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Laura Swift

@lauramswift.bsky.social
205 followers 199 following 53 posts

editor / maker / writer / researcher. Free Palestine 🍉 Helping good people make good books. lauraswift.com

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Reposted by Laura Swift
Jeremy Millar @jeremymillar.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Would you like to fund a bookshop established by some of the your favourite presses? You would?
gofund.me
Donate to Small Press Futures Bookshop, organized by Small Press Futures
Help us build a bookshop run by the publishers themselves 15 independent presses.… Small Press Futures needs your support for Small Press Futures Bookshop
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Manisha Krishnan @manishakrishnan.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
NEW: Staff at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette told @adamm0rgan.bsky.social AI is infiltrating their workplaces, from generating cover art and back cover copy, to publicity materials, to rejection emails, as execs tell junior staff to "champion" the tech. www.wired.com/story/book-p...
wired.com
Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
What a joy to have such beautiful and talented friends! Buy Lenni's new poems they are astonishing! www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page... @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social
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Wim Van Mierlo @wvmierlo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
"What are we doing by ceding our ability to take intellectual pleasure to a machine?" 👇
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Happy national poetry day - almost everyone I know has been touched by this terrible affliction, I hope they find a cure soon
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
something menacing is brewing lauraswift.com/human-voices...
lauraswift.com
Human Voices Press
An experimental nonfiction press, coming soon Human Voices is a new small press for the North West. Specialising in creative, experimental, and politically urgent nonfiction, we champion weird thin…
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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward
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Open Book Collective @openbookcollective.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How do you persuade your institution to fund open access? Join us on 22 October (11:00 CEST / 10:00 BST) for a free Open Access Week webinar with colleagues from the University of Essex and TU Delft, plus the Open Book Collective. Register: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Navy promotional graphic with a magenta diagonal panel on the right. Text reads: Open Access Week, Free Webinar. Making the case: how libraries justify support for open access. Speakers: Hannah Crago, Open Access Service Manager, University of Cambridge; Louise Otting, Collections & License Manager, TU Delft; Caroline Ball, Community Engagement Lead, Open Book Collective. Event details in a light panel: Thursday 22 October 2026, 11:00 CEST / 10:00 BST, on Zoom, free to register. Open Book Collective logo bottom right.
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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
every lever of power in the so-called American liberal order – from the ostensibly liberal government to the ostensibly liberal media to ostensibly liberal academia – are all laser focused on one single thing...the state of Israel must be allowed to massacre as many Palestinians as they wish
This is one of those moments where I’m overwhelmed and do not feel up to the task of capturing exactly what is happening in words as peaceful college students across the country are being thrown into the carceral grinder by their own administrations for the crime of sitting around and asking for the facilitation of less death but I will tell you one thing which is that we are currently experiencing a period of collective mass hysteria and mass psychosis I haven’t seen since the early 2000s where every lever of power in the so-called American liberal order – from the ostensibly liberal government to the ostensibly liberal media to ostensibly liberal academia – are all laser focused on one single thing: No matter the cost in blood or money, no matter the suffering of innocents, no matter the violations of supposed norms, the state of Israel must be allowed to massacre as many Palestinians as they wish and any effort to forestall that from Boston to Los Angeles to Atlanta to New York City should be met with the full force of the militarized police to “restore the peace.” 

This specific slaughter for some reason – and yes I know a number of the reasons – is worth any price we might have to pay at home in terms of dismantling our own Constitutional rights. It’s madness. People have gone mad. Normal people that we all know not just the easily dismissed as "evil" ones.
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
more life; the great work begins
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
www.read.barcelona photo credit Ingrid Ferrer (@ingridfh1)
read.barcelona
read. Barcelona 2026
read. International Convention of Books and Ideas will be an international event that brings together professionals from publishing houses and magazines.
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Feeling really invigorated after being in Barcelona earlier this month for Read, a new annual convention for radical independent publishers. Plenty to be gloomy about in our industry and the world at large, but there are still pockets of hope when comrades come together ♥️
A white woman smiling during a seminarConference delegates standing in a courtyardA panel on 'magazines against Trumpism'Perry Anderson speaking at a large outdoor public event
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I genuinely love indexing, it's a really fun and beautiful art! If you don't want to index your book you can hire me
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Virginia Werewoolf @woolfianjosh.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hwæt! We Capūlets in gærdagum þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða Montagūen ellen fremedon
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LSE Press @lsepress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Publishing hopefuls, listen up! 🔊 We are seeking a Publishing Assistant (Maternity Cover) to join our ambitious, non-profit open access press. Full details can be found in the job description below. If you’re interested in joining us, apply by 24 September 📚 🔗 www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/44...
linkedin.com
Publishing Assistant (Maternity Cover) at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) — London, England, United Kingdom | LinkedIn Jobs
Apply for Publishing Assistant (Maternity Cover) at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in London, England, United Kingdom. Full-time Entry level role. See responsibilities, qua...
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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Great news, and looking forward to a book historian becoming Chief Exec of the UK Space Agency sometime soon in this brave new world!
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Poems! Come and get your poems!
Flyer for a pamphlet launch featuring Lenni Sanders and others, Gulliver's in Manchester, 8/10/26
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
In gorgeous Barcelona for Read convention, get in touch if you are also here www.read.barcelona
read.barcelona
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Imagine being so rotted in the brain you think the people who volunteer to rescue people from drowning are the enemy
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Rob Delaney @robdelaney.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
🐳 You’re God damned right @hesterblum.bsky.social & I made a TWENTY-FIVE EPISODE PODCAST just about 𝐌𝐎𝐁𝐘-𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐊. Subscribe now at exploringthegreats.com/moby-dick & enjoy our thrilling trailer:
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Toss @stevenspoints.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Live your life in a way so it is plausible that Kermit the Frog could perform your eulogy
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Natasha Devon @natashadevon.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Perhaps we ought to take a moment to reflect on how many white male cishet privately educated non disabled men have been given jobs and promoted without question based on fabricated CVs, unfounded self-confidence and an embellished life story & whether we’ve even heard of them.
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
also wheelchair users have legal priority in the wheelchair space on a bus! If someone has a pram in it they have to move out of the way or get off!
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Something so charming about whole countries simultaneously going outside to marvel at the movements of the heavens for an evening. We are all just silly whimsical mammals floating through the vast infinity of space finding things interesting!
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Who's to say whether standing in a lake to watch the eclipse with friends instead of going to the Hachette summer party was a good move for my career, but it felt like a good move for my soul
Looking at the shadow of a colander to see if the eclipse has started yet (it has not)Two friends stand thigh deep in a lake wearing eclipse glasses watching the sunFriends and bikes having a picnic in the long grass at sunsetA blurry phone photo of a partial eclipse
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Gorgeous feedback from an author I worked with recently (a development edit for a trade/crossover academic book). I loved this project - get in touch if you also want to make some magic ✨
Oh my goodness, I cannot express how helpful these comments and suggestions are!  I am so grateful for this rich trove of ideas and recommendations. You managed to do that magical thing of being able to pinpoint exactly the places I was struggling and not only were you able to diagnose what was wrong but suggest how to fix them!  Thank you for engaging with the ideas in this book with so much thoughtfulness and care.  The book will be so much better for it.
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What The Trans?! 🏳️‍⚧️ @whatthetrans.com · 05/08/2026
REMEMBER The guidance coming into effect today doesn't dictate what you're allowed to do as an individual. It for service providers and business owners. Do not cower in fear, do not reduce yourself, do not isolate, that is one of the intended effects.
Photo taken at a protest, he background is tall old buildings of a city centre, a lightskined hand is holding a sign with a trans flag painted on it that says "fuck your "respect and clarity""
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
urgh sending love to our trans siblings today, this is absolute shenanigans and for the avoidance of doubt I couldn't give less of a shit about where you piss
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Tricia Lockwood @tricialockwood.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Hating Men To look at one picture of Jarvis Cocker for 3 hours
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Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 29/07/2026
#OtD 29 Jul 1962 fascist Oswald Mosley tried to march with the Union Movement in Manchester, UK. However, he was attacked by anti-fascists and had to be rescued by police. A Mosley speech later was drowned out by a crowd of anti-fascists. More info: www.patreon.com/posts/e37b-6...
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Like it genuinely hadn't even occurred to me before that Microsoft Word was something you could just... not use?
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Simon's brilliant talk at #OIPA2026 has really inspired me as I set up my new laptop and processes for freelance life. So far LibreOffice is great! I don't have a single Microsoft product on my computer! None of my business expenditure is funding genocide in Palestine that I know of!
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Victor Luftig @vl1959.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I think assigning students challenging stuff--at any level--is a way of expressing respect for them and for their potential, and I don't think such expression of respect depends on their recognizing it as such in the moment. Also we are custodians of what we cherish.
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Gregk Foley @gregk.co.uk · 22/06/2026
September 2024. I know pretending stuff like this doesn’t matter and isn’t salient in any way is a load-bearing pillar of mainstream political punditry in the UK, but I would really like people to grapple with the possibility that Starmer was a nasty, vindictive prick and everyone could see it.
KEIR Starmer has been criticised for his reaction to a pro-Palestine who interrupted his speech during the Labour conference.
The Prime Minister was talking about how every child's contribution should be heard when a person in the crowd began shouting:
"What about the children of Gaza?"
The person then added: "Those opportunities don't go to every child, do they?"
They were then led out of the hall by security as Starmer said: "This guy obviously has a pass from the 2019 conference."
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HK @hkesvani.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
As we see the end of the Starmer years, I am reflecting on my favourite things about him. Personally, it was when he told a newspaper that he didn’t dream or have any internal thoughts
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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 22/06/2026
Starmer is resigning, talking about a country where everybody is valued after he banned trans people from everything and oversaw a number of racist pogroms.
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Owen Jones @owenjones.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Keir Starmer lied through his teeth to become Labour leader. He justified Israeli war crimes, arrested opponents of genocide, attacked pensioners, disabled people and migrants, pocketed freebies, crushed dissent and threw others under the bus to save himself. History damns him
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Open Institutional Publishing Association @oipassoc.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
As we wrap up we’d like to say a huge thank you to our hosts @sussex.ac.uk @openpress.bsky.social for welcoming us & particularly @samnesbit.bsky.social and @lauramswift.bsky.social for all their hard work and support to make today happen 👏 as well as all of our hard-working committee! #OIPA2026
Screen showing a slide at the OIPA 2026 symposium, held at the University of Sussex
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
A real pleasure to chair such an invigorating panel yesterday! Small presses making big moves against the status quo
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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.
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Open Institutional Publishing Association @oipassoc.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
LJMU Open Journals Service have just published their first Zine! It has come out of a monthly #Ethnography club meeting, and describes itself as a guerrilla-style Zine, 'publishing the unpublishable': openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/EiD @ljmuresearch.bsky.social #OpenAccess #Publishing #Zines #Journals
openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk
Ethnography is Dead
The zine explores ethnographic and qualitative research as creative, critical, and reflexive practices.
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
getting rid of grades entirely would be much more effective at curbing surreptitious use of genAI than any amount of surveillance, would do vastly less harm to the pedagogical relationship at the heart of education, and wouldn't be another massive economic windfall for the creepiest people you know
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Uni of Sheffield Special Collections, Heritage and Archives SCHA @uoscollections.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Researchers… it’s time to roll up, roll up 🎪 Join The National Fairground and Circus Archive for a one-day symposium on women in circus 🤹‍♀️ Open to the public at the University of Sheffield. Book your free place, online or in-person: tinyurl.com/WomenInCircus2026
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sean guynes @guynes.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
The conglomeration of academic publishing is a threat to scholarship. There are plenty of incredible not-for-profit academic publishers out there. (Hey, hi, I represent one!) If you feel deeply that your scholarship is political, then you can't ignore the fact that so is your choice of publisher.
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Survived 13.1 miles! And raised £350 for @medicalaidpal.bsky.social 🎉✨
A quite sweaty white woman holding a medal at the finish line of a half marathon in central Manchester
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Open Press University of Sussex @openpress.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
We are excited to announce the launch of the brand new Open Research Bulletin! Aimed at anyone with an interest in open research, the ORB showcases expert comment, case studies, and practical tips for new researchers and experienced practitioners alike. www.journals.sussex.ac.uk/index.php/op...
a simple graphic with the words 'Open Research Bulletin' against a grey/beige background and a logo showing a keyhole to represent the idea of openness.
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Laura Swift @lauramswift.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
*in a couple of days 😬
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Katy Montgomerie 🦗 @katymontgomerie.com · 26/05/2026
Could there be a better example of "the trans debate" than 98% of women supporting trans people and then one single lone person voting against them and getting their way regardless. It's all such a fucking sham
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Avert Your Eyes, Pamela Ganache! @pressfuturist.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Amazing how publicly some academics are willing to embarrass themselves.
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