Do you do a reading challenge? This year’s Helsinki Libraries Challenge made me think again about ways to write. The photo shows what I read to fit the 50 categories this year. I began from my TBR pile, which to quote a colleague, Isabel, can be seen from space. If I’d bought or received it,Continue reading “Fifty books, five ways of writing “
Author Archives: Kate Sotejeff-Wilson
An olive branch outside the academy walls
How do you find people to write with? How do you sustain the collaboration? And how do you breathe fresh air into established writing relationships? What do you expect a writing partner to do – work on the same text or different texts, in the same institution or outside, at the same career stage orContinue reading “An olive branch outside the academy walls”
Stet summer
Summer is coming in. You don’t have to sing cuckoo, but it helps. If you don’t know why you might, listen to Sumer is icumen in. The Hilliard Ensemble apparently have good Middle English pronunciation. I can’t judge, but would expect no less. The further north you live, the more extreme the relief. Last monthContinue reading “Stet summer”
A NEaT few years
I became vice chair of Nordic Editors and Translators (NEaT) in the middle of that first few weeks of lockdown. Two years later, I was elected chair, and this week, after four years in post, I handed over to our new chair. For me, a key thing in positions of trust is making sure thatContinue reading “A NEaT few years”
London Book Fair 2026 – human readers, unite!
In the mayhem of the London Book Fair, one thing was clear. Human readers want books written by other humans, and they want to read them together. Publishers can now mark their works as Human Authored as part of a Society of Authors initiative. Mock-up books and a mock-up crime scene told generative AI companies,Continue reading “London Book Fair 2026 – human readers, unite!”
Alphabetical diaries
Worried about productivity? Planning to get that book finished by doing a daily six impossible pages before breakfast? Don’t. Sheila Heti took ten years to write 165 pages. Ironic to readers from this corner of the globe, given that “heti” in Finnish means “at once”. Heti boiled her journals down and rearranged them in alphabeticalContinue reading “Alphabetical diaries”
Write a year together
Kirjoita vuosi (“Write a year”, Art House 2025) edited by Sinikka Vuola and Päivi Koivisto, is an accessible guide for writers. If you’d like to extend the depth and range of your writing skills and want help to commit to writing regularly, this could be the book for you. It is like a writing courseContinue reading “Write a year together”
Happy new writing! Join us in 2026
Happy new writing year! How far in advance do you block out writing time? I plan my retreats for the whole next year at the end of the one before. There might be more to come, as I am testing a new venue in January, but every couple of months, we have a couple ofContinue reading “Happy new writing! Join us in 2026”
Your application, your human reader
Recently I learned that a university had proposed using an AI chatbot to write research funding applications. The writers would have to check whether the bot had hallucinated the guidelines. This led to flurry on social media. Some scholars saw it as a cynical cost-cutting, productivity-boosting exercise. What I don’t know is whether the botsContinue reading “Your application, your human reader”
When and where do you write best?
I’m choosing dates for my retreats in 2026. This will be the seventh year for Ridge Writing Retreats! So far, I’ve facilitated about 70 retreat days online and in person in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere and Säynätsalo, and a few hundred hours of Write on Wednesdays. I write well at all our venues, and that isContinue reading “When and where do you write best?”
Ridge Writing Retreats 