

(Note how Awad also strategically uses short sentences to drive the story forward instead of just ramming them in everywhere for some sort of failed "effect".)

McCurdy constantly misses opportunities to add dimension to Waldo as a character by stating the obvious and telling us exactly what she's thinking all the time. It becomes a boring stream of consciousness that leaves nothing to excite the reader or provoke curiosity. I have zero desire to get to know Waldo any further because I feel like I already know everything I need to know to deduce that she is not a character that I care about or that holds any interest to me.

I think the reason for this lack of depth and nuance in Waldo is due to two things: firstly, McCurdy lacks experience as a writer and plainly needs to just read more books. Secondly, McCurdy is said to have based this story on her own personal experience, leading me to believe that she adhered too rigidly to the sequence of events in her own life rather than allowing the FICTION part of the story to become realised. (Florence Given did something similar with her absolute abomination of a book Girl Crush, which flopped so hard she basically pretends it never happened.) The potential of Half His Age is stifled by Jennette McCurdy's heavy-handed approach to retelling the events in her own life. She might have changed the setting, but there is no room for the story to breathe, grow and develop on its own with nuanced and layered characters.

McCurdy should have just worked this out with her therapist

This book has been heavily marketed as seeking to "start conversations on female rage," as though authors like Han Kang, Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Eliza Clark, Shirley Jackson, and many, MANY more haven’t already been doing this for decades.

But more to the point...this book is actually just not about female rage at all?

If you're reading this you're probably already intimately familiar with the expectations of a book within the 'female rage' – or 'Good For Her' – genre. Typically we would see some sort of character evolution that involves a move towards freedom and catharsis. This transformation is not always carried out in such a way that would be considered "healthy" or "normal" by polite society, but it almost always speaks to some deeply felt (and suppressed) shared experience or desire by most women who read it.

Half His Age does not do this. Waldo's motivations, aside from the obvious of pursuing Mr Korgy, remain murky and scattered at best. We do not root for Waldo or care about her, or see her rage expressed really in any way at all. There is no revenge or self-destruction that provides an outlet for her to tear down whatever systems are fuelling her discontent. McCurdy has stated that writing this book allowed her to work through her own rage at what she experienced as a teenage girl who was taken advantage of by a much older man in a position of power, but those emotions failed to be fully realised in this book.

As one friend of mine so eloquently put it: it has a female in it and she does get angry sometimes?? it's about a topic that makes women angry?? but a book about female rage that does not make??

One thing I will say is that I am a female and I did feel rage reading it – but probably not for the reasons McCurdy was hoping.

What is McCurdy adding to this conversation exactly? As many other reviewers have pointed out, without any character development or emotional payoff or transformation, the point of this book and its intended market remain unclear. If writing this book was purely an avenue for McCurdy to work through her shit, vent her own frustration and find catharsis then girl, get a fucking diary.

The "unlikeable female character"

The "unlikeable female character" often goes hand in hand with the "Good For Her"/"female rage" genre. Usually she's unlikeable because she's acting in ways considered contradictory to society's typical expectations of a "well behaved woman," often in the pursuit of revenge or simply acting on her intrusive thoughts and repressed urges. She's "unlikeable" to the patriarchy but to women reading her, she's a fucking inspiration, or at the very least we're rooting for her because she's doing the things we've only ever fantasised about doing. Waldo fails to fit this category of "unlikeable female character," and not in some clever or subversive way. She's just boring. She's not some anti-hero that we can see ourselves in, she's vapid and shallow and entirely unrelatable.

It’s a real shame because this theme of informed consent and the power dynamics of age-gap relationships, is a really interesting one to explore and I think this concept as a novel could have been excellent especially in the context of Hollywood and child stars. With a good editor and more time, perhaps the ultimate version of this book could have been realised, but that is the issue with publishing famous names. There is a tendency to hype the shit out of them, rush through the writing process and then completely disappoint upon release. McCurdy clearly has some writing talent too based on the success of her memoir, so I’m sure if she had been given the time and guidance from the right editor, she could have pulled this book off.

I keep asking myself why I'm so enraged by this book – enough to write over 3,000 words about it – when I only read 10% of it. Aside from the fact that it was atrociously written and yet has had one of the biggest, most public global press tours I've ever seen for a novel, I think it's that if it were anyone other than Jennette McCurdy, the possibility of publishing this book would never have even been entertained by any publisher. There are so many incredibly talented writers deserving of the time, money and platform to produce their art as what has been afforded to McCurdy and it all feels so grossly unjust that such a painfully average piece of work is all there is to show for it.

I know there will be people who say that the book and its short sentences and blunt language is meant to make you uncomfortable, that that's the point. But I do not accept that these poor grammatical and narrative choices are just part of what it takes to portray an angry, unlikeable character. I have read a lot of uncomfortable shit with deeply disturbing scenes (the grape scene in Lapvona, anyone?) and I know that provoking discomfort and how it challenges you as a reader is not the same as provoking disgust purely for shock factor without some deeper meaning behind it or ultimate payoff. If you are seeking to disturb and upset your reader, there should be a valid reason for it that serves the motivations of the character and the story. Half His Age did not have this. It appears to want to shock purely for the sake of it rather than driving the narrative forward.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that this book was so extraordinarily bad. White cis women with influence/a huge following have been writing and publishing the worst book you'll ever read since the dawn of time (see: Haley Pham and the aforementioned Florence Given). But I really thought Half His Age would be different, given how much I enjoyed McCurdy's memoir.

I am sorry for what Jennette McCurdy went through in her own life with a fucked up, coercive age-gap relationship, but we can still accept that this book is not well written. If she wanted to explore and unpack her own experience she should have written another memoir or an essay collection as non-fiction is clearly her strong suit. Or just gone to therapy. I don't know.

What a banger of an interview to end the season on. I am not exaggerating when I say that I still think about Tender is The Flesh almost every day, nearly a year after I finished reading it. It is one of the greatest works of literary fiction/horror of all time in my opinion, so when Agustina Bazterrica agreed to join me on the podcast, I made sure not to waste a single second of our time together to make the most of the session.

And what a session it was.

This conversation didn’t just stay with me...it fundamentally changed how I read and experience books.

Agustina is exacting in her work. She operates with scalpel-like precision leaving nothing to chance. Every single word is deeply considered and exists to build the world of the story.

Together, we explore the cultural landscape of Argentina and how violence, patriarchy, and political history shape Agustina’s work. She walks me through her writing process and the structural precision behind her novels: the scaffolding, the silences, and the emotional engineering that make her fiction so unforgettable.

We talk about the importance of research, the responsibility of writing violence ethically, and the role literature can play in understanding societal cruelty. Agustina also shares her thoughts on reader engagement, the challenges of being a writer in a volatile world, and why books still hold transformative power.

This episode slowed me down. It taught me to look at craft with more intention. It made me a better reader.

If you’re interested in literary horror, cultural critique, or the deeper mechanics of storytelling, this finale is for you.

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If this episode resonated, share it with someone who might need it, and leave us a review to help more listeners find the show. 🖤

• Join the conversation on our Sick Sad Friends Discord for monthly book club meetups, community chats and more.

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Thank you all for being with me throughout this season. I hope you've enjoyed listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it. I'll be taking a wee break before Season 3 because I swore to myself I would finish the first draft of my novel!! I am giving myself three months to get it done. There will be a wee bonus episode in between seasons though so stay tuned for that.

In this episode of Sick Sad Lit, I sit down with Torrey Peters, acclaimed author of Detransition, Baby and Stag Dance, for a deeply honest conversation about the realities of the modern writing life.

Torrey opens up about the emotional labour of touring, the pressures of book marketing, and how societal change shapes creative expression. Together, we discuss desire, identity, and transformation—recurring themes in Torrey’s work—and explore what it means to create art that resists categorisation while inviting empathy and confrontation in equal measure.

From the burnout of promotion to the beauty of connection, Torrey reflects on the messy, necessary work of making meaning in a world that often wants neat narratives. It’s a conversation about honesty, risk, and the courage to keep writing, even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

Join the Conversation

If this episode resonated, share it with someone who might need it, and leave us a review to help more listeners find the show. 🖤

• Join the conversation on our Sick Sad Friends Discord for monthly book club meetups, community chats and more.

• Follow Sick Sad Lit on Instagram.

This week on Sick Sad Lit, I sat down with the luminous, razor-sharp, and deeply funny Lauren McQuistin of @BrutalRecovery, to talk about her new book No Lost Causes Club getting sober young, building emotional muscles from scratch, and what it really means to reclaim your life when alcohol stops serving you.

We explore sobriety as self-respect, the discomfort and beauty of feeling your feelings fully, and the weird, tender limbo of recovering before anyone expects you to need to. Lauren shares the realities of early recovery, from navigating parties and friendships without numbing through them, to rewriting the story of who you think you are and who you’re allowed to become.

This is a conversation about agency, grace, and second chances; about learning that you don’t need to destroy yourself to be interesting, and that healing isn’t boring, it’s radical, difficult, and sometimes hilarious.

If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s another way to live (one grounded in self-trust, community, and staying soft in a world that rewards collapse) this episode is for you.

🎧 Listen to the episode here →

In this episode of Sick Sad Lit, I sit down with one of the most provocative and fearless voices in contemporary fiction: Eliza Clark. Author of Boy Parts, Penance, and She’s Always Hungry, Clark writes with scalpel-like precision about modern alienation.

Nobody captures the digital grotesque quite like her.

We talk about the ethics of obsession, the cultural hunger for true crime, and how fiction can humanise—or implicate—those we call monstrous. Eliza shares her thoughts on revenge narratives, power fantasies, and the moral tension at the heart of storytelling. We also discuss how fan fiction and digital spaces shaped her creative evolution, the blurred line between empathy and horror, and what it means to write characters who do unspeakable things.

If you love unhinged narrators, moral ambiguity, literary horror, or stories that leave you slightly unnerved, then this episode is for you. 🖤

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

In this week’s episode of Sick Sad Lit, I sit down with R. O. Kwon—author of The Incendiaries, Exhibit, and co-editor of Kink—to talk about what it really costs to write from the heart.

We talk about fear as fuel, the slow burn of creative longing, and what it means to turn personal and ancestral trauma into art. Reese speaks with such clarity about the vulnerability required to tell the truth on the page, and the liberation that comes with it.

If you’ve ever felt torn between fear and creation, this episode might just remind you that both can coexist, beautifully.

🎧 Listen now on Sick Sad Lit wherever you get your podcasts.

Some stories haunt you long after you close the book, and Midnight Timetable is one of them.

In this week’s episode of Sick Sad Lit, I sit down with Bora Chung, the International Booker–shortlisted author of Cursed Bunny, to talk about her haunting new collection Midnight Timetable.

We talk about ghosts, grief, humour, and the strange comfort of horror. Bora shares her journey from teaching Russian literature to becoming one of the most celebrated voices in contemporary fiction, and how she uses horror and satire to tell the truth about living in a broken world.

If you love speculative fiction, eerie beauty, or the quiet optimism that sometimes hides inside fear, this conversation is for you.

Ottessa Moshfegh has built her literary career on writing the characters we’re often told to look away from: the outsiders, the unlikable, the ones whose obsessions curdle into grotesque truths about who we are.

In this episode of Sick Sad Lit, I sit down with Ottessa to talk about her writing process, the themes that have haunted her from McGlue and Eileen through My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona. We dig into the pandemic’s impact on Lapvona, her fascination with confinement—physical, psychological, and societal—and her insistence on writing what scares her most.

She opens up about aging, self-discovery, and what it means to measure a life in books while navigating the contradictions of private creation and public literary identity.

Whether you’re drawn to her unflinching portraits of alienation, her ability to find beauty in the grotesque, or her sharp insights into being human, this conversation offers a rare glimpse into the mind of one of today’s most compelling writers.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

Watch our interview on YouTube:

Whoever said you should never meet your idols, clearly never met Mona Awad.

For the Sick Sad Lit season 2 podcast premiere, I was lucky enough to sit down with the fever-dream Bunny queen herself to discuss her highly anticipated new novel, We Love You, Bunny. A dazzling return to the world of her cult classic Bunny, it blends fairy-tale horror, satire, and dark academia into a story about creation, obsession, and the power of storytelling.

Mona and I explore the evolution of her writing - from sharp realism to feverish surrealism - and the recurring themes that define her work: transformation, body image, identity, and the complexities of the female experience. We also dig into the psychological depth of her characters, the role of humour and satire in her prose, and how fairy tales continue to shape her literary imagination.

Mona reflects on her creative process, the influence of her academic background, and the way music fuels her writing routine. Mona also shares insights into the power of love, friendship, and marginalised voices in literature, offering a rare glimpse into her evolving journey as a writer.

If you’re drawn to fiction that’s grotesque and beautiful, hilarious and haunting, this conversation is for you.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. 💕🐰

Or you can watch the interview on YouTube!

I can't wait to hear your thoughts Bunny. 🖤

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Pumpkin Spice is fine, but have you tried consuming literature that changes who you are as a person?

Here in Aotearoa, our spooky season happens to be in Spring, but I thoroughly enjoy living vicariously through the Northern Hemisphere's fall-vibes in Halloween and the inevitably killer list of autumn new releases. Now I don't know about you but when the world is on fire, my comfort reads aren't cozy - they haunt, and this year’s new releases are perfect for that.

If your idea of autumn comfort is curling up with a story that bites back, here are the latest releases to sink your teeth into this season.

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Fiction New Releases

We Love You Bunny by Mona Awad

About the book

In the cult classic novel Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracised and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.” An invitation to the Bunnies’ Smut Salon leads Samantha down a dark rabbit hole (pun intended) into the violently surreal world of their off-campus workshops where monstrous creations are conjured with deadly and wondrous consequences.

When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies’ side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers—and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny.

Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad.

Publication date: 23 September 2025

Beings by Ilana Masad

About the book

In 1961, an interracial couple drove through the dark mountains of New Hampshire when a mysterious light began to follow them. Years later, through hypnosis, they recalled an unbelievable brush with extraterrestrial life. Unintentionally, a genre was born: the alien abduction narrative.

In Ilana Masad’s Beings, the couple’s experience serves as one part of a trio of intertwined threads: Known only by their roles as husband and wife, Masad explores the pair’s trauma and its aftermath and questions what it means to accept the impossible. In the second thread, letters penned by a budding science-fiction writer, Phyllis, to her beloved, Rosa, expose the raw ache of queer yearning, loneliness, and alienation in the repressive 1960s—as well as the joy of finding community. In the present day, a reclusive and chronically ill Archivist attempts to understand a strange forgotten childhood encounter while descending into obsession over both Phyllis’s letters and the testimony of the first alien abductees.

Over the course of a decade, Phyllis wrestles with her desires and ambitions as a lesbian writer, while the abducted couple grapple with how to maintain control of their narrative. All the while, the archive shatters and reforms, redefining fact and fiction via the stories left behind by the abductees, Phyllis, and the Archivist themself. Masad makes human what is alien and makes tangible what is hidden – sometimes by chance and sometimes intentionally – in the archive.

Publication date: 23 September 2025

Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite

About the book

No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…

So goes the family curse, long handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts. And now it’s Eniiyi’s turn – who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, is already used to her family’s strange beliefs, as well as their insistence that she is a reincarnation. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?

Publication date: 25 September 2025

Playing Wolf by Zuzana Říhová, Alex Zucker (Translator)

About the book

A couple deep in the woods of a failing marriage find themselves the unwitting victims of a kidnapping plot after they move to a mysterious village in this distinctly poetic and disturbingly elegant horror novel for fans of Midsommar and The Witch

Husband and wife Bohumil and Bohumila, together with their son, move from Prague to a remote village with the hopes of salvaging their marriage. In the searing summer heat, they try to fit in with the villagers, only to be met with hostile stares and evasive lies. Each night, the couple hears what they suspect to be a large animal wandering around their cottage—an impression that oddly corresponds to the mysterious flyers found at the local watering hole regarding a wolfen fairytale. As inexplicable coincidences begin piling up, it’s clear something sinister is afoot.

After a drunken night out, Bohumil and Bohumila come home to find the house empty: their son is gone. After three days of searching, they find the villagers in festive costumes gathered outside their cottage. Is it a bizarre game, or some perverse, folkloric ritual? Are Bohumil and Bohumila in danger? And what has happened to their son?

A dark social tale that slides inexorably towards psychological horror, Playing Wolf is a modern ballad of human destiny and discovering the animal in each of us.

Publication date: 30 September 2025

What Hunger by Catherine Dang

About the book

A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nyugen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere.

It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba.

Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.

But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer.

What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.

Publication date: Already published

The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, Anton Hur (Translator)

About the book

In a labyrinthine research facility where those who open the wrong door might find it's disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they're running from are their own, an unnamed protagonist begins their night shift under the watchful eye of the building's enigmatic senior guard.

Each evening, as the fluorescent lights hum and the silence grows heavier, the guard shares another story - of cursed objects hidden behind security glass, of lives unspooled by vengeance, sorrow or revelation. These tales are not mere ghost stories. They're warnings. Lessons. Or perhaps confessions.

As the nights stretch on and reality frays, the protagonist starts to suspect that the building itself is alive with malevolent intent - that the objects aren't just cursed, but waiting. Watching.

Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny and deeply political, The Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations.

Publication date: 2 October 2025

Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin, Megan McDowell (translator)

About the book

A haunting, unforgettable collection of tales from the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature winner and three-time Booker finalist, Samanta Schweblin.

Once a decade a story collection rips a hole in the sky and we remember how it feels to have a spell cast upon us. From Jamaica Kincaid’s At the Bottom of the River to Denis Johnson’s Jesus’s Son to the earthquake stories of Haruki Murakami, these books are often short, but unforgettable. Samanta Schweblin’s Good and Evil is such a book. Sculpted and lucid, strange and uncanny, here is a masterpiece of suggestiveness. Step by step these six stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life—ourselves.

In one tale, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring, to go home to her family, only to wish she could go back. In another, a sorrowful father finds himself unable to communicate with his son after a life-changing misfortune occurs under his supervision. In yet another, a dying woman calls a friend she hasn’t spoken to in thirty years—not since an accident which forever changed them both.

Guilt, grief, and relationships severed permeate this collection—but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love, and longing, each sinister and beautiful. When something seismic happens in our lives, the waves keep coming for years after, with warning or without. Sometimes, all we can do is wait around the corner, ear pressed to the phone receiver, for them to arrive.

Fantastical and subtly terrifying, these stories draw on magical realism, psychological fiction, and the dark side of fairy tales inherited from literary predecessors like the Brothers Grimm and Jorge Luis Borges. Yet, far from antiquated or closed off, Schweblin’s worlds invite us in, like quicksand or a strong river’s current. These stories will insinuate themselves into your heart, and your bloodstream.

Publication date: Already published

The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas

About the book

When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust… from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.

In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.

Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice her every time she enters a room or the growing tension between them… and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood grows stronger.

Publication date: Already published

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle

About the book

Lucky Day is the newest novel of terror from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against the most horrifying concept of all: nothing.

Vera is a survivor of a global catastrophe known as the Low Probability Event, but she definitely isn't thriving. Once a passionate professor of statistics, she no longer finds meaning in anything at all.

But when problematic government agent Layne knocks on her door, she's the only one who can help him uncover the connection between deadly spates of absurdity and an improbably lucky casino. What's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and the world is at risk of another disaster.

When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one...

Publication date: Already published

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin

About the book

A cursed film. A haunted past. A deadly secret.

The Baroness, an infamous exploitation film long thought destroyed by Nazi fire, is discovered fifty years later. When lonely archivist Ellen Kramer—deeply closeted and pathologically repressed—begins restoring the hedonistic movie, it unspools dark desires from deep within her.

As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices, she becomes convinced the movie is real, and is happening to her—and that frame by frame, she is unleashing its occult horrors on the world. Her life quickly begins to spiral out of control.

Until it all fades to black, and all that remains is a voice asking a question Ellen can’t answer but can’t get out of her mind.

Do you want it? More than anything?

Publication date: Already published

Bog Queen by Anna North

About the book

The story of an anthropologist's monumental discovery and the clash of civilizations it sets off over the fate of the land that holds us

When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she has ever seen: Although its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved.

Soon Agnes is drawn into a mystery from the distant past, called to understand and avenge the death of an Iron Age woman more like her than she knows. Along the way she must contend with peat-cutters who want to profit from the bog and activists who demand that the land be left undisturbed. Then there is the moss itself: a complex repository of artifacts and remains with its own dark stories to tell. As Agnes faces the deep history of what she has unearthed, she is also forced to question what she thought she knew about her talent, her self-reliance, and her place in the world.

Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and the druidic order of Celtic Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with contemporary urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects two young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a mysterious and complex landscape.

Publication date: 14 October 2025

Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton

About the book

In this electric horror novel from the author of The Insatiable Volt Sisters, an exhausted mother thinks her newborn might be a monster. She’s right.

Thea’s third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn’t consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn’t convinced it was going to be born green, or have a third eye, or have tentacles sprouting from its torso. Thea was fine. Her baby would be fine. 

But when the nurses handed Lucia to her, Thea just knew. Her baby girl was a monster. Not only was Lucia born with a full set of teeth and a devilish glint in her eye, but she’s always hungry. Indiscriminately so. One day Lucia pointed at her baby brother, looked Thea dead in the eye and said, “I eat.”

Thea doesn’t know whether to be terrified or proud of her rapacious baby girl. And as Lucia starts growing faster and talking more, dark memories bubble to the surface--flashes from Thea’s childhood that won’t release their hooks from her heart. Lucia wants to eat the world. Thea might just let her.

Crackling with originality and dark humor, Rachel Eve Moulton’s Tantrum is a provocative exploration of familial debt, duty, and the darker side of motherhood.

Publication date: Already published

The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee

About the book

Jordan Peele’s Us meets The School For Good Mothers in this horror-tinged intergenerational saga, as a single mother’s doppelganger forces her to confront the legacy of violence that has shaped every woman in their family.

Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online cloth diaper shop, her resentful teenage daughter Luna, and her screen-obsessed son Luca, Alice can never get everything done in a day. It’s all she can do to just collapse on the couch with a bottle of wine every night.

It’s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning and everything has been done. The counters are clear, the kids’ rooms are tidy, orders are neatly packed and labeled. But no one confesses they’ve helped, and Alice doesn’t remember staying up late. Someone–or something–has been doing her chores for her.

Alice should be uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who begins to share their haunted family history from Alice’s great-grandmother, a comfort woman during WWII, through to Alice herself. But the family demons, both real and subconscious, are about to become impossible to ignore.

Sharp and incisive, The Hunger We Pass Down traces the ways intergenerational trauma transforms from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break that cycle.

Publication date: 30 September 2025

The Midnight Shift by Seon-Ran Cheon with Gene Png (Translator)

About the book

A bestseller in Korea, a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness.

When four isolated elderly people commit suicide back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn’t understand why she’s the only one at her precinct that seems to care. Dismissing the case as a series of unfortunate events due to the patients’ loneliness, the police force doesn't engage. But Su-Yeon doesn’t have the privilege of looking away. Her dearest friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, lives on the sixth floor, and Su-Yeon is terrified that something will happen to her next.

As Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman named Wanda at the crime scene. Wanda, hot on the trail of her ex-lover, Lily, gives Su-Yeon the answer: a vampire did it. Su-Yeon is skeptical at first, but then a fifth victim jumps from the window and her investigation reveals the body was completely drained of blood. Desperate to discover the cause of the deaths, Su-Yeon considers Wanda’s explanation—that something supernatural is involved.

The Midnight Shift is a gripping mystery, overflowing with commentary about societal isolation and loneliness, the sharp knife of grief, and the effects of marginalization, perfect for readers of Cursed Bunny; Woman, Eating; and A Certain Hunger.

Publication date: Already published

Nonfiction New Releases

We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat

About the book

A stunning work of narrative non-fiction from one of the most powerful young Native American writers at work today—We Survived the Night combines investigative journalism, folklore, and a deeply personal father-son journey in a searing portrait of a community fighting for self-determination in a fractured nation.

Born to a Secwepemc father and Jewish-Irish mother, Julian Brave Noisecat’s childhood was full of contradictions. Despite living in the urban Native community of Oakland, California, he was raised primarily by his white mother. He was a competitive powwow dancer, but asked his father to cut his hair short, fearing that his white classmates would call him a girl if he kept it long. When his father, tormented by an abusive and impoverished rez upbringing, eventually left the family, Noisecat was left to make sense of his Indigenous heritage and identity on his own.

Now, decades later, Noisecat has set across the country to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding this nation’s First Peoples, as he develops his voice as a storyteller and artist in his own right. On his way he meets the activists campaigning to change the Washington football team’s name, members of the Quinault Nation forced to relocate due to rising sea levels, and Navajo families still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. He follows the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline and retraces his family’s own canoe journey honoring the 50th anniversary of the Alcatraz Occupation, an experience that brought Noisecat and his father closer as Native men than they had been before.

Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life, alongside an intimate and deeply powerful reckoning with a relationship between a father and a son. Soulful, formally daring, indelible work from an important new voice.

Publication date: 14 October 2025

The Genius Bat: The Secret Life of the Only Flying Mammal by Yossi Yovel

About the book

An awe-inspiring tour of bat world by the world’s leading expert

With nearly 1500 species, bats account for more than twenty percent of mammalian species. The most successful and most diverse group of mammals, bats come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, from the tiny bumblebee bat to the giant golden-crowned flying fox. Some bats eat fruit and nectar; others eat frogs, scorpions or fish. Vampire bats feed on blood. Bats are the only mammals that can fly; their fingers have elongated through evolution to become wings with a unique super-flexible skin membrane stretched between them. Their robust immune system is one of the reasons for their extreme longevity. A tiny bat can live for forty years.

Yossi Yovel, an ecologist and a neurobiologist, is passionate about deciphering the secrets of bats, including using AI to decipher their communication. In The Genius Bat he brings to vivid life these amazing creatures as well as the obsessive and sometime eccentric people who study them–bat scientists. From muddy rainforests, to star-covered night deserts, from guest houses in Thailand, to museum drawers full of fossils in New York, this is an eye-opening and entertaining account of a might mammal.

Publication date: 7 October 2025

Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys by Mariana Enriquez, Megan McDowell (translator)

About the book

An enchanting, illuminating, highly personal tour of some of the most iconic cemeteries of the world—part travelogue, part memoir, part hauntology by the author of Our Share of Night and "Buenos Aires's sorceress" (The New York Times)

"Enriquez is a queen of horror."—Los Angeles Times
"One of Latin America’s most exciting authors."—Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mariana Enriquez has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager, visiting them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walked among the headstones. But in 2013, when the body of a friend's mother who was disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship was found in a common grave, she began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest. 

In this vivid, cinematic book, Enriquez travels North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting the catacombs of Paris, Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery, Elvis's grave at Graceland, the above-ground mausoleums of New Orleans, her hometown of Buenos Aires's Recoleta, and more. She investigates each cemetery's history, architecture, its dead (famous and not), its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors. Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, folklore, musicology, and literature, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez's obsession with cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she walks among. Exhilarating, unsettling, and unlike anything else, Enriquez's first work of nonfiction is as original and enthralling as the stories and novels for which she's become so admired and beloved.

Publication date: 30 September 2025

Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism, 1968-1980 by Eleanor Johnson

About the book

A compelling, intelligent, and timely exploration of the horror genre from one of Columbia University’s most popular professors, shedding light on how classic horror films demonstrate larger cultural attitudes about women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and more.

In May of 2022, Columbia University’s Dr. Eleanor Johnson watched along with her students as the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. At the same time, her class was studying the 1968 horror film Rosemary’s Baby and Johnson had a sudden horror cinema engages directly with the combustive politics of women’s rights and offer a light through the darkness and an outlet to scream.

With a voice as persuasive as it is insightful, Johnson reveals how classics like Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining expose and critique issues of reproductive control, domestic violence, and patriarchal oppression. Scream with Me weaves these iconic films into the fabric of American feminism, revealing that true horror often lies not in the supernatural, but in the familiar confines of the home, exposing the deep-seated fears and realities of women’s lives.

While on the one hand a joyful celebration of seminal and beloved horror films, Scream with Me is also an unflinching and timely recognition of the power of this genre to shape and reflect cultural dialogues about gender and power.

Publication date: 30 September 2025

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Hi friends,

If you're looking for a way to make even a tiny bit of difference to the horrific suffering of the Palestinian people, this is it.

I am running an urgent appeal to raise money to help Ahmed Yasser and his family to buy a 14-person tent, large enough to provide some semblance of shelter and dignity to his family of 8.

Ahmed is only 27 years old, but he has lived through a lifetime of grief, responsibility, and displacement. At the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, Ahmed was terribly injured while helping others. His body still carries those wounds, yet his spirit has never stopped reaching outward. Even as he struggles to survive, he delivers water to his entire camp and fundraises for neighbours who have even less.

A Life Rebuilt, Then Shattered

Before the war, Ahmed’s life was beginning to take shape. He had built a clothing shop in northern Gaza from the ground up, piece by piece, into a beautiful and thriving business. It was his pride and joy, a symbol of the future he envisioned for himself and his family.

That dream was destroyed when bombs forced them to flee their home and his shop. Since then, Ahmed, his mother, and siblings—eight people in all—have been displaced again and again. From Rafah to Al Mawasi to Al Zawaida, each move has stripped them of more: belongings, safety, strength, and hope.

His father was killed when Ahmed was just two years old. For most of his life, he has carried the weight of responsibility for his family. This war has only deepened that burden.

Nowhere to Sleep but a Car

Today, Ahmed’s family has nothing left. Their latest displacement has left them with no shelter at all. They are currently sleeping in a car. Imagine eight people, day after day, night after night, huddled in a vehicle, without privacy, safety, or comfort. It is unsustainable. It is inhumane.

When asked how he is coping, Ahmed said simply:

“I am truly exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but I am still trying to hold on and stay strong.”

What Ahmed and his family need most right now is a tent—large enough to shelter all of them, strong enough to withstand the elements, and dignified enough to give them a sense of stability. A 14-person tent would mean they no longer have to sleep in a car.

Why This Matters

It can be easy to lose sight of individual stories amid the overwhelming flood of news from Gaza. But each statistic hides a human being—someone like Ahmed, who once had a shop, a livelihood, and dreams for his future. Someone who loves cats and kittens, who built something with his own two hands, who has lost so much but still finds ways to serve his community.

Ahmed has shown extraordinary resilience and generosity. Despite his own suffering, he continues to support those around him. Now, it is our turn to support him.

How You Can Help

This campaign aims to raise enough money to buy Ahmed’s family a 14-person tent. Your donation, no matter how small, will directly provide them with the shelter they so urgently need.

Please consider donating to this campaign and sharing it widely. Together, we can show Ahmed that he and his family are not forgotten. Together, we can give them back a measure of safety and hope.

Donate today and help provide a tent for Ahmed’s family.

Donate Now

If you're feeling sick and helpless at the never-ending stream of horrific images and videos coming out of Palestine right now, you're not alone.

But if you want to actually do something about it but have no idea where to start, there are ways to contribute no matter your situation, and every single action - no matter how small - adds up to support the demand for a free Palestine.

The below is listed in no particular order, and most options are free!

Read books by Palestinian authors

Buy from an Indie bookstore if you can, otherwise borrow from your local library. If they aren't in stock or don't have them on the shelves, order them in. This shows the demand for Palestinian work and buying from indie bookstores supports both the author and the bookstore for a win win.

Same goes for borrowing from the library - we love supporting our local libraries and they need our support now more than ever as censorship and the effort to try and ban books runs rife across the globe.

Some reading to get you started:

• The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience by Plestia Alaqad

• We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth by Ahmed Alnaouq, Pam Bailey

• We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir by Raja Shehadeh

• Forest of Noise: Poems by Mosab Abu Toha

• The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi

• Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd

• Letters From Gaza: A Collection By the People; Unveiling Their Stories and Emotions From the Year That Has Been by Mahmoud Alshaer, Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq

• They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom by Ahed Tamimi, Dena Takruri

• Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire by Jehad Abusalim (Editor), Jennifer Bing (Editor), Mike Merryman-Lotze (Editor)

• The Coin by Yasmin Zaher

• What Does Israel Fear From Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh

• Cactus Pear For My Beloved: A Family Story from Gaza by Samah Sabawi

• Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd

• Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad

• Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

• The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza

Books about Palestine written by others:

• Moral Abdication: How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza by Didier Fassin, Gregory Elliott (translator)

• The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra

• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

• On Palestine by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, Frank Barat (Editor)

• Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics by Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick

• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis, Cornel West (Foreword), Frank Barat (Introduction)

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

Show up at rallies, protests and vigils

There is always activity happening, no matter where you live. Google "Palestinian Events Near Me" to find your closest chapter.

If you're in Aotearoa, visit: Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa, People 4 Palestine, Falastin Tea Collective, Justice for Palestine for information!

If you can't make the next one, go to the one after that. If you can't go to that one, start your own! Take a flag and sign and wave it on a street corner in your neighbourhood. The point is to be seen and heard, so any activity is good activity.

Write to your representatives

Politicians pay attention to numbers. Flood their inboxes and mailboxes. Demand a ceasefire, demand accountability, demand they stop funding or arming genocide.

Important points for your email:

• Call for an immediate ceasefire by the Israeli Government.

• Call for the Israeli Government to provide safe and secure passage for humanitarian aid and medical support and supply.

• Officially recognise Palestine as a sovereign country.

• Condemn the targeting of civilians and collective punishment and declare that there can be no justification for blocking civilian access to water, power and humanitarian aid.

• Call for sanctions against the Israeli Government for their crimes against humanity and continued breach of International Law.

Sign petitions

While not a substitute for direct action, petitions show growing public pressure and can help keep Palestine on the political agenda.

Look for ones run by credible advocacy groups and circulate them widely.

Donate if you can

Even small amounts matter. Direct aid organisations such as Medical Aid for Palestinians, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, local grassroots groups on the ground are doing vital work.

If you can’t donate money, consider donating books, resources, or your time to fundraising initiatives.

There is heaps of amazing merch, tees, prints, totes and more that you can buy where profits will be donated to Palestinian causes.

Some links to check out:

• Troll Tees

• Readers and Writers Against Genocide

• Preserved Identity

There's also super cool raffles and giveaways like this one!

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Share Palestinian voices

Palestinian writers, journalists, and activists are being censored daily. Follow them, amplify their posts, and share their work on your platforms. Elevating Palestinian perspectives cuts through the disinformation and keeps their stories alive.

Consume and share Palestinian media

Read Palestinian publications, watch films, listen to music and podcasts. Support cultural production as a form of resistance.

Podcasts to listen to

• This is Palestine

• Lets Talk Palestine

Films

• Born in Gaza (Netflix)

• Farha (Netflix)

• Gaza: Surviving Shujayea (Al Jazeera)

Final thoughts

As members of the book community, we already know the power of words, stories, and visibility. Literature shapes culture, and culture shapes politics. By centering Palestinian voices, showing up in public spaces, and putting pressure on those in power, we contribute to a global movement for justice.

A bookish community for the unhinged, the literary, and the culturally weird.

I started Sick Sad Lit as a space to explore the books and ideas that get under our skin: unreliable narrators, female rage, unsettling and unhinged stories. Now, we’re taking that conversation off the page and into a new space: a Discord community.

Think of it as the after-hours book club, minus the polite small talk. A place to share what you’re reading, discuss your latest hyperfixations, fantasise about the dream soundtrack to your favourite book, and make lifelong friends.

Inside the server, you’ll find:

• Discussions on books including: Current reads, Good for Her picks, non-fiction favourites and translated lit.

• Media & Culture: From cursed pop culture to horror films to internet ephemera.

• Writing & Creating: Share your work, drafts, or just commiserate about the process.

And if there's something you want to see, let me know. We can build this space together.

👉 Join the Sick Sad Friends Discord here.

What should be a creative safe haven has always felt a bit…off.

I’ve written previously about how 15 year old me used to blog three times a day with gay abandon on sites like WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger, so the fact that Substack left me stumped was a mystery to me.

Part of the problem I think is that Substack doesn’t know who or what it wants to be.

What started out as a promise of a utopia for writers to build a platform and get paid for it with full ownership, has turned into some weird mashup of Twitter meets Instagram meets…LinkedIn??! It feels gross every time I look at the Notes feed.

I’ve entertained the idea of leaving the platform before but I didn’t really give it too much serious thought because I had no idea what the alternative might be and the whole idea just felt overwhelming.

And then I read David Farrier’s piece on Webworm about why he is leaving the platform:

Back in January of 2024, I sent out a newsletter called “When Good Dogs Do Bad Things”. In it, I explained how, as well as hosting newsletters like Webworm, Substack also hosted newsletters by some Nazis.

Not borderline alt-right types, but full-blown Nazis.

Substack has an incredibly hands-off approach to moderation, and at first wasn’t going to do anything. Then, after pressure from writers (and readers) like me who weren’t Nazis, Substack deleted a bunch of them, deciding they did violate one of their T&C’s by including “credible threats of physical harm”.

Back then, I decided to stay on Substack — hoping things would get better. I have had open dialogue with their founder, Hamish McKenzie, which I found somewhat reassuring.

I hoped things would get better.

They didn’t.

Last month, Substack sent out a push notification to users encouraging them to subscriber to a full blown Nazi newsletter:

As Taylor Lorenz reported on July 29:

Substack sent a push alert encouraging users to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter that claimed Jewish people are a sickness and that we must eradicate minorities to build a “White homeland.”

NatSocToday describes itself as “a weekly newsletter featuring opinions and news important to the National Socialist and White Nationalist Community.”

Substack’s response to all of this is to defend Free Speech.

But what they seem to forget is that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. And one of those consequences is writers choosing to leave a platform that will defend Nazi propaganda and in the same breath, inexplicable censor images of Palestinian children being starved to death in a genocide carried out by Israel:

Substack is not some writer’s utopia. It’s a social media platform with rich investors who at some point will be expecting to see serious return on those investments, which means that enshittification will also inevitably ensue, (more than it already has) with algorithm changes, ads and paid sponsorships slowly creeping into the platform.

So I’m leaving.

But the good news is that there is a genuine alternative out there called Ghost, that has rigorous moderation processes in place to ensure Nazi BS and misuse of their platform is shut down right away.

I began the migration process last night which included exporting my content and subscriber list to Ghost and I received this email from their tech team, further evidence of their strict policies:

This email only reinforced that I had made the right decision to move to Ghost.

In terms of what that means for you, the reader, my new home on Ghost will feel exactly like it did on Substack (minus the weird Notes homepage and hate speech of course):

It even looks cooler!!!

You can find me at my usual domain: www.sicksadlit.com or here.

This does mean that I won’t have Substack’s algorithm recommending my page, so if you like what I do please share with others, it means the world.

See you on the spooky side! 👻