Kate Sotejeff-Wilson

Bodies, writing

We’ve been online and on screen too long. We need to get off, and get out. We know this, but we don’t do this. We need other people to help us do it, together. It’s three years since Covid-19 hit. I wrote about how it affected our writing then. Now, many things are back toContinue reading “Bodies, writing”

The carrier bag theory of fiction

If you read one thing about writing this year, try this. It’s tiny – but transformative. Ursula Le Guin’s own writing is beautiful and she writes about writing wisely, from Words are my Matter to Steering the Craft. But here she goes back to the first stories at the dawn of time and forward toContinue reading “The carrier bag theory of fiction”

Write into 2023

Happy new year! Let’s write again, like we did last year… at two of your favourite venues and in a new social writing challenge. My new year’s writing resolutions are to write little and often, keeping Wednesday mornings for my own writing projects, and to write more in person with others in pairs as wellContinue reading “Write into 2023”

Writing your article in 12 weeks

Well, I finished reading it in that time, but I didn’t finish working through it. Laura Belcher is brilliant – if you do most of what she says. Why most? Because I have one reservation. Not that her book Writing your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks isn’t hugely helpful. It is. Anyone who thinks it’sContinue reading “Writing your article in 12 weeks”

Violent Phenomena

Violent Phenomena (eds. Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis 2022) rolls the south and east of the globe to the top. 21 essays address racism in the publishing industry in general and literary translation in particular: If you’re dual heritage, or mixed, or more, these essays will resonate. It’s time to get over monolingualContinue reading “Violent Phenomena”

Where do you want to write next?

October is busy. If you do half term or have an autumn break, you are going to need it. Everybody you said you’d do something for wants it now. All the things you signed up for are suddenly happening. And those “by the end of the year” deadlines start looming on the horizon like littleContinue reading “Where do you want to write next?”

Writing round the table

Helsinki’s poetry moon festival, Runokuu, is in the last week of August. I spent it with a dozen colleagues, translating Finnish poems and listening to some of the poets. That was the perfect way to mark ten years of living in Finland. As I’d hoped, the poetry translation workshop made me think hard about aContinue reading “Writing round the table”

Same here

For Women in Translation Month, I’d like to remember a woman translator I missed by a whisker, and share her thoughts on writing. Tarja Roinila was a prolific, much-loved, and much-awarded translator into Finnish. She died in 2020, aged just 56. She’d been translating prose, poetry and philosophy, from French, German and Spanish, for halfContinue reading “Same here”

Get back to writing

Summer stretches gloriously before us. If you’re in Finland, the holidays are well underway. You won’t expect to hear from your colleagues again for the rest of this month. And if you’re elsewhere in Europe, you still have time to get yourself to Helsinki for 18 and 19 August. Why come to Helsinki? To joinContinue reading “Get back to writing”

Pitch your book

You have a great idea for a book, you’ve begun writing it, you’re sure your readers will appreciate it. You only have to convince a publisher. Where on earth do you start? I’m going to talk about non-fiction here, particularly about creative non-fiction. That means bringing ideas out of academia to a wider readership. I’llContinue reading “Pitch your book”