Next month marks five years that I’ve been a freelance reviewer, and I turn 35 later in the year. With these milestones in mind, I’ve been pushing myself a bit more to make contact with new publications and try to get my work out there more widely.

Most recently, I was pleased to have my first article in Literary Hub, an essay about rereading Little Women in its 150th anniversary year in conjunction with the new BBC/PBS miniseries production. (I shared this article intensively on social media, so do forgive me if you’ve already seen it somewhere else!) This is the first time, apart from here on the blog, that I’ve blended book commentary with personal material. I think it’s probably the best “exposure” I’ve had for my writing thus far: last time I looked, Literary Hub’s Facebook post about the article had gotten 123 likes and 33 shares, with 71 likes and 22 retweets on Twitter.

[Note: I now know that the spelling is Katharine Hepburn and have asked twice over e-mail for the editor to correct it, but it’s clearly very low on their list of priorities!]

 

I continue to review for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on a regular basis. My latest review was quite a negative one, alas, for Richard Flanagan’s First Person (). Upcoming: Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau () and A Weekend in New York by Benjamin Markovits.

 

I still contribute the occasional review to Shiny New Books. My latest two are of From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty () and All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church ().

 

I reviewed Florida by Lauren Groff (), my fiction book of the year so far, for Stylist magazine. This is the fourth time I’ve volunteered for their “Book Wars” column, but the first time I’ve ‘won’ – I attribute it to the high class of book!

 

Bylines coming later in the summer:

• A dual review of two nature-themed memoirs in the Times Literary Supplement (June 15th issue). This is my third piece for the TLS, but as it’s a longer one it feels a little more ‘real’.

• An essay on two books about “wasting time” (including Alan Lightman’s) in the Los Angeles Review of Books (June 20th).

• A dual review of a memoir and a poetry volume by African writers in Wasafiri literary magazine (Issue 95).

Upcoming work, with no publication date yet:

• A dual review of two death-themed poetry collections for PN Review.

• Two book lists for OZY, one on the refugee crisis and another on compassion in medicine.
• A review essay on Gross Anatomy by Mara Altman for Glamour Online.