Spring 2012

I'll be reading from John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet at Poetry at Blacks on 10 Jan and from To the River at The Book Stops Here on 13 Feb.

On 30/31 May I'll be teaching a couple of all-day workshops at Charleston Festival on writing and walking, with inspiration and technical tips from Frank O'Hara and Virginia Woolf. Both of these notably original writers used walking – be it city strolls or rural tromps - as ways of stimulating their work, and we'll be looking at Woolf's diaries and O'Hara's lunch poems to see how these fertile strategies might be applied to our own creative productions. Advance booking is recommended as places are very limited.

Winter 2011

I've just written a short piece about my years as a riot grrrl for my friend Matt Wolf's Teenage project (his film, an adaptation of Jon Savage's book, is out next year). Recent reviews include Jesmyn Ward's National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, a biography of the strange friendship between Conan Doyle and Houdini, and a book of the year toast to Wayne Koestenbaum's magnificent Humiliation.

Autumn 2011

I'm spending autumn in New York, researching The Trip to Echo Spring. A report of my adventures is in the New Statesman. A couple of dates on my return: I'll be reading at Richmond Literature Festival on 25 November and the Festival of Ideas in Bristol on 1 December. I'll also be guest lecturing on Exeter University's Writing, Nature and Place MA on ways of approaching place-specific writing. 

August 2011

On 20 August, I'll be in conversation with James Runcie at the amazing Beyond Borders festival at Traquair House in Scotland, discussing landscape, memory and identity. I'll also be talking to Joan Bakewell about landscape at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22 August as part of her Key Ideas of the 21st Century series.

June/July 2011

June kicks off with the Telegraph Hay Festival on 3 June and the Yellow-Lighted Festival in the Cotswolds on 4 June. Later in the month, I'll be reading at the Steyning Live Lounge in Sussex on 21 June and the CMP Festival in Brighton on 9 July. I've also written a piece for the Observer magazine about why I spent my early twenties living feral in a bender in the Sussex countryside.

April/May 2011

I'll be interviewed by Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour on 27 April. You can listen again here.

First reading of the season is with the prodigiously talented Leo Benedictus at the i Literary Salon in the Hendrick's Horseless Carriage of Curiosities on Satuday 28 May at 1pm. That's followed by Charleston Festival on 29 May, where I'll be in conversation with Alexandra Harris, author of Romantic Moderns, and the art historian Frances Spalding.

You can read my guide to New York's best literary hotels in Condé Nast Traveller here.

February 2011

To The River will be published in the Netherlands by De Bezige Bij, also the Dutch publisher of WG Sebald and Virginia Woolf.

December 2010

I've just been awarded a fellowship at MacDowell, the oldest artists' colony in the United States, to work on my second book, The Trip to Echo Spring. I've also received grants from the Arts Council and the Authors' Foundation to travel around America in the spring of 2011 in the footsteps of Tennessee Williams and Raymond Carver. I'm thrilled by both these opportunities, and extremely grateful for the generosity and support of MacDowell, the Arts Council and the Authors' Foundation.

July 2010

I've started writing for the New Statesman; reviews include the latest novels by Benjamin Markovits and Nicholas Shakespeare. I've also been recommending spooky summer reads for the Observer, as well as reviewing the brilliant Nicola Barker. And there's a whole slew of other stuff - Nancy Mitford and Michael Chabon among them - here.

January 2010

Recent reviews include Meg Rosoff, Tobias Wolff, Jane Gardam, William Burroughs and Janice Galloway, not to mention a bizarre history of literary hoaxes. I've also profiled Stephanie Meyer, the squeaky-clean vampire queen, for the Observer, as well as previewing hot books to look out for in 2010.

June 2009

I'm delighted to announce that the non-fiction book I'm currently working on, Going Under, and my second book, The Trip to Echo Spring, have been bought by Canongate.