The Fortnightly
has had a restful holiday: travel and reading mostly.
Greetings to all new subscribers who have signed up during the summer: I hope you enjoy the full Fortnightly experience shortly. Since 2016 I’ve been collating interesting writing and reading, and pointing the way to helpful things for teachers, as well as linking to my own writing.
Issue 171 is out this time next week, including George Eliot, Naomi Klein, Judi Dench and George Saunders. I’ll also be spreading my wings a little this year (the first full year on Substack), with some extra one-issue mailings in between the fortnightly ones. Coming soon: Irish education right now, and AI in English teaching.
The Occasional appeared twice in the summer for paid subscribers (see below): sincere thanks to you for supporting my writing. But The Fortnightly itself continues to be free to all, with the usual mix of interesting writing, reading and thinking during term-time.
See you next Saturday.
The Occasional
appeared twice this summer for paid subscribers. Many thanks to them, and if you upgrade you can check out those and all future issues, as well as accessing the entire archive of The Fortnightly itself since 2016.
Included in July and August:
Holiday reading plans.
James Shapiro at the Dalkey Book Festival (and his new book The Playbook).
The renovated Folger Shakespeare Library, and the new Mayfair Library in Kilkenny.
Brian Klaas’s Fluke: chance, chaos and why everything we do matters.
Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills: powerful and personal, and interesting background to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.
John Boyne’s short novels Water and Earth.
Victoria Kennefick’s essay on her former husband’s transition, an essential read for her second collection egg/shell.
Teaching and Learning: a few AI ideas (more coming).
Michael Longley’s Life of Poetry - a lovely BBC Radio series.
And a cornucopia of other links and ideas: self-checkout machines, African book covers, a writing shed, Arcimboldo’s ‘Summer’, David Frum on Middlemarch (more in 171), the lovely documentary Birdsong, typewriters and more.
While I’m here:
Two free webinars for teachers coming up via Tralee Education Support Centre:
On Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These: Tuesday 10th September, 7pm to 8pm. Registration link.
On revising King Lear for the Leaving Certificate exam: Wednesday 16th October, 7pm to 8pm. Registration link.