Oliver Haslam

Really happy to share this roundtable - thanks to all those who were involved and to @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and @olihaslam.bsky.social for putting it together!

Collage of book covers: Sally Rooney: Beautiful world, where are you; Sarah Moss: The Fell; Natasha Brown: Assembly; Samantha Harvey: Orbital; Ali Smith: Summer; Carlos Manuel Álvarez: False War.

So happy to see ‘Stuck on Stuckness: On the Intractability of the Present’, co-authored by @alicebennett.bsky.social @keeblearin.bsky.social @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and me for @c21literature.bsky.social special issue The Century @ 25, out in the world after over two years! doi.org/10.16995/c21...

I am very glad to have been the occasion of this new series for C21 Literature. Huge thanks to Alex Houen, Leonid Bilmes, Laura A. Zander, and Adam Kelly for their engagements with Free Indirect, and to Denise Wong and Oli Haslam for the invitation to respond.

Excited to announce that our new issue has opened! c21.openlibhums.org/issue/1422/i...

'The Century at 25' was guested edited by Alice Bennett, Arin Keeble, Melissa Schuh, and Denise Wong

Call for book review essays - book list C21 is inviting scholars and researchers to contribute book review essays for upcoming issues. We currently have a selection of titles published in 2025 available for review, spanning film and …

We are looking for review essays! You can see some of our selected titles at the post below. Get in contact with our review editors @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and @olihaslam.bsky.social to request some or for further info

So pleased to be launching @c21literature.bsky.social ’s inaugural roundtable review w/ @olihaslam.bsky.social ! Thank you to our fabulous contributors for their work on this excellent piece 👏👏👏

<em>C21</em>’s Roundtable Review of Timothy Bewes’s <em>Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age</em> (2022)

C21 journal has published a ‘round table review’ of Timothy Bewes’s book FREE INDIRECT. It includes a short essay by me; other contributors include Leonid Bilmes, Laura Zander & Adam Kelly. Bewes does a response at the end 👇

c21.openlibhums.org/article/id/2...

@c21literature.bsky.social

The front cover of The Edinburgh Companion to the Millennial Novel

The contents page of The Edinburgh Companion to the Millennial Novel

Very happy to receive my copy of The Edinburgh Companion to the Millennial Novel edited by Loic Bourdeau and @cilloyd.bsky.social. I'm in there talking about (what else) writers and writing work. Great to see the contribution from my @c21literature.bsky.social colleague @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social

a new monograph by one of our fabulous advisory board ☺️

Book cover: Melissa Schuh, Literary Autobiography: Contemporary No Elises and their Self-Representations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Flyer: Melissa Schuh Literary Autobiography Contemporary Novelists and their Self-Representations -Explores the narrative strategies developed by novelists as they cross generic boundaries of ction and non-fiction -Presents case studies of works by canonical contemporary authors -Develops denitions and concepts to analyse forms of autobiographical writing that flaunt their fictionality Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing Get 20% off with this code: PALAUT

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LIFE WRITING Series Editors: Clare Brant • Max Saunders "Melissa Schuh's Literary Autobiography offers a theoretically elegant and literarily sensitive rethinking of the fraught relationship between the novel and autobiography. Central to the book is the concept of performative contradiction, which Schuh develops as the defining aesthetic strategy of literary autobiography—a strategy that embraces fictionality not to undermine life writing, but to open it toward deeper questions of truth, identity, and narrative ethics. Schuh's analyses of Roth, Coetzee, and Grass persuasively show how these works form an aesthetic lineage that contemporary autofiction continues to draw from. This book will be indispensable for scholars across life writing studies, narratology, and literary ethics." —Stefan Kjerkegaard, Aarhus University, Denmark Why do novelists write about themselves? What modes do novelists use to manipulate representations of their personality? Why is it often late in their career that novelists write about their own lives? This book develops the concept of literary autobiography as a genre responding to a profound uncertainty about the knowability of the self, often negotiated through a particular concern with the writing life. Comprising a particular sub-genre and style of contemporary life writing, the autobiographies examined in this book foreground their formal 'literariness' through the explicit use of fictionality, disrupting established (auto) biographical tropes by employing narrative innovations associated with postmodern fiction and prefigured by modernist experimentation. Taken together, they exemplify an aesthetics of performative contradiction, in which novelistic strategies cast doubt on the veracity of the life represented. Exploring works by canonical and popular novelists - J.M. Coetzee, Philip Roth, Günter Grass, Elena Ferrante, and Karl Ove Knausgard - this book addresses the increasing novelisation of contemporary life w…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, because my book is out now, fresh off the press!
Happy book birthday to “Literary Autobiography: Contemporary Novelists and their Self-Representations” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) 📕🎉! doi.org/10.1007/978-... @hss.springernature.com

Congratulations Emma!!

Call for C21/BACLS Panel Proposals BACLS members are warmly invited to submit proposals for panels for the upcoming British Association for American Studies (BAAS) and British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS) conferences in coll...

In conjunction with @bacls.bsky.social, we are looking for some proposals for panels at BAAS and MSA! Read more here:

Lovely to see that Minimalism and Affect in American Literature, 1970-2020 was shortlisted for the BACLS Monograph Prize! Huge congratulations to winners, @drdominicdean.bsky.social and @dremmaparker.bsky.social, and fellow shortlister @gabriele-lazzari.bsky.social

Massive congratulations Dom!!

💫 My book is finally in print! Immensely grateful to all my colleagues and to @emilysharp.bsky.social , @elizabethfr.bsky.social, and the whole team at @edinburghup.bsky.social for their support throughout the writing, revision, and publication process! 🚨

(For a 30% discount, use code NEW30)

We've refreshed out author guidelines for submissions to our journal, including new guidance for anyone looking to submit an interview. We'd love to hear from you!
c21.openlibhums.org/site/authorg...

False War by Carlos Manuel Álvarez review – a new vision of migration A novel of interlocking stories captures the ordinary lives and interior worlds of Cuban exiles seeking sanctuary in Miami

This is an absolute stunner. Out this week with @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social and this Autumn in the US with @graywolfpress.bsky.social. Beautifully translated by Natasha Wimmer. My review: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

Printed sign announcing the BACLS (British Association for contemporary literary studies) What Happens Now? Conference 2025 at the University of Stirling, on a green pinboard with a landscape painting in the background.

Photograph of a part of the BACLS WHN25 conference programme, showing the plenary roundtable and workshop: The Century at 25.

Photograph of a buffet spread of sandwiches, wraps and fruit.

Photograph of a deer in a grassy field between two trees.

Some @bacls.bsky.social #WHN25 Stirling conference snapshots in anticipation of the @c21literature.bsky.social roundtable: The Century at 25, which I‘m a part of with @alicebennett.bsky.social , @keeblearin.bsky.social @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social @olihaslam.bsky.social . There’s a conference deer 🦌!

Get in touch with your review essay ideas if you're interested in writing for C21!

🔊C21 are excited to be commissioning a series of new review essays! Check out the suggestion of topics and titles in this thread and get in touch via email or DM our review editors (@heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and @olihaslam.bsky.social) if you’d like to review any of these recent publications!📖

A cover image for the journal Orbit, with the text Orbit in a black circle atop a light blue typewriter.

Orbit is an open-access journal of American literary studies. We have no fees. We are digitally preserved. All thanks to @openlibhums.bsky.social

Our next special issue is on indigenous speculative fiction. We recently had an issue on Percival Everett

Check us out at orbit.openlibhums.org/issues/

The banner image for this journal special issue shows an oil painting of trees, blue sky, and a meadow.

Hiya BlueSky! We've got a cracking special issue on Ali Smith which features an interview with Ali Smith, published in December 2024: c21.openlibhums.org/issue/901/in.... Check it out, if you haven't already had a chance! #AcademicSky #BookSky #Literature #OpenAccess @bacls.bsky.social