In this missive:

• Self-Advocacy and boundaries
• Orkney Calling
• April Outlier Hour Poll

For six years I have been writing alone, through a pandemic, the death of my father, and my own dark night of the soul. During this process, I reached out to others doing similar work, or institutions that might support me, and this did not bear fruit. The message was clear: I had to walk this path with only my closest allies around me. Work, and the outcast dead were a solace, an affirming company. The years of writing and research have been legitimised in a published book (somewhat—this subject matter of murdered women will never really be legitimate in the eyes of patriarchy). Now, I’m being asked to contribute at events, and yet I am having to advocate for myself as a disabled author. When I state explicitly what including me in the conversation will entail, the silence of the reply is often deafening. For anyone else who needs it, I have found Ever Dundas and Julie Farrell’s Inklusion: a kickass guide to making literature events accessible to disabled people helpful. 

It seems fortuitous that the same day I may have found a house to live in on Orkney, I read this stanza in George Mackay Brown’s “St. Magus Day in the Island”

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWelome to the women in their grey shawls: who most
endure, and have the silence of stone under
sun and rain, but cry each upon other at a 
time of tempest and grief, stone upon stone
shaken and huddled and harshly singing and 
each more precious than onyx or ruby. They 
are given honoured place…

Here are the old women who are also the Carlin stones, the ancestral markers, the neolithic menhirs, the way-markers and burial cairns. The shape of my next book is forming and this is an exciting time, though the process is still murky—sybilline.

Below is a poll for dates for our next Outlier Hour for paid subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber, join our merry band of creatives!

All potential dates are Saturdays, 7pm GMT. To find your time zone go here.