iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Even better: goofy stance is right leg forward because Disney once released an animation showing Goofy surfing that way round.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Oh my god. It’s actually finally happened. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

97% is “no clear consensus”?! Come off it, Liz.

Screenshot of guardian news story by UK technology editor Robert Booth, dated 16th December, under the category “Artificial intelligence (AI)”

Headline: Boost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan

Subheader: Liz Kendall faces pressure from campaigners as she tells parliament there is no clear consensus on issue

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

This was a truly lovely thing to find on arrival back into the office today, after a fairly intense few weeks of extensive touring. Thanks again to the BA, and to all the brilliant booksellers who voted. It really does mean the world.

A bright blue award sitting on a desk, which reads: “BA Booksellers Association - Sophie Christopher Publicist of the Year: Anna Frame”

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Yes, yes she is. Not only that, she’s #6 on the bestseller list at the most competitive time of year, her poetry outselling celeb memoirs. Pretty much unheard of. Huge thanks to Lemn and the many other poets, writers, booksellers and readers who’ve lent their support to this extraordinary woman.

A screenshot of a tweet from Lemn Sissay, which reads: Today Len Pennie is number 6 in the Sunday Times Bestseller List.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Huh. Is that…optimism, I can feel?

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

It’s been almost 2 months since I last made this journey - the longest stint in some time. Is it odd that I’ve missed it?

A laptop and takeaway coffee sit on a train table. Through the window can be seen a river and several arched bridges.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Amazing work here from The Trainline. How did they know that “surprising or inaccurate” information is what I’m almost always looking for in a customer service situation? (To be fair to them it was, as advertised, utterly useless.)

A screenshot which reads:

Trainline Assistant Beta
This Trainline Assistant is powered by Al and its content may be surprising or inaccurate. Please don't input sensitive information like credit card or phone numbers.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Well, I guess LinkedIn’s algorithm *sort of* got it right in advertising this to me?! More info on this job, and the Publicity Assistant role we’re also advertising, at www.canongate.co.uk/jobs.

A LinkedIn email advertising a job for Deputy Publicity Director at Canongate (12 month contract, Edinburgh or London) - sent to me, the person who is hiring for that role.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

It was a total joy therefore to see this morning’s review in the iPaper from @mariannelevy.bsky.social, praising him for all this and more - talking about how, like his memoir, his fiction too has grown deeper and more sensitive as he’s got older, without losing any of its…Nivenness. >>

“Yet, luckily for us, it seems this was a temporary diversion. Because something wonderful has happened: Niven has grown up. His subject matter has deepened, while his writing has matured and become more rigorous; tight plots and an attention to detail on a sentence level that is belied by the strut of his literary persona.

Jada is a man whose responses to humanity are binary - "If it's a woman, will I f**k it? A man, will I fight it?" - yet he holds his tiny son to his shoulder and marvels at the throb of his "wee rabbit heart".”

As always with this author, there are beatings and bodily fluids, rendered so lavishly as to veer into the baroque. But they are something of a smokescreen; what he does so well, now, is heart. Niven, a man who got banned from Twitter in 2018 for telling a pair of Trump supporters, "I certainly hope you both die soon", is now writing, with precise sensitivity, about the agony of IVF.

It is a much-repeated piece of advice that novelists should put their characters through hell, which Niven evidently takes seriously; and as his memoir attests, he has been there himself.

The horror Dan confronts at The Fathers' midpoint is so shatteringly rendered I had to stop and put the book to one side for an hour, just as I did, a couple of years ago, reading O, Brother. Niven's most devastating passages are hard to take. Yet I always knew I'd return.

Much of the narrative of O Brother was driven by the increasing divide between John and the younger Gary. As Niven found success and money in London, he pulled away from his Glasgow terrace past, a place where, both figuratively and literally, Gary remained. That divide is also present here - in the bottle of fresh juice Dan buys for Grace, "that cost more than wine and tasted like cut grass", while Jada's baby Jayden is discovered masticating a full-sized Mars bar. A question central to O, Brother is central to The Fathers too: "What was so different about me and him?"

So many books are described as hilarious and so very few are. But Niven knows his comedy, and he treads where others fear to go. These days, his jokes are often a vehicle for his political rage; he paints - by stealth - a compelling picture of social injustice. To read

“compelling picture of social injustice. To read The Fathers is to witness the squalor of Jada's existence, the food poverty - at one point Nicola begs for something nutritious and Jada, under duress, eventually offers to go to the Chinese takeaway for vegetables in black bean sauce.

The speed with which, in the second half of The Fathers, Dan is sucked into Jada's world is testament to a lingering feeling, present in so many of Niven's books, that the past, the poverty, the desperation, they are all just a hair's breadth from the oysters and Chablis.
That the Glasgow rain pounding on Grace and Dan's windows will find its inevitable way through.”

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Over the moon to see this glowing shout out for @lilyking.bsky.social’s Heart The Lover in this week’s Bookseller, referring to it as “one of the best novels I have read all year”. Many thanks to @laurenrbrown95.bsky.social!

Screenshot of the Bookseller magazine’s October previews, with a close up on a specific write up:

“Literary.
Lily King.
Heart the Lover.
Canongate Books.
£16.99, HB, 9781837265497.

In her senior year of college, the narrator of the intoxicating new novel by the Writers & Lovers and Euphoria author is drawn into a feverish triangle of complex friendship, desire and the intimations of first love with friends Sam and Yash. Decades later and a successful writer with a husband and children, a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. This is one of the best novels I have read all year.”

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Love that @edbookfest.bsky.social are offering discounts and free bookable spaces for book clubs - such a great idea! Full info at mailchi.mp/edbookfest/i....

Screenshot of email:

Make your next meeting a 'Book Group on Tour' edition with a visit to the Festival this August.

Enjoy money off a visit to our events and some exclusive perks to make your next gathering an extra memorable one.
Get planning with your bookish friends and make the most of:

• 10% off event tickets* when purchasing five or more tickets (applicable against full price tickets for adult events)

• access to book our dedicated Book Nook space, where you can chat as a group before or after your event

• a special on-the-day discount for our Festival Bookshop, brought to you by Waterstones

Read on to discover how to book in and take advantage, with further information including full terms and conditions available on our website here.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Even more so when it looks like this:

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

My train, like all others going south, has been stopped in Newcastle due to a fatality on the track. Lots of people confused milling about the station, lots of staff looking stressed. I have sympathy for everyone involved here, except whoever is responsible for this. Do LNER do surge pricing now?

A screenshot from The Trainline app, showing tickets from Newcastle to London on sale for around £600 for a single.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

*cough* With apologies for leaping in: we’re working hard to tell people that All Fours is both very funny and very sexy. But there’s a definite issue in hardback that, if you lead with funny, some people assume it’s not serious, literary writing too - when arguably funny is FAR harder to do well.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Your sarcasm aside, my question about GDPR was genuine. Based on this from the ICO, my understanding is that even publicly available email addresses cannot be added to a mailing list without explicit opt in. Which I didn’t. Happy to be told I’m wrong if I am.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Also: CHECK OUT THESE WRITE UPS.

Jacket image: The Two Roberts, by Damian Barr. A roundel on the image reads “Book of the Month”

The Two Roberts
Damian Barr

This deeply moving love story remembers two almost-forgotten Scottish artists, Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, who met at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1930s before embarking on a European art tour together, the looming threat of the Second World War on their heels. Charting their rise to stardom amid Soho's bohemian elite, where the pair rubbed shoulders with the likes of Francis Bacon, and their subsequent descent into infamy and near-obscurity, their fierce devotion to one another and profound impact on each other's art is constant. Impossible to put down, the novel explores themes of class - the two Roberts were never able to "play the game" of the art world, lacking the inherited wealth their contemporaries took for granted - and social change. "Bobby and Robert have been buried in the footnotes when, for a brief, glorious time, they were the story," Barr writes in the extraordinarily moving afterword. "This novel is my way of writing them back to where they belong." I would love to see the novel have as much impact on the memory of these artists as Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet has had on Shakespeare's twins - in the afterword, Barr notes that Colquhoun's grave is still unmarked "because his family could not afford a headstone".

Canongate Books, £18.99, 4 September 2025, 9781805301547

Jacket image: Poyums Annaw by Len Pennie. A roundel on the image reads “Editor’s Choice”

poyums annaw
Len Pennie

I have come late to the amazing Pennie but, as anyone who saw her Nibbies acceptance speech after winning the Discover Book of the Year Award 2025 knows, she is a resounding force for good. Fresh from that win, the performance poet and TikTok phenomenon, who writes in both Scots and English, follows her debut collection, Poyums, with a second, blistering collection that confronts patriarchy, gender-based violence and societal injustice with tenderness, a jousting wit and not a little righteous fury.

Canongate Books, £14.99, 25 September 2025, 9781837263288

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

LOVE this glorious write up of @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social’s conversation with Miranda July about All Fours - the front cover of today’s Guardian Saturday. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

Front cover of the Guardian Saturday magazine, showing Miranda July looking into a mirror, with the headline - Sex, Power and Permission To Blow Up Your Life: What Miranda July Gave A Generation of Women.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Thrilled to see @danzep.bsky.social in the New York Times opinion pages this weekend, with a rallying cry in praise of European sleeper trains, and against environmentally ruinous, socially divisive American individualism (here’s looking at you, Musk). Read it here: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/o...

A screenshot from the NY Times. The text reads:

OPINION GUEST ESSAY:
Europe Built Trains. America Built Highways and Regret. By Dan Richards.

Listen to the article: 7 minutes

Mr. Richards lives in Edinburgh and is the author of the forthcoming "Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark.”

An illustration shows a lone train, viewed from a birdseye perspective, weaving its way through an abstract red landscape. Surrounding it on all sides are the shadows cast by many planes.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

And speaking of swans - my local park has cygnets again, for the first time in 3 years! Though that heron is definitely interested…

A mother swan sits in the water, accompanied by a fluffy grey cygnet.

The mother and cygnet swim through a narrow channel toward a nest, on which the male swan is sitting. At the right of the channel, a heron is standing, gazing steadfastly ahead.

A close up of the heron, striped grey, white and black, standing amidst the foliage.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

I’m sure there must be better ways to end a busy week than a swim under blue skies and purple hills, accompanied by the reservoir swans - but I’m damned if I know what it is.

A sandy path, lined by grass, leads down to a small beach at the edge of a bright blue reservoir. In the opposite side of the reservoir are several low hills. The sky is a vivid blue.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

The weather affects my activity levels, you say? SURELY NOT.

A bar chart showing a year of step counts. On the bar representing November is marked the number “6884”. The bars remain static through December and January, then steadily climb through the Spring months.

The same bar chart, this time with the number “11,020” marked against April.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

“Everywhere along the roadside, the chrome-yellow straight-out-of-the-tube-and- laid-on-with-a-palette-knife brashness, the amazing coconut smell of the gorse…” Another in my ongoing series of photographs entitled: ‘God, I love this city.’

Bright yellow gorseflowers crowd the foreground, while tucked in behind them can be seen a winding path stretching to the top of a hill.

Two trees stretch toward one another over a path, creating an arch, a spray of white blossom visible mixed amongst them. Behind them is visible a pond with a swan sleeping on the water, which is yellow with the reflection of gorse from the hillside beyond.

Spikes of yellow gorse flowers frame the bottom of the picture, and can also be seen stretching out in the distance round the edges. Far below is a glimpse of water, on the other side of which is a small hill. The sun is setting, and silhouetted against it on the hill are visible a tower and a series of columns.

The sun has set further against the same silhouetted structures. This time the gorse is barely visible against a small hill in the foreground, also appearing to be almost in sillhouette.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

He has absolutely no idea what’s going on - totally out of it. I don’t know if that is better or worse than the alternative. time.com/7280114/dona...

Transcript of a TIME interview with Donald Trump:

When you and I spoke last April. Are you still committed to complying with all Supreme Court orders?

Sure, I believe in the court system.

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that you have to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. You haven't done so. Aren't you disobeying the Supreme Court?

Well, that's not what my people told me-they didn't say it was, they said it was— the nine to nothing was something entirely different.

Let me quote from the ruling. "The order properly requires the government to facilitate Aboriginal Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador." Are you facilitating a release?

I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you're saying. But I leave that to my lawyers. If they want-and that would be the Attorney General of the United States and the people that represent the country. I don't make that decision.

Have you asked President Bukele to return him?

I haven't, uh, he said he wouldn't.

Did you ask him?

But I haven't asked him positively, but he said he wouldn't.

But if you haven't asked him, then how are you facilitating his release?

Well, because I haven't been asked to ask him by my attorneys. Nobody asked me to ask him that question, except you.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Caught a little of the chorus on Merlin…

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Went for a walk along the Water of Leith this morning before work, and the birds were in full voice: wrens, robins, blackbirds, pigeons, even a blackcap. Plus swans, moorhens, ducks and coots down by the pond, all busily nesting. I love this little stretch of wildness by my house.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I love visiting London, but returning home is always made easier by the fact this is the office…

A view into a courtyard seen through a narrow stone corridor and a pair of ornate metal gates. Beyond the gates is an iron street lamp strapped to the wall, and beyond that a yellow building with a sloped roof and small paned sash windows, set against a bright blue sky.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Re-upping this post...because @nswriting.bsky.social has only gone and been shortlisted! Over the moon that even more readers will be introduced to her writing and, through her, to the legendary Nusayba bint Ka’ab al Khazrajia. #JhalakPrize2025

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

The other has a gate that’s now permanently locked, a lawn that’s heavily overgrown, and their (much smaller) clubhouse falling into disrepair. >

An overgrown bowling green sits, looking neglected. The sky behind is in tinged with pink.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

One of these clubs has an immaculate green, almost always with a game ongoing, and a large clubhouse that’s often lit from within and full of people. >

A perfect bowling green is photographed through the bars of a metal gate.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

At the entrance to a park near my house are two bowling clubs, their gates facing one another over a small path. >

A photo of a paved path, bordered on both sides by privet hedges. Arrows are drawn on the photo, pointing to two gates tucked into the hedges on either side.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Weekend’s reading: a satisfying chain of connection.

Three books in a pile, on a sunlit wooden table. Starting from the top, the books are:

Orbital, by Samantha Harvey.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka.
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Well this is fun. It looks very much like Trump’s team asked AI “how to easily apply tariffs”, and based their numbers on the results - despite those results in no way corresponding to reality, economics or how tariffs work. By fun I mean horrifying.

Screenshot of a post from James Surowiecki:

Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did.

Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us
are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate
Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.

It's also important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff.

A graph below shows the figures cited.

Screenshot of a post from Krishnan Rohit:

This might be the first large-scale application of Al technology to geopolitics.. 40, 03 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily.

Contained within his post are multiple screenshots of those AI results.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

A perfect London weekend of theatre, galleries, restaurants, bookshops, history geekery, reading in the sunshine, drinking coffee, catching up with friends, and lots and lots of walking. Springtime incarnate.

A book sits on the wooden arm of a sunny park bench, next to a piece of blossom. Behind it, a green lawn stretches out, with several trees covered in white blossom. The book is multicoloured, primarily in blues and purples. The words “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka” are visible on the spine.

View of a clean white gallery space, taken from above. Several people are looking at the paintings, which aren’t clearly visible from this angle. (They are large square canvases by late American artist Noah Dennis, depicting an idealised version of life in LA’s Pueblo del Rio in oils.)

A white woman with long brown hair and a dark blue jacket stands on paving stones, amid the ruins of an old church. Through an archway behind her, a cafe named Barbie Green is visible, with blue umbrellas outside.

A black and white photograph of Fran Lebowitz, taken by Peter Hujar in 1974. She is a young woman with shoulder length dark hair, propping herself up in bed on her elbow and looking directly at the camera. The sheet has a pattern of polka dots, and the wallpaper behind her has a strong geometric pattern of dots and ellipses.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

A deeply moving and entertaining evening @portybooks.bsky.social last night, launching @danzep.bsky.social’s Overnight. Much talk of love, service, vulnerability and joy, alongside Moomins, bats and croissants. Huge thanks to @rkrystalli.bsky.social for her (as ever) thoughtful chairing!

Dan Richards stands in front of a shop window showing a display of his book, Overnight. He is a white man with brown hair and a beard, wearing a red jumper, dark blue trousers and a blue jacket.

Sitting on a sofa, Dan reaches to pick a copy of Overnight off a stack of books, most of which have slips of paper sticking out of them. He is holding a pen.

Dan sits in a mustard yellow chair, giving a reading from Overnight. Behind him is a grey pull up banner displaying the words The Portobello Bookshop, and a series of bookshelves marked ‘Crime’ and ‘Fantasy’.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Dina Nayeri’s Guardian review is well worth a read (www.theguardian.com/books/2024/f...) - though this passage to me sums it up:

Screenshot:

Searching and honest, these essays carry the reader from New York dinner parties to seventh-century battlefields to Jerusalem checkpoints and down the alleyways of a shrewd and compassionate mind. As she trails Nusayba, the academic in her recedes and you can hear a girlish heart racing, her belief in her own courage blossoming. This subtext is what makes Namesake a pleasure to read: the shy, people-pleasing scholar behind all that incisive research diving headfirst into old myths as if trying to resurrect her redoubtable foremother. Will she find belonging and a connection to her ancestors? Will she ever return to Gaza or get flagged by Prevent? Will she stop worrying, make peace with overstaying houseguests and English aubergines? Will she be allowed to introduce herself as Arab and feminist without having to reject her Muslim history? At once vulnerable and intellectually rigorous, here is an illuminating and trenchant exploration of Muslim feminism (a term I understand better now, though I still have a lot of arguing left in me). An essential read in the war against lazy stereotypes, cultural annihilation and every form of apartheid.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

My family WhatsApp group agrees.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

The most beautiful flowers from @canongate.co.uk meets the most beautiful evening light. Well done, everyone.

A beautiful bouquet of purple and pink flowers sits in a glass vase on a white mantelpiece. It’s being hit by a warm evening light, which casts a shadow on the wall behind.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Slightly blown away to start the day with the news that I’m double shortlisted(?!) for the Nibbies - and alongside such an array of talented publicists! Miranda and Len’s books both mean a huge amount to me, and I’m just so glad to have played a small part in helping them find their readers.

A screenshot from The Bookseller website:

The Shortlist

Anna Frame
All Fours by Miranda July
CANONGATE

The campaign for All Fours by Miranda
July is one of two category nominations for Canongate's
communications director Anna
Frame. It moved July on from a cult name into a fully-fledged literary author and an authoritative voice in feminist conversations. From prepublication buzz to widespread reviews to big events, via some tricky scheduling issues, it led to great visibility and triggered multiple reprints.

Anna Frame
poyums by Len Pennie
CANONGATE

The second shortlist place for
Canongate's Anna Frame is for her work on Len Pennie's poyums. Poetry is a rarity in the bestseller lists - especially in hardback, and when it covers themes like such as mental
illness and abusive relationships - but poyums was propelled there through smart use of Pennie's social
platforms and a host of well-chosen events. Author care was exceptional.

Social media asset, with white text on a dark blue background. It reads:

The 35th British Book Awards
Shortlisted
Publicity Campaign of the Year

Anna Frame
Ellie Hughes
Eve Wersocki Morris
Tina Mories
Mia Quibell-Smith
Ellen Turner
Rebecca Mundy
Patrick Hargadon
Fran Owen, Mari Yamazaki, Annabel Robinson & Hayley Camis

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

It’s a good day when we get to shout about new acquisitions by not just one but TWO authors I love! @patricknessbooks.bsky.social @yassmin.bsky.social

A screenshot of a Bluesky post from Canongate, featuring a picture of Patrick Ness (a smiling white man in a blue polo shirt, looking into the middle distance):

Canongate @canongate.co.uk

We can't wait for MERIDIAN, a phenomenal genre-bending love story which unfolds across a multitude of settings, from a dystopian near-future to the battlefields of the Second World War. By the beloved @patricknessbooks.bsky.social, coming in 2027!

A Bluesky post from Canongate, featuring a photo of YM Abdul-Magied (a Black writer in a multicoloured headscarf and round glasses, looking directly at the camera with a half smile):

Canongate @canongate.co.uk

We're delighted to have acquired AT SEA, the debut adult novel from YM
Abdel-Magied. They've crafted a powerful, propulsive, captivating literary environmental thriller centered around a high-stakes oil-rig operation which we can't wait to publish in May 2026!

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Springtime haze after a day of blue skies. Unbeatable.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

On a train journey across the country today, I finished Heather Parry’s recently released novel Carrion Crow, and (years belatedly) started reading A Swim in a Pool in the Rain - George Saunders’ acclaimed short story workshop in book form. >>

Two hardback books sitting on a train tray table, an English rural scene and blue sky visible through the window behind them. The bottom book is white with blocky black text visible on the spine: Heather Parry, Carrion Crow. On top of it sits a pale blue book with George Saunders written in white caps on the spine and cover. In cursive letters on both is just visible the title: A Swim in the Pond in the Rain.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Well. This *definitely* wasn’t what I was expecting from this evening, but I’m over the moon - and feeling so very lucky to work every day on such amazing books, with the brilliant @canongate.co.uk team. Also, tonight was evidence yet again that if you want a good party, ask a publicist to plan it.

A bouquet of flowers lies on its side next to two framed certificates.

The first reads:

PPC ANNUAL AWARDS 2025

This is to certify that
Anna Frame
won the Waterstones Award for Hardback Fiction for
'All Fours' by Miranda July.

The second reads:

PPC ANNUAL AWARDS 2025
This is to certify that
Anna Frame
won the PPC Award for Best Debut Campaign for
'Poyums' by Len Pennie

A social media card that reads, in gold and black:

WATERSTONES
WINNER
The Waterstones Award for
Best Hardback Fiction Campaign
2025 PPC Annual Awards

A social media card that reads, in gold and black:

Publishers' Publicity Circle
WINNER
The PPC Award for
Best Debut Campaign
2025 PPC Annual Awards

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Today’s the day, and London you’re looking mighty fine! Can’t wait to see 150 or so of the UK’s best publicists - not to mention pals from the worlds of bookselling, events and media - at the PPC Awards tonight. publicitycircle.bsky.social

An interior shot of King’s Cross train station, taken looking down one of the platforms toward the exit. The curved glass roof is letting in light from above, which picks out the roof of a train on the right and casts long shadows from the passengers disembarking.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Stumbled across this trail sign today. I’m now wondering if it was in fact an unsubtle hint to humanity from the future…

A thin tree with the remains of autumn leaves still clinging to it stands above a broad canal. Pinned to it is a sign in hot pink, with thick black letters proclaiming the words “WRONG WAY”.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

There are few things I like more than an interlinked short story collection (sorry, ‘mosaic novel’), and I’m so glad to have picked this up on my last visit to @portybooks.bsky.social. I’ve not yet read Darraj’s previous book, A Curious Land, but now really want to do so.

A yellow paperback book, with an image of olives visible through an illustrated tear in the cover. The title “Behind You Is The Sea” and the author’s name, “Susan Muaddi Darraj” are both written in dark blue.

The book is being held aloft against a backdrop of Edinburgh spires and turrets.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Going back through Holly Dawson’s stunning memoir of memory loss, fragmented identities and the stories we leave behind, and am struck yet again by the beauty of these Acknowledgments.

A book page. It reads:

And This Too Is True -

- that I am grateful. I am grateful. For everyone, and everything, in this odd little world. I'm alive. We're alive. And it's beautiful, for a moment, to sweep the dust we share into a book.

To my family, to my women, to my children. To friendship: to Sol and Sam and Simon, to Lori and Laura and Lucie and more.

To Thor (I love you, dickhead). To my sisterhood of students, who teach me more than I them. To Melissa, for lifting me, always. To Jamie and Silvic, who gave hope a pulse, and all at Canongate who got the blood flowing through.
To my coven of female writers,
who wrote the I before my I
began. Who put an I on the page for all women everywhere.
Who breathed into I-hood the power of We-hood, holding us at times when it's impossible to go on. Chant their names, incant them:

Woolf and Platb and Paley,
Lorde Angelow, Levy and Kay.
Ernaux, Cusk, Rich, Ditlerson.
Winterson, Sbonagon, Gay.
Sexton, Sontag, Smith,
Lispector, Cixous
- too many to say

(Continued in next photo)

A book page. It reads:

This is the kind of rhyme I make up to keep exercising, testing, my memory, my brain. Thanks, Brain, for putting up with me.
I promise I'll be nicer to you from now on.)

****

This part of a book is usually called Acknowledgements.
Acknowledgement: (i) To notice someone or something; (ii) To recognise importance; iii) To confirm receipt; (iv) The acceptance of the truth or existence of something. Etymology: Old English, 'to know'.

So - let's notice each other. Recognise importance. Confirm receipt of everything, good and bad, sent our way. Accept each other's truth and existence. Know each other, knowably and nobly. Know ourselves and leave nothing unknown.

A copy of a book entitled All of Us Atoms: A Memoir, by Holly Dawson. The jacket is white, with a design of several large coloured circles and black lines. Some of the circles contain fragments of a black and white photo of a woman’s face.

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

The clearest and key point in the article is this: that PR is a tough job partly because so much is outwith our control. You can sink hours or even days of work into a campaign, and have nothing to show for it. That’s absolutely true - I’d estimate >95% of pitches I send yield no coverage, >>

Screenshot: “No one sets out to fail a book. Publicists can't control media, nor do they want to.”

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Anna Frame @annaframe.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

< It’s been inspiring to watch audiences respond to this book, online and in person, and I’m hugely grateful to the legion of people who’ve helped find an audience for Omar’s words (including Dina Nayeri, whose Guardian review is screenshotted above). I hope it finds its way into many more hands. >

Omar, wearing jeans and a black hoodie, sits on stage with chair Rahul Rao, wearing chinos, and black jumper and a gilet. A table between them is covered in a keffiyeh acting as a tablecloth, with a copy of Omar’s book propped up on it. Behind them is a dark green roller banner advertising Lighthouse Books, Edinburgh’s radical bookshop.

The photo shows the interior of a fairly large church, a red carpet stretching between pews full of people toward a stage set up at the front. Two people are just visible on the stage: Omar, dressed in a grey jumper and jeans, and chair Alex Clark, who’s wearing a long dress and tweed blazer.

Omar sits on stage with chair Max Porter, who’s listening intently.

Omar stands talking to two men: musician Brian Eno and Palestinian Ambassador Husam Zomlot.

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