Harare Review of Books

Finally! Harare Review of Books, Issue 2, 2026 https://shonatiger.substack.com/p/harare-review-of-books-issue-2-2026?r=18i0sn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Fiction sharpens language skills better than nonfiction phys.org/news/2026-09... If you want more of the latest news, research, and interesting articles in language and linguistics, check out my free weekly digest at the link in bio! ⬆️

intriguing

Heyo! My story “Teeth” was narrated by Wil Wheaton back in June on his It’s Storytime podcast! It's about a monster-slaying priest investigating a series of disappearances, ft. a fugitive supersoldier, a black market fishmonger, and a grocery list. open.spotify.com/episode/5ET7...

Home from World Fantasy con with my writing battery recharged to full.

Griots & Galaxies is back for Season 2! S2E3: Tendai Huchu On worldbuilding, series writing, and hurdles facing African writers in publishing www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCpu...

Griots & Galaxies is back for Season 2! S2E2: Chido Muchemwa and Mubanga Kalimamukwento On writing for community, grief, and building Black women's archives www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1uQ...

Griots & Galaxies is back for Season 2! S2E1: 'Pemi Aguda On setting, symbolism, and spirituality, and how her architectural background arises in her work youtu.be/P7My6PeqCNA?...

Yay!

“Should we in the United States try a Brazilian strategy?” @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social on lessons from Brazil:

"The Goatkeeper’s Harvest" by @tobiogundiran.com at The Dark is one I kept revisiting for months afterward. Harrowing.

"There is no prophesy here, only a carousel of horror against Palestinian determination to return." Fady Joudah on Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, and the "liberalization of liberation" of Palestine: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ghassan-kanafani-palestine-mahmoud-darwish-fady-joudah

We are running 2 events to celebrate the shortlist with @bookblast.org. ‘Unsilencing The Female Voice’ at Veranda Books (London) on 29 October - get your free ticket: tinyurl.com/mr35jf6z ‘A Multitude of Voices: Translating the Female Experience’ online discussion - register: tinyurl.com/yutdthwd

Congratulations to Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896) and translator Brian Karetnyk for Troubled Water’s position on the Warwick shortlist!

Blake Crouch told me he started thinking of Dark Matter season 2 as an album; episodes 5 & 8 are its “two radiant ballads.” I love them! For @reactorsff.bsky.social, we talked about those two standalones. A nice appertif before the season 2 finale this Friday! reactormag.com/blake-crouch...

Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction is just $2.99 on Amazon if anyone else wants to exercise some poor impulse control on The Day They Found Out This is Actually Somehow a Real Thing That People Are Doing In the Real World.

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! Please browse unsafely by adding many more books to your reading list. 😘

This week in literary history, the first ballpoint pen is sold in New York City.

Here, her Q and A with The Harvard Gazette. news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Parch Marks is a cli fi novel with a dual narrative - near future and Middle Bronze age, with some folk horror elements. Archaeologist Eva Sinclair excavates a mysterious massacre #Halloween #HalloweenReads Pumpkin carved by @motiblackart.bsky.social www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-p...

THE HEXHAM HEADS: In 1976, BBC early evening magazine show Nationwide aired a segment about a real-life folk horror story. Stone heads unearthed from a garden, paranormal activity and werewolves abound in this notorious report, thought lost until 2024...

Announcing the shortlist of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2026. Congratulations to the authors, translators, and publishers! tinyurl.com/bdhfm9nx @tenement-press.bsky.social @pushkinpress.com @sevenstoriesuk.bsky.social @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social

Orion’s Belt is open to submissions until October 31! @orionsbeltmagazine.bsky.social www.orions-belt.net/submissions

Benedict Cumberbatch presents How to Live on Earth. “Living on Mars would be horrible. Let’s try to live on Earth.”

Just found a really strange note on my desk in my own handwriting: "You really enjoyed reading 'There Is No Antimemetics Division'. Great book. Top notch worldbuilding and exciting plot. Old-school SCP shenanigans." I have no recollection of writing this.

Pub day for @wtalabi.com 's fantastic, thoroughly gripping The Fist of Memory from @dawbooks.bsky.social A book that demonstrates what's possible in SF.

Just did an online book order that was half Czech literary classics, half lurid crime pulps. I contain multitudes, most of them irritatingly self-congratulatory.

Today's SFF story: Skipping Stones over the Barrier by @kergankergan.bsky.social. This story comes together in an incredibly satisfying way, and I do love a good bit of Mad Science. (Getting back to daily short story recs after returning from VP! Whee!) magazine.trollbreath.com/skipping-sto...

Crossing the border exacts a terrible price in tony lashden's story Payment in Kind, translated by Maddy Robinson: www.fictionable.world/stories/paym... #books #reading #fiction #comics #translation #blog #podcast #books

Career Advice | An Ode to Overhead Projectors Now obsolete, they transformed my teaching. By Eric Fournier: https://bit.ly/4BqDQNn #EDUSky #AcademicSky #HigherEd

Trying to mix some essays, poetry and philosophy into my reading (what else are bank holidays for). In despair at people outsourcing their thinking to others (including writers), it's refreshing to dip into In Extremis by @jgoldsmith.bsky.social with its open minded, playful intelligence.

Olivia de Zilva takes out @readingsbooks.bsky.social New Australian Fiction Prize for 2026! A great win too for newish indie Pink Shorts Press, punching above their weight as ever… www.readings.com.au/news/the-202...

The old town is still having water issues. I remember there were times we went without water for at least tow weeks. It should really not be this difficult to fix this type of infrastructure.

But hey, at least we have surveillance software that tracks all our digital behaviour so it can make ugly fliers and give us three words to describe our own children, am I right?

Short story collections are a notorious hard sell. So it has been with Saltburn. Here’s a review that might whet your appetite. And the hardest thing is spreading the word. So a share or a like would be nice. davesbookblog-daja.blogspot.com/2025/04/salt... renardpress.com/books/saltbu...

By me for today's @theobserveruk.bsky.social: Why horror fiction is having a moment, with @gnofhorror.com, @lucyrosecreates.bsky.social, @jamieleenardone.bsky.social observer.co.uk/culture/book...

and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom

Bonus Book Cover of the Day:

Batool Abu Akleen’s '48kg' Makes Warwick Prize Shortlist arablit.org/2026/10/27/b...

“Where do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?” From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?

I have a long piece at @theconversation.com about AI and the university theconversation.com/friday-essay...

CfP #BISA2027 ‘Thinking climate politics from the Pacific’. This is a panel of researchers who work in the UK & Europe, who think about climate from the Pacific. We recognise the problems of doing this but share a commitment to challenging the marginalisation of Pacific knowledge in our region.

yeah so this QT led me to their website, where I realise they also publish the incredible Hausa soapfest SIN IS A PUPPY THAT FOLLOWS YOU HOME (just read it okay) plus loads of Manickavel, and I just spent look sod off it's my birthday this week, I'm allowed.

They have a ton of Urdu pulp that looks like the purest gold trash, I am in there.

Future Worlds Prize 2027 is now open for entries! If you're writing a work of SFF, are based in the UK and Ireland, identify as a writer of colour, and are over 18, we want to hear from you! Full details of how to enter are here: www.futureworldsprize.co.uk/2027-prize/