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Helen McClory

@helenmcclory.bsky.social
1.5K followers 495 following 674 posts

Writer, Reader, Hybrid creature linktr.ee/HelenMcClory helenmcclory.com

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Reposted by Helen McClory
Adam Farrer @adamjfarrer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It's actually quite useful to see how your Prime Minister copes when he's suffering so much second-hand embarrassment that he wants to bite down on his own fist like it's an apple but can't because he needs to avoid an international incident.
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Jonathan Gibbs @jonathangibbs.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Great to see M. John Harrison on the Booker shortlist. We were honoured to have him contribute to A Personal Anthology, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, with some writers you'll expect, some you won't and some you just love to see: apersonalanthology.com/category/m-j...
apersonalanthology.com
M John Harrison (as editor) – A Personal Anthology
M. John Harrison was born in 1945. He published his first story in 1966 and his first novel, The Committed Men, in 1968. Climbers won the Boardman Tasker prize for Mountain Literature in 1989. His …
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Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
What I want is a TV documentary channel entirely devoted to documentaries with no quick-cut montages of everything about to happen, which don't give a fuck about keeping my attention, presented by extremely knowledgeable people in a terrible mood who have no interest in trying to make me like them
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Last night I watched the online convo CM had with Camilla Grudova. It was so inspiring and thought provoking (the part about tech bros not wanting to die because it's what the plebs do! Chills)
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
My relatives used to save up their food scraps and misc liquids to tip on the orange order marches through here. I feel they'd have still gone after nightmare pigeon, they were a tough old lot
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Mark Hebden @unionlib.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Scotland: We want to leave the UK BBC: Huh? Wales: We want to leave the UK BBC: What? Northern Ireland: We want to leave the UK BBC: Lolz Some shithole in Oxfordshire: We want to leave the UK because racism BBC: REPORT THE HELL OUT OF THIS #Piddington
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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 13/09/2026
An AI flyer is a brown M&M test. If your event or business is cutting corners by using an AI flyer, where else are you cutting corners? What else are you cheating out on? Why should I be bothered to go somewhere you couldn't be bothered to promote with a little of your own personality?
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Got to hear this live, among much other clubby industrial angelic brilliance from Model/Actriz music.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ho...
music.youtube.com
Cinderella
YouTube video by Model/Actriz - Topic
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
My first ever band tee. I think it's a good one
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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
something deeply magical about Penda's Fen being on telly the night after the Bright Phoebus Revisited show. Both masterful pieces of art that flirt around the edges of folk horror, but land on something older and richer - folk *weirdness*, and a cultural identity that resists being boxed in.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Torment nexus scientists: dear world governments, please stop us from continuing to make the torment nexus! Please? m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOi5...
m.youtube.com
The Hugging Face cyberattack was way bigger than OpenAI said
YouTube video by 80,000 Hours
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Jared Pechaček @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Hi Homer, I recently came across The Iliad and was blown away by its expansiveness, its humanity, and its complex use of . Have you considered new ways to promote your book and expand its reach across various platforms? I would love to connect and hear your ideas. Kind regards, Apollonius
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Just back from Edinburgh psych fest. Model/Actriz should be everywhere. The lead singer Cole Haden walking through the crowd, mic lead like an umbilical cord, to wind himself round a pillar? The mosh to vogue ratio?!
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Elephant Mastodon @emath.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Literary fiction is coming. It is going to revolutionize the economy. We know that China has already got a start on literary fiction. We can’t afford to be left out of the literary fiction economy. Think of your kids. They might already be engaging with literary fiction.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Just back from Edinburgh psych fest. Model/Actriz should be everywhere. The lead singer Cole Haden walking through the crowd, mic lead like an umbilical cord, to wind himself round a pillar? The mosh to vogue ratio?!
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness might be here but so too is the season of high frizz from that mist. I have never not once found a cream that helps make my much neglected wavy hair.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Watching Quo Vadis I can't help but see Josh O'Connor on Peter Ustinov. Remake should have him in the role of Nero.
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Salt Books @saltpublishing.com · 26/08/2026
A few months back, hundreds of people were approached by ‘recruiters’ at Salt offering new editorial positions. Now hundreds of our authors are being affected by offers of US editions, translations, film & TV deals and more… www.saltpublishing.com/blogs/house-... #BookSky #SaltPublishing
saltpublishing.com
A very flattering email
by Chris Hamilton-Emery Someone wrote to me a few days ago to say that my poems have an abrasive musicality, and that they were struck by the tension between spectacle and reality in my work. They sai...
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Irish Literary Times @irishlittimes.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
“Late Fragment” — Raymond Carver And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
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RedruM @dorsalstream.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
And some people say there is no more public grief.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Is America okay
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The Man who came to dinner (1941) is such a gem. An irascible literary critic and international personality holes up in a Midwestern bourgeoisie household after an accident and proceeds to tear everything to pieces. Bette Davis is there, eyebrow raised
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jswaneylaw @jswaneylaw.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
It is never ever ever ever going to work out better for you if you talk to police before speaking with a lawyer.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Me and my 5 year old are listening to the audiobook of the hobbit. Once they can read they can read it themselves. A policy I intend to pursue as openly as my parents did
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Mic Wright @brokenbottleboy.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
A lot of podcasts now are like the sound of a slowly deflating whoopee cushion extended to an hour for ad placement purposes
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Just out of A Trial: After An Enemy of the People at the Edinburgh International Festival. Wagner Moura is immense and the whole thing really fantastic
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
There are so many children in the cafe where I normally write and given what I'm working on right now I'd prefer there was a power cut and every one left. Writers block is other people (but mainly me)
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
A hole in a field
A dark patch of pushed down wheat in amongst a golden expanse of the crop. In the background some low green hills, with two branches breaking across the frame.
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Simon Bisson @sbisson.com · 04/08/2026
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. There Will Come Soft Rains, Ray Bradbury's melancholy obituary for a dead world, is set today.
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Catherine Eaton @sparrowpost.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Leonora Carrington in her Greenwich Village apartment, New York.
Tall dark-haired woman standing against a threshold, wearing a dark blouse and long striped skirt. Next to her is a dark table and chair full of clutter from a meal.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Towards the end of The Odyssey, and this is not a spoiler, there's a bowl on a table where the suitors are feasting. It's brightly painted and drew my eye as if it were a real relic from the ancient world, placed there, briefly, to sing in colour
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I am in an experiment with lip colours kind of a mood. Today's looks like I ate some chocolate and a tiny bit of glitter, such as one might at a children's party
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Do you know a living author who needs talked up a bit more? Sarah Moss. Each of hers I've read has been excellent.
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Adam Christopher @adamchristopher.me · 23/07/2026
It should have been $150,000 per title. It should have put Anthropic out of business and made me and other authors financially secure enough to keep writing and keep creating and keep fighting. We’re getting a token gesture. Anthropic won here. They pay a pittance (for them) and can do it again.
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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 23/07/2026
“in 1901… rising rents forced the family to abandon [Orkney] & move to Glasgow… Within five years of their arrival in the city, his father, mother & two brothers had all died, worn out by stress & poverty” —Andrew Watson on the life & work of Edwin Muir #poetry besharamagazine.org/arts-literat...
besharamagazine.org
Edwin Muir: The Return to Eden
Andrew Watson contemplates the life and work of the famous Orkney poet who made a journey from childhood trauma to rediscovery of faith and meaning
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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
#DarkAcademia
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Just out of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Mine eyes have seen a spectacle
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
It's been a bit rough over here, with the press who put out most of my work shuttering without finding a secondary publisher, and my agent letting me go. However, my work is on the Scottish curriculum, I've another radio 4 story in the works, and there's this:
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The Dream of a Mad God

Jane cut a dismal figure in the mirror of the coffee shop's toilet, the kind of mirror they don't make of glass because the clarity and dignity of glass is much too valuable to waste. Functionally it gave her no reflection, only a kind of smeared blur. She was distantly aware that she was trembling, but could think of nothing to do but feel wretched. Soothing herself was out of the question for some time. If only she had some resources, but no. She could not even clutch the sink to give herself a stern looking-to, because the mirror, that horrid gunmetal mirror, was nailed up above the hand dryers. She got too close to the sink and triggered the tap sensor, startling herself. Water...
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I'm reading Runway Horses in The Sea of Tranquility series by Yukio Mishima and have just finished the book within the book where a group of men storm a barracks in protest at foreign influence threatening the divinity of the emperor and uh well I have read Mishima's biography on Wikipedia
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
A few things about AI flyers and posters being around everywhere is 1. Uchh. 2. Ugly 3. Legibility is at new lows. I'm not sure this last point has been part of the convo yet. I'm dyslexic and I find the way AI clutters information to be extra hard to parse
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Reposted by Helen McClory
Frankie Huang 黄碧赤 @ourobororoboruo.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Wholesome
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
Oh my god no way Sarah J. Mass. Once again, who are these scams for?!
A long and rambling email supposedly from Sarah J Mass, but actually a piece of AI sludge trying to scam me Into... something? It's not really clear what.
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Biollante @bivouacchillin.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I have so many photos of James Gandolfini that my phone thinks he's my dad
People and Pets categories in my phone app. My cat is indeed my pet but Tony Soprano isn't my father
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
The Longest Father's Day
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Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Every single poem I post I want to add the line AI COULD NEVER because it cannot. It cannot. You sabotage yourself if you use it. You throw your pearls before the swine of techfeudalism. You embrace the age of consumption.
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Hey everyone, please watch Widow's Bay. Steven King's Parks and Recs. Cosy new England island weirdness that's getting darker by the episode. C'mon in.
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Reposted by Helen McClory
Nick Holdstock @nickholdstock.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
For all you post box lovers out there - an Edward VII one on the outskirts of Edinburgh (one for @helenmcclory.bsky.social?)
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Helen McClory @helenmcclory.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Just out of Obsession. To give you a spoiler free flavour of the film, after one particularly gnarly scene, me and the man next to me, a complete stranger, both shared a look, and after it was over had a brief chat about how far it went.
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