Durre

September 25, 2016September 25, 2016

On Self-Care and Working Smarter

About a month ago, I was a blubbering mess. Everything in my life was seemingly going well, but I felt restless and dissatisfied from within and I couldn’t work out why. I even tweeted a few HELP ME statuses that I deleted, yet not before a friend of mine saw them and reached out to me, asking…

September 1, 2016September 25, 2016

Why I Want to #Read & Discover More #Welsh #BME #Writers

A while back, I attempted to compile a list of Welsh BME writers to read on Twitter. Since then, I’ve sat on this for months, thinking and then overthinking it; “is this necessary? Are you really going to be that person? How will people respond?” Yet every now and then, I’m reminded of this little project of…

August 8, 2016September 18, 2016

Writing Updates!

I’ve never really done this, but seeing as I haven’t had the chance to fully promote and talk about the cool stuff that I’ve been writing and doing lately, I thought, why not? So this post will just be some pieces I’ve had published here and there the past couple of months. A wide mixture really; flash…

July 31, 2016July 31, 2016

Review: The Elephant’s Foot by M. A. Oliver-Semenov

Published this month, The Elephant’s Foot is M. A. Oliver Semenov’s (Mao) “first and maybe final” poetry collection, filled with the vibrancy and poignancy of life. With poems that depict childhood memories of the narrator’s mother, to Skyping family on birthdays and Christmases, it provokes feelings of nostalgia through distance and time. It explores how memories are eternal and…

July 30, 2016September 25, 2016

Quick Review: The Normal State of Mind By Susmita Bhattacharya

The Normal State of Mind by Susmita Bhattacharya My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very quick and generalised review as I read the book a year ago and never got around to reviewing it at the time. While a lot of the detail has filtered out, the key aspects of the book…

July 30, 2016September 25, 2016

Review: The Blood on My Hands by Shannon O’Leary

“Set in 1960s and ‘70s Australia, The Blood on My Hands is the dramatic tale of Shannon O’Leary’s childhood years, growing up with an abusive father, who was also a serial killer. No one, not even the authorities, would help O’Leary and her family. The responses of those whom O’Leary and her immediate family reached out to for help…

July 25, 2016July 30, 2016

Monthly Reads: June 2016

Due to the reasons mentioned in my May Reads, I didn’t read much in June. I feel like it’s a confession that no self-proclaimed book lover should ever be making so publicly, but to hell with etiquette, propriety and your book snobbery. Yeah, you. In good news, I have half drafted my July/August posts already and have…

June 27, 2016June 27, 2016

Monthly Reads: May 2016

I know, I know… Don’t say it. I started a new job, left an old one, and both of those things, while being dependant on each other, actually have separate processes of their own that take up so much energy and mental stress, that I’ve just had to put everything on hold for a while. On…

May 23, 2016September 25, 2016

Monthly Reads: April 2016

I should have really started doing this sooner. I used to keep track of what I read in order to have some sort of a list/record of it on Goodreads, but I lost swing of it, sadly. It got too fiddly and another form of a social network account that I had to keep updated.…

May 15, 2016September 25, 2016

In Conversation With Holly Müller

A while back, I reviewed Holly Müller’s highly impressive debut novel, My Own Dear Brother, which was published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Publishing. The novel depicts World War 2 but from a new perspective, whereby, instead of telling the story from the Jewish point of view, it tells it from the non-Jewish, Austrian point of…