ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 17/05/2026This week’s unglamorous writing week open.substack.com/pub/eyelashr...open.substack.comWriting week 03Getting out of the house. 051
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 26/11/2025thespinoff.co.nz/books/20-11-... This take is probably old, but I think this conversation would be less heated if these covers (sorry for cursing the timeline) were somehow good and/or the AI use were imperceptible. The fact that they're heinous makes it much easier and more fun to be outraged.thespinoff.co.nzHow two AI book covers forced the publishing industry to reckon with its futureA design studio’s use of AI has disqualified two books from the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026. 0102
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 25/01/2025Saw the Eno doco last night (one of the many many iterations). Genius!! Highly recommend to anyone who tries to make things. 120
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 20/12/2024Phone call with mum: ‘People are driving around the supermarket car park, you know, going 40! Knocking over little old ladies… it’s easy to do once you’ve done it’ 1140
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 29/05/2024Sat my driving test today (passed!). I loved the test guy, an older man with big moustache. He refused all small talk and my efforts for us to be friends. Wouldn't say how his day was going. He sighed once at a red light but was otherwise an enigma. It was very freeing, somehow. 10511
Reposted by ashleighTe Herenga Waka University Press @thwupbooks.bsky.social · 19/04/2024We are delighted to have a new James Brown book on the way. July! teherengawakapress.co.nz/slim-volume/ 072
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 19/04/2024*crying* Please. Academics. 'The internet' is not a valid source description for your photos. 061
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 08/03/2024Just remembered an essay I have to write for an anthology, in less than a week. Good luck to my future self 120
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 10/02/2024Did a short poetry reading last night and it was fun and nice. But in her intro the lovely MC was like: ‘In these times we need poets to uplift and inspire us with their words’ and the poems I had prepared were about death and weed whacking and one was about a bad dream I had about green peas. 3393
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 04/02/2024Significant milestone in my old-person-learning-to-drive journey: drove to the dump and got a new recycling bin 190
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 27/01/2024'It’s best to use digital tools to implement these structured task systems because they’re well suited for organizing and modifying large numbers of items grouped into levels and categories ...' I found this article insane www.newyorker.com/culture/offi...newyorker.comHow to Have a More Productive YearKnowledge work is always changing, and our approach to it needs to change, too. 340
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 25/01/2024Breaking my social media silence to say that earlier I was just walking along carrying many boxes to the mailroom when I saw the work courier guy. He veered towards me and gave me and the boxes a friendly hug! Kind of baffling but nice. The old 'box effect', surely 040
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 21/12/2023Best blog :))) newsroom.co.nz/2023/12/21/k...newsroom.co.nzKa pai: the 2023 ReadingRoom awardsReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias celebrates the best things in New Zealand writing this year 150
Reposted by ashleighJane A @cravenjaney.bsky.social · 14/12/2023I'm good at being terrible at self-promotion. However, my book 'Calamities!' came out earlier this year & then kinda vanished from existence & made no end-of-the-year lists or anything like that but fuck it, I'm quite proud of it. It's angry & a bit funny. Poems: shop.goodbookshop.nz/p/calamities...shop.goodbookshop.nzCalamities!In her second, spine-cracking collection, Jane Arthur wants ‘to get morbid’. Moving with ease between the cerebral and the ethereal she measures her anxieties against a cosmic canvas – taking in... 23218
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 11/12/2023Have almost surfaced from the busiest part of the year and feel dizzy from the effort of articulating my opinions, some of which are probably bad, and badly articulated – but also feel very lucky to get to read so many great things 2130
Reposted by ashleighBill Manhire @pacificraft.bsky.social · 02/12/2023. How Memory Works Come over here we say to the days that disappear. No, over here. . 0116
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 02/12/2023Against all odds – Cycling Week is back! This might well be my dullest entry yet (except for the wind sock mystery) but still. The continuing is the thing. eyelashroaming.substack.com/p/cycling-we... 052
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 02/11/2023Sadly this event has had to be cancelled due to illness! Sorry everyone. I recommend still having a beer and reading a book though. 010
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 28/10/2023Jetlag is actually great. Have been up since 3am. Made some leek and potato soup (with an intense focus that means the soup will be good). Multiple loads of washing. Multiple teas. Cleaned out the fridge. I feel like one of those crazed early-morning CEOs. But with no ambition 1220
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 25/10/2023Little plug for an event I’m doing with Ya-Wen Ho and Ash Davida Jane next week at Unity. (hm. I really have to get a new author photo) www.eventfinda.co.nz/2023/author-...eventfinda.co.nzAuthor Event: Ya-Wen Ho, Ashleigh Young and Ash Davida JaneAuthor Event: Ya-Wen Ho, Ashleigh Young and Ash Davida Jane, Come and join Ya-Wen Ho, ..., Unity Books, Wellington, Wellington Region, 2 November 2023, 0144
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 24/10/2023Not for the first time, I think Londoners must have bladders of steel. There is just never anywhere proper to go to the loo in this city 020
Reposted by ashleighDorothy, a publishing project @dorothyproject.bsky.social · 20/10/2023Incredible review of @pipadam.bsky.social's THE NEW ANIMALS by the one and only Joy Williams @bookpostusa.bsky.social! books.substack.com/p/review-joy...books.substack.comReview: Joy Williams on Pip AdamJoy Williams finds a New Zealand writer, now published in the US for the first time, who hit her like a wind of hurricane force. Introducing Pip Adam. 0168
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 20/10/2023The people in the hotel where I am staying have taken away my tea strainer when cleaning my room. It is a fancy tea strainer. I am livid and sad. I think they think I am crazy with my tea ways. 3100
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 18/10/2023Hey – so if anyone needs anything just blurted out, especially total non-sequiturs, in a time efficient manner, I can do that for you! No audience too large or small 0100
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 18/10/2023Have gone awol at the Frankfurt book fair (sorry to my writers, I will bet back to work soon). It’s good 0150
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 17/10/2023I am loving Germany so far but… please, the water glasses. They are so small 1130
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 10/10/2023There’s a serious-looking panel discussion at Frankfurt book fair next week called ‘What Is a Book?’ Sign me the hell up. I will report back 1140
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 09/10/2023Always feel a bit silly when my phone rings and I freeze in terror and don't answer it, then I google the number and see that it was just the tea shop telling me my special tea has arrived 190
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 06/10/2023Heard a story yesterday about a couple who are going to rehome their cat because the cat (who is otherwise an excellent, excellent cat, by the sounds) keeps attacking the man’s legs on the stairs. 350
Reposted by ashleighErik Kennedy @erikkennedy.com · 25/09/2023An amazing grief poem by Tim Relf from the new 'Poetry Salzburg Review'. 0111
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 23/09/2023So sick of seeing new articles about this cretin, but am always powerless against them and end up reading them all. This one was pretty good I thought. time.com/6315607/brya... 540
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 22/09/2023Got an email that opened with: 'I hope you are super busy.' Look. Let's just agree to hope that each other is well. No one needs your quirky business hopes, get outta here 2120
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 22/09/2023This was heaps of fun! Thank you to Good Books. And thank you to Bill. And thank you to Goldings for the beers after. (No more public speaking though, now. Only private exclusive-members speaking from now on.) 081
ashleigh @ashleighyoung.bsky.social · 20/09/2023Feeling pressure to invent a whole new personality for a new platform but ...ah the hell with it. Same old nonsense 2120