Many of you are, I hope, currently at or heading to a No Kings gathering this fine, sunny Saturday. I’m sorry to say I can’t: I’ve just got back from Florida and brought a nasty upper respiratory tract infection with me. I’ll be coughing my lungs out and feeling like death warmed up while everyone else competes for Best Signage and Most Witty Takedown of our current political leaders. And also make connections and sign up for organisational and observational training. Because it’s that kind of hard, continuing work that leads to change. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere.
Charlie and George of course also have no time for kings—mainly because, being god-emperors of Broadview, such lesser beings are beneath their notice.
I will leave you with Charlie enjoying the morning sun and hoping that some bird or squirrel will come down from the cherry tree—which as you can see if being colonised by the over-exuberant clematis—and join him for lunch on the deck.
Again over on Gemæcce (my research blog), two posts about Early Medieval Pictish stones—or, more specifically, the animals carved on them. It can be hard to tell sometimes whether these easts are real, wholly imaginary, or just attempts to convey something they’ve never seen in real life.
Certainly some are very real, and realistic—and I’ve drawn a few examples. But as far as we know (certainly as far as I know, and I’ve searched extensively) the Picts never carved many of the animals Hild would have been familiar with. So I set out to create what I thought those beasties might have looked like if they had. One of those examples in particular gave me a lot of trouble…
As almost always happens, I forgot it was IWD until lunch time. So here’s a slightly update version of a post I did a few years ago. Enjoy!
Janes Plane live at the Ace, Brixton, 1982. Pictured, l to r, Nicola Griffith, Carol Holmes, Jane Lawrence.
Once upon a time—44 years ago, on March 8, 1982 to be exact, International Women’s Day—I and four other women debuted our band, Janes Plane. (I’ve written about that many times so won’t rehash it here but do feel free to go down the search rabbit hole). It was early March, too, eleven years later, when Ammonite, my first novel, debuted in the UK. (Which makes today Ammonite’s 33rd birthday!) And of course it was just ten days after that that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For me, IWD is a complicated anniversary.
But today, just because it pleases me to do so, I’ll focus on the music. Here are two Janes Plane songs. The first, “Vondel Park,” is about the summer I was 19 and me and Carol, my lover (that’s what we said back then, lover, not partner or girlfriend) went to Amsterdam, got stranded with no money, starved in a campground for about a week, then finally got some cash and spent it immediately on, first, a Big Mac and fries, and, second, a chunk of red lebanese hash, which we smoked in Vondel Park in the sunshine while hippies played their guitars. I spent four lovely hours hallucinating herds of wild horses running with a 50′-tall Bertie Bassett (a figure made of Liquorice Allsorts—a liquorice sweet/candy). Here’s the song, accompanied by a video created from various TV clips of the band edited together by Lou, our bassist.
And here’s “Bare Hands.” I don’t know what the song meant to the rest of the band, but my lyrics are about Hull, a grimy, desperate city in East Yorkshire (so bad you could address a letter to ‘Crap Town’ and it would get there), where I moved after I left Leeds in early summer, 1979 (right before we went to Amsterdam). I lived there with Carol for ten years and always knew it could be a better place, if only people would believe enough to try. I left long before that happened—but it did. So, to me, this is a song about hope.
I think IWD, too, is all about hope. So turn up the sound and drift and dream…
I’ve just done my last local She is Here-focused book event.1 It was small, and lovely, a very community affair in Edmonds with cookies and soda and lots of conversation, and a great introduction by Leila Norako, a medievalist at UW. Sadly I don’t have pictures—but then I remembered I do have pictures of the Ravenna event that I haven’t posted, and in fact haven’t had time to write about.
Ravenna was a great event—just right. Third Place Ravenna is a small store, which struck me as a perfect venue for this book.2She is Here is not like any of my other books—it contains my first published poetry, for instance; my first published artwork; and a very candid interview. For those reasons I wanted something intimate for this book—not the great echoing space of Elliott Bay or the even greater-capacity Third Place Lake Forest Park (where I’ve done my last few events).
The events folks were initially concerned that the store wouldn’t be big enough but eventually they came round to my way of thinking (thanks Spencer, thanks Bailey!). As it was, it turned out perfectly. Bailey rearranged the store so that the reading was a sort of 270-degree, reading-in-the-(almost)-round affair, with several blocks of chairs. (This meant I had to swivel my head a lot when talking, to make sure everyone felt included, but, hey, that’s a small price to pay.) And in the end every seat was filled and only a handful of people had to stand. I tried to find the best photo to show everyone, but even so, you can’t see two of the blocks of folks on the other sides of bookshelves—but I drew some helpful arrows so you can imagine:
Listeners invisiblebehind shelving…
Most of the photos (thanks, Bailey) seem to be me talking—but I assure you Kelley talked too and asked lots ofo ifty questions—as did the audience. Here are a few more pix:
Eyes rightEyes centreEyes left…
As you can see from all the coats and hats it was a cold night—I was truly delighted that so many people made the effort. The Q&A session ran a little long, and then the signing line was long, so I’m sorry that the booksellers were kept late. But also, y’know, not sorry because it was such a splendid evening.
And then we all went to the pub and carried on until they kicked us out. Oh, well. Even the best nights must come to an end…
I have an event coming up at Charlie’s Queer Books, but that’s focused not on me but on my conversation partner, Olivia Waite, for her new book, Nobody’s Baby. And I’ll be reading from and talking about SiH at ICFA later this month. Thee are also more interviews and reviews to come… ↩︎
Plus, of course, they have the pub downstairs that sells Guinness. Plus plus, it is a beautifully accessible store. I recommend it highly. ↩︎
Sorry about the earlier non-post post. I was experimenting with something and then, well, a certain four-footed beastie who shall remain nameless but is George’s brother decided to help by trompling across the keyboard at the Very Best Time Eva.
March is Women’s History Month, and Under the Rainbow, in conjunction with Edmonds Library and Edmonds Bookshop, are sponsoring a special storytelling event with, well, me. Here are the details.
Event: Under the Rainbow: Nicola Griffith. Doors open 6:00 PM, programme 6:30 – 7:30 PM Pacific. Edmonds Library, 650 Main St, Edmonds, WA 98020
Co-sponsored by Under the Rainbow, this will be an hour of reading and conversation all about many parts of my life and writing but—given that it’s Women’s History Month—a fair amount focused on why seeing women and especially queer women in historical fiction is so important
I’ll do a couple of sort reading but mainly be in conversation with my favourite interlocutor, the ever-fabulous Kelley Eskridge!
So, tomorrow—Tuesday, 24 February, 6:00 PM PT/9:00 PM ET—I’m doing a virtual book event for City Lights in San Francisco. I’ll be reading from She is Here, and talking with the editor, Nisi Shawl, about the book, the editing process, and—yes!—politics. What, you’re surprised? Come on, it’s City Lights; the Outspoken Author series, “designed to fit your pocket and stretch your mind,” is all about “today’s edgiest fiction writers” showcasing “their most provocative and politically challenging stories,”; and, well, the State of the Union. How could we not get political? Therefore, as well as poems and art and fiction, we’ll talk about manifestos and activism and what role writers can play in creating change.
So what would you rather listen to for ninety minutes: lively book-and-art-as-activism chat, or some bloated rambling about the (very sad) State of the Union?
I was sad when Hild was not reviewed in the New York Times on publication. A year later, when it wasn’t even mentioned as a paperback, I felt a bit wistful, then shrugged. It had had plenty of other excellent notices.
So I was surprised and sceptical yesterday when I started to get emails, comments, and social media messages saying: ‘Hey, wow, great review of Hild in the NYT!’
I did a search—couldn’t find it anywhere. Then a reader finally sent me this:
So, hey, it’s true! (Though I still can’t find the link, which is weird. EDIT TO ADD: here it is. It looks as though it’s part of a newsletter.) So February is turning into a great book month for me: She Is Here is published, Spear, after four years as a hardcover is finally available as a paperback, and now, only a doze years late, Hild finally gets her NYT spotlight.
That’s it: after nearly four years only i n hardcover and ebook and audio, now available in my favourite format! Same book with same front cover and interior illustrations, just a few different quotes on the back. I mean, the book got a lot of quotes—really great reviews.
Kelley and I have recently returned from 10 days in London, one of the most genuinely multi-cultural cities I’ve spent time in. We had many deep and interesting conversations, one of which I’ll touch on further down. (And others I might discuss in more detail in a future post.) Most of those we spoke with—friends, family, colleagues, strangers, whether in politics, arts, sciences, religion, nonprofits and/or social justice organisations—are as distressed as we are about what is happening in this country and their own, and its implications for the rest of the world. Several of our conversations revolved around the findings about change and civil disobedience that I detail in this post—which I had just begun drafting before I left Seattle and so was top-of-mind.
3.5% of a population can force real and lasting change
Nonviolent civil resistance, or unarmed civil struggle, can and does force real change in the behaviour of government, or, if the government cannot change, then its collapse. Stop and think about that a moment, please: not slight change, or meaningless promises but real changeor the fall of government. According to Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2012), once around 3.5% of a nations’s population2 has begun active and sustained participation in nonviolent civil resistance, success becomes increasingly likely with time.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the BBC talking about how this has worked internationally.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. [Note: given revised data—see footnote 1 below—it would be more accurate to say ‘very rarely failed to bring about change.]
In 1986, millions of Filipinos took to the streets of Manila in peaceful protest and prayer in the People Power movement. The Marcos regime folded on the fourth day.
In 2003, the people of Georgia ousted Eduard Shevardnadze through the bloodless Rose Revolution, in which protestors stormed the parliament building holding the flowers in their hands. While in 2019, the presidents of Sudan and Algeria both announced they would step aside after decades in office, thanks to peaceful campaigns of resistance.
Here’s Chenoweth herself discussing her work. Watch it; it’s only 12 minutes. Pay attention. She speaks to 150 years of data; if you doubt the numbers I use here, go argue with her: she has the receipts. Moreover, though she was speaking 13 years ago, her central thesis is sharply relevant to us here in the US (and, as I discovered, the UK) today more than ever.
What this means for the US today
3.5%. A small percentage—but in terms of the US population, big absolute numbers. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2025 the population of the USA was 341,784,857. 3.5% would be 11,970,000. Essentially 12 million people.
If 12 million Americans engaged in active and sustained nonviolent protest/civil disobedience, the current administration would very likely either change significantly or collapse.
12 million. Are there 12 million Americans willing to commit to protest? I think there are. I think that since late 2016 an increasing number of ordinary people are becoming aware, unhappy, and organised. These organisations are many and varied. Some are very small and unconnected to anything else—blocks of houses where families have learnt to look out for neighbours during floods and wildfires, government shut-downs, or sudden DOGE-mandated layoffs. Other organisations at the congregation or neighbourhood or city level are loosely networked. Then there are nodes of specialised groups—food banks, whistle-makers, observers, trainers in nonviolent response—who are starting to coordinate. And then there are cities and states who are becoming rapidly radicalised because of governmental overreach, callousness, and murder: Minneapolis/St Paul and Minnesota; Los Angeles and California; Chicago and Illinois.
Just as important, though often less reported, are the smaller communities in more rural areas where voters are as likely to be registered as Republicans or Independents as Democrats. See, for example, reporting on Wilder, Idaho, population 1,725, where 72% of the county it sits in voted for Trump in 2024: 400 citizens or legal residents, including children, were zip-tied and detained, 105 were held on immigration charges, and 75 were deported. You can risk a bet that in the mid-terms, that county voting percentage is going to look rather different. If you want more on smaller communities and their less-reported tribulations at the hands of immigration and border control agents, see, for example, this NYT article (gift link).
There’s no way to know for certain how many of us there are, but my guess is more, and very possibly a great many more, than 12 million.
But can those 12 million commit to the extent required—and what is the extent required? Can that commitment be sustained—and for how long should that be? Can those 12 million coordinate—and to what extent should their actions be concentrated or decentralised?
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the finer details, but bearing in mind, always, that we are talking about nonviolent behaviour in support of a clearly articulated goal, two things I feel sure of:
In terms of mass protest, the more people that gather on the street—and are seen to gather—the more others will join. There is safety in numbers. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the bluntest of terms, the more ordinary Americans that participate, the greater the odds are of the enforcement agencies (ICE, FBI, National Guard, police) becoming unwilling to gas, shoot, or beat protestors: their kids, their parents, and their friends might be in the crowd. This, according to Chenoweth, is what has happened in other times and places.
Coordinated protests must happen in towns, small cities, and big cities, in communities both red and blue. More than one of those protests must, on the same day, be huge—record-breakingly huge.
The protests must show not only determination but commitment to kindness and building community rather than to hate and division. Hate does not help. (I’ll return to hate in a bit.)
What do I base all this on? Thinking about US movements for change during my lifetime, looking at the numbers, and considering the results both obvious and subtle.
Precedent in the US
All these numbers are available via a variety of sources. Wikipedia has an aggregation page with enough links to get you started. Please note that while some of these protests were met with violence, whether from over-zealous law enforcement or from hateful counter-protesters, the overwhelming majority remained steadfastly nonviolent in the face of provocation. Also, while it’s important to acknowledge the risk of violence, it’s equally important to remember that, according to Chenoweth’s data, the greater the percentage of a community’s population that’s marching, the less likely it is that local law enforcement or National Guard will be willing to use violent tactics against a crowd of those who may be their relatives, friends, or neighbours.
In terms of single-day actions in the US in my lifetime, some examples:
Earth Day (1970): On April 22, more than 20 millionAmericans (10% of the population at the time) took part in teach-ins, clean-ups, and rallies in more than 10,000 towns and campuses. Huge, huge numbers, but a single-day decentralised event. It was not a protest; the focus was not on marching with the goal of regime change but on raising the environmental consciousness of those in power and agitating for legislative action. Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and absolutely raised the bar on environmental action in this country, an effect that lasted 55 years—until the actions of the current administration, which has effectively destroyed the Clean Air Act and other safeguards.
Women’s March (2017): On January 21, 3.3– 4.6 millionAmericans (1-1.3% of the population at the time), the majority of them women, marched in over 50 states as counter-programming to Trump’s inauguration. There were over 750,000 in Los Angeles and 500,000 in DC. Those huge numbers buoyed the participants; judging by anedotal accounts, I believe the Women’s March laid the foundations for much of today’s local organising, whether focused on neighbourhood-scale actions or forming wider networks.
No Kings (2025): On June 14, about 5 millionAmericans (1.4% of the population) marched in over 2,000 locations in protest and counter-programming of Trump’s Flag Day military parade. On October 18 there was another coordinated protest, this time estimated at between 5 – 7 million Americans (1.4 – 2.0% of the population). This may be the nation’s largest biggest single-day protest. But it was not concentrated in select cities—it consisted mainly of smaller gatherings in many locations. Even so, I believe it consolidated much of the networking and experience of the Women’s March and, again, strengthened the commitment to change and the ability to coordinate action.
In terms of more sustained protest:
George Floyd/Black Lives Matter (2020): Over the three months after George Floyd’s murder, polls3 suggest 15 – 26 million Americans (4.5 – 6% of the population) joined at least one racial justice demonstration, with the single-highest day turnout on June 6 of perhaps 500,000—though not all in one place. That lack of massive numbers in any single time and place, and (perhaps—I’m happy to be corrected on this) specific actionable demands may be why outcomes are less obvious. Nonetheless, I believe these protests and organised networks helped make the No Kings actions possible. I also believe it had an impact on more localised change—in terms of city and county police regulations and response.
Much more recently, the spate of ICE Out protests resulting largely from the killings in Minneapolis/St Paul of two US citizen observers, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by Customs and Border Protection agents, are more difficult to quantify. For one, it’s difficult to find reliable numbers (though they seem to have been lower than most protesters hoped). And for another, while there seem to have been some results—the ICE presence in Minneapolis/St Paul and some other cities is being reduced; there will be an investigation into the death of Pretti but not Good—there is no commitment to agents removing masks or wearing ID, or obtaining judicial warrants before breaking into people’s homes and hauling them away with no due process. Democrats in the Senate have (temporarily, if past experience is any guide) found some spine—but at best these results are minor and, at worst, misleading.
What does all this mean?
That we have most of the groundwork already done: the conditions exist for a nation-changing protest. But. We need more, and bigger. With longer planning and very clear demands. And a great deal of very unglamourous behind the scenes organisation. Imagine beginning with a single-day nationwide General Strike, school closings, and people on the street in huge numbers—more than 12 million, with, say, 1.5 million in DC, at least half a million in each of the ten largest cities, and tens or hundreds of thousands in smaller cities and towns across the country—followed by two weeks of massive and peaceful demonstrations and/or vigils and/or withdrawal of services or money. And/or perhaps more specific and regionally focused actions.
Is this possible? Yes. Many unions are ready. Many congregations of many creeds are ready. Many administrations at city, county, and state level are ready. Many local and regional law enforcement agencies are reevaluating their cooperation with federal enforcers. Community organisers are ready. There are more and more people out there who have recent experience of protest, demonstration, and vigil. They are connected, formally and informally. Ordinary Americans are more than ready; once we see it begin, we will join. There are easily 12 million of us.
Negativity bias—stats and stories
I promised to touch on those interesting conversations we had in London, and this is where it gets even more hopeful. To understand why let’s first consider something I’ve talked about often: negativity bias.4 People pay more attention to the negative than the positive. It’s an evolutionary trait: humans are prey animals; in survival terms it’s more cost-effective to focus on a sound that could be a predator than on a laugh. As a result we are more attuned to and tend to overweight the importance of the negative than the positive. We can look to the evidence of our own everyday experience; anyone with even a passing familiarity with social media understands that bad news spreads faster and further than good news. Negative disinformation moves even faster. Countless studies back this up: all over the world, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’
This is important. I want you to understand and believe it: in the context of information and/or news (whether gossip, anecdata, mainstream media, social media, tabloids, podcasts, newsletters or government announcements), negativity bias can lead to a distorted perception of reality. This distortion can be extreme—normally reasonable people can have a seriously skewed understanding of the world around them. There are reams of data to back this up but rather than hammering at you with tables and statistics and links, let me tell you a story.
I used to teach women’s self-defence for a living; my students were women and girls (and a handful of men) of all ages, abilities, colours, creeds, and socio-economic backgrounds. Around the second session, when I started showing women how to apply the strikes I taught in the first session—how to seriously hurt their attacker—they baulked. Why? Because, they said, fighting back would just make it worse, make their would-be rapist (rape and sexual torture is what most women fear) angry and more like to hurt them. Everything they knew about the world told them that fighting back would do no good: all you had to do was read the newspaper, watch the news, listen to the radio to learn that (this was before the internet).
I would sit them down, and ask: What do you think the odds are of a woman fighting off a rapist? Someone might venture, Five percent? No, I’d say: if the attacker is unarmed, data show that 72% of the time if a woman fights back she will avoid rape; if she fights back against an attacker armed with a knife, her chances are 58%; against a gun, 51%. Even if a would-be rapist is armed with a gun and the woman he has targeted is unarmed, if she fights back the odds of her avoiding rape are greater than even. (The odds of her being less badly hurt are also better if she fights back than if she doesn’t.)
Those stats were from a 1985 study, Ask Any Woman: A London Inquiry into Rape and Sexual Assault, Ruth E. Hall (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1985). While writing Always (published 2007), I went to the Department of Justice website to check their statistics: the numbers held up. Looking at what info I can find now (and the internet has got so bad that it’s difficult to find clear answers) it seems that women’s odds have not got worse.
So why do women believe fighting back is useless? Because the media tells them so. Media, mainstream and social, reports completed rapes (the bloodier and more brutal the better) far more often than attempted rapes. While in real life women have an almost 3:1 chance of beating off a would-be rapist, the media publicises 13 completed rapes for every attempted but uncompleted rape. (Why? Because bad news garners clicks. Bad news sells ads.) When it comes to gender violence, media negativity bias is 39:1. That is a seriously skewed version of reality. That’s what we’re up against; that’s why it’s easy to read bad news and believe the world is irretrievably broken.
Saving the best for last
Right now there is a lot of bad news to notice. In the US we are hit daily with everything from the disassembly of public health and the cancellation of research programmes to federal agents executing citizens in the streets. In the UK we talked to people in positions of formal and informal responsibility at the national, community, or diocesan level who are worried by the signs of hatred visibly rising in their spheres of interest—racist graffiti, street violence, social media attacks.
Again and again we brought up this notion of 3.5% and change. It excited everyone—it is exciting. But then one woman Kelley was talking to suddenly stopped and said (I’m paraphrasing a second-hand report) “Oh! All that hatred out there, that feels so overwhelming, like there’s nothing we can do because the whole world hates us… What if it’s only 3.5% who are full of hate, and not the whole world?”
When Kelley told me this later that night I said, Yes! And, oh, I wish I’d been part of that conversation! Because I would have pointed out that when you factor in the cognitive bias towards the negative, it’s probable that the level of real hatred, the kind of hatred that leads to burning synagogues, spitting on immigrants, attacking transfolk—or to marching in the street to counter-protest nonviolent marches for change, calling your representative to vote for dehumanising legislation against transgirls in sports, or directly funding hate groups—is not just small but tiny. Think about it. Think about the numbers of people who show up for anti-abortion vigils or White Power marches or transphobic campaigns; try to remember how many homophobes showed up at the last Pride event: minuscule, comparatively speaking. Insignificant when weighed against those of us who protest hatred and cruelty.
If it takes only 3.5% of a population to change the direction of a nation; if the hatred we feel is out there isn’t quite as widespread as we think; and if you factor in the negativity bias at a ratio of 39:1, well, even if the bias was wrong by an order of magnitude, it’s still a heartening answer. Change is possible. More possible than we might think.
I don’t know what will force the growing dissent against the current administration’s agenda into full flower but I have no doubt it’s coming. And when it does I have no doubt it will succeed. There are so very many more of us than them.
Many thanks to Mary Brandt whose Wellnessrounds.org post brought Chenoweth to my attention and helped crystallise what I’d been fumbling towards for a while. Those who want to follow the evolution of Chenoweth’s thinking might want to download this PDF. (Thanks Jennifer!) ↩︎
I’ll be using ‘population’ and ‘Americans’ interchangeably to refer to those who live in this country, whether they’re citizens or not. ↩︎
Lowest estimate from Pew, highest from Kaiser Family Foundation. These are self-reported numbers rather than estimates from photos and professional crowd counters. ↩︎
I usually talk about it in terms of Misery Lit, and the perception that High Art has to be depressing. ↩︎
Event: 7:00 – 8:00 PM Pacific. Third Place Books, 6504 20th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98115
Lovely cosy bookstore—with pub (more Guinness!!) next door
I’ll be reading from and talking about She Is Here—mostly solo, but then a conversation with my favourite interlocutor (Kelley!), and if you’ve attended one of our joint things before, you know how much fab fun those are!
This is one of those free-and-everyone-is-welcome events—RSVP isn’t required but it is a kindness. It helps the bookstore know how many books to order and how many chairs to set out, all that good stuff that makes an event comfortable for all.
But if for some reason you don’t get around to registering, please don’t let that get in the way: come and join the fun.
I’m in the UK—home later this week—but in honour of She Is Here’s book birthday, I’ve changed this website’s avatar to one of the drawings in the book, “Happy Hound.” To see the other drawings—and poems! And essays! And stories!—you will, of course, have to read the book. Which you can! Because it’s out!
George, the International Cat of Mystery, has many clandestine skills. On this Çaturday, he has added one more: to move in broad daylight without so much as casting a shadow…
Also, I frankly just love the deliciously ambiguous and vaguely ominous phrase The Lord of Light Casts No Shadow. I suspect it may reemerge as the title of something or other in the future.
Just between you and me, George, aged six, lately has been looking a little bulked-out, more like a portly Victorian gentleman than a slinking operative. Though none of it is fat: he’s just a big, muscly cat.
We will rebuild him, bigger and bulkier than before…
Perhaps it’s this worry, that he may be becoming a bit too substantial to continue as ICOM has prompted the development of his new skill. I await further developments with interest.
Meanwhile, as though to torment George, Charlie (the same age as George, give or take a few minutes) seems to be taking the opposite route to maturity: he’s looking lean and hungry.
Young Charlie has a lean and hungry look…
If you look closely and from a slightly different angle you can see where—more than five months later—the fur has not yet quite grown back over his war wounds.
The cold shoulder
Mostly it doesn’t bother him—and mostly I no longer notice—but when it’s especially cold he tends to go out a bit less than he did. No doubt this is partly reaching maturity and the consequent need to sleep 85% of the time like many obligate predators but perhaps he also feels the cold in that shoulder. And perhaps we’ll never know…
On Monday—a cold night!—I popped into Phinney Books for forty minutes to sign stock and pre-orders, and personalise copies of She Is Here for anyone who showed up.
It had been a hard day for me,1 which meant I was tired and a bit crumpled when we first got there. And damn it was cold—if I hadn’t had to be there I wouldn’t have been, so I wasn’t expecting much in terms of attendance.
Phinney Books display. Photo by Jennifer Durham—all photos byJennifer Durham.
starting out cold, and signing pre-orders
But! A couple of dozen people did (hardy souls!), and a fair few of those came with me next door to the pub. We ate, we laughed, we chatted, we drank a few pints. And I got progressively happier and more relaxed.
The food was particularly tasty that night—
—and the Guinness is always great! As you can probably tell, I drank…a few
Lovely to see friends like Neal for the first time this year
This made the next day much easier to face,2 so thank you to every single friend, reader, and soon-to-be-friend who showed up. And to Tom of Phinney Books for making it as seamless as possible.
The first official event for She Is Here will be when we come back from the UK: Third Place Books in Ravenna, on Tuesday, 17 February. I’ll talk about the book, and read, and then Kelley will ask me questions and then you get to ask me questions. (Meanwhile, here’s a question for you: if you’re planning to be in Ravenna, what are you most interested in—what would you like me to talk about and what would you like to read: essay, poem, a whole short story, a chunk of the new novella? I haven’t had time to think about this yet, so here’s your chance to get what you want.)
But that’s not for two and a half weeks. For now, I declare She Is Here well and truly launched! May the muse bless all who sail in her!
Insert long, complicated story of visiting two different hospital labs, being told they couldn’t do the tests as ordered, racing to internist’s office to get other orders written, getting back to the lab to find it closed…and knowing I’d have to do it all again the next day, only this time with the added fun of the prize of success being having eight tubes of blood sucked out, woo hoo! ↩︎
It went exactly as expected, sigh, and now I have an enormous bruise on my arm for the trip to the UK. And when I got home I had time for a cup of tea and then I had a virtual book event for the Out In Tech reading group, who were reading Ammonite. But they were lovely people, so it was a pleasure. ↩︎
They arrived last night just as Kelley and I settled down by the fire with a bottle of wine. So, yay! She Is Here is here. She is real! The book exists. Go forth and buy (well, okay, preorder) a bazillion copies.
I’m intensely curious about how this wee creative commonplace book will be received. I have to say, from my admittedly influenced perspective, not to mention author bias, it’s a fine-looking and perfectly-formed specimen with a lovely feel to cover…
I have a new book coming VERY SOON. I, of course, want you to read it. I’m also trying to find time to prep the events—y’know, what bit/s to read, how to talk about the book—before those events actually begin. Which means I’ve been working out how to talk about the book.
I thought you might like to see what I came up with.
Dear Reader,
Novelists learn very early in their careers to summarise every new book with a pithy phrase. (My first novel Ammonite: “Change or die.”) But today, less than a month before the publication of She Is Here, I am still struggling to define it. Perhaps that’s because it’s not a novel—nor all fiction, nor even prose. Not even text. She Is Here is a selection of various published and unpublished creations spanning my career from before the publication of that first novel through to today. The fiction ranges from very short, to very early, to a novella about the magic of music published here for the first time. The poems were written to express emotion in private—grief, refusing ableism, dangerous lust, and the despair of degenerative illness. None are previously published—in fact, this marks the first publication of any of my poems anywhere. Similarly, I made the art purely for its own sake—in this case, images (very) loosely inspired by the illuminations of Early Medieval gospels. The non-fiction ranges from manifesto to Op-Ed to epistolary criticism to musings on etymology and the double-edged tool that is branding. Different facets from different eras of my creative life. That long-ago tagline, “Change or die,” was perfect for Ammonite. More than 30 years later I find it has become the bedrock principle of my life. Writers are often advised to write what we know. I believe, rather, that we write from our deepest self, from who we are. If we want our work to change and grow, we must, too. Life is change—constant discovery. The last words of “Glimmer,” the shortest fiction in the book, are “She is here. She has arrived.” The narrator has made a galaxy-spanning journey through time and space, past reality—astonishing, impossible—a miraculous achievement. But the achievement, the arrival, isn’t the point; the rest of her life is about to begin. Because it’s always about to begin. She Is Here, then, is a snapshot of a moment in time, containing, as do all of us, bits of the past, present and future. A kind of creative Commonplace Book. She is here. I am here. But where, exactly, is that? I have no idea; that’s the point! The joy lies in continuing to find out…
If you like the sound of that, perhaps you’d like to join me for one of those events in Seattle or Edmonds or virtually, before or during publication. I’m curious about what aspect of the book you’d like to know more about—so if you have an opinion, comment, or question, just drop it here.
Meanwhile, feel free to pre-order the book. Or put a hold on it at your library. It’s all good.
Image description: Photo, taken on a bright spring day with an old disposable camera, of a friendly neighbourhood street: cars parked in the shade of a tree growing on the sidewalk in front of Phinney Books and its next-door neighbour, the 74th Street Alehouse.
My new book She Is Here is officially for sale on 10 February—but I’ll be in the UK seeing friends and family and doing a scary exciting Thing.
So for those who live in Seattle and like to support their local bookstore, and who might just want to get their book two weeks earlier than anybody else, I’ll be at Phinney Books on Monday, 26 January, starting around 4:30 pm, signing stock and personalising any pre-orders, then repairing to the pub next door for a well-earned pint. (I’ll sign any book of mine—whether an old tattered favourite you bring with you or one you buy right there.) This is a quiet pre-launch, as much for me as for readers. She Is Here was an unexpected book—a risky, strange book in some ways—and I want to mark the occasion among friends and fellow readers and new acquaintances before I go off to do the (also unexpected—very very VERY unexpected—and sort of amazing) Thing in London. And what better way to do that than a quiet, satisfied Guinness in your local pub? Feel free to join me there. Think about it: here in Seattle what better way is there to spend a cold dark and probably wet night but in warm and welcoming company with good food, fine ale (and/or cocktails or coffee or wine) and a new book to take home? Also, maybe—just maybe, if I drink enough beer—I’ll tell you what this whole Thing is about…
Seriously. I would love to see you there. As Kelley and I have watched so much in this country and the world go to hell the last year, we have renewed our commitment to life, not just existence in the face of stress and overwhelm; to seeing people and being social—friends, neighbours, colleagues, readers; lots of people. We all need each other. It’s comforting to spend time with like-minded folk. And life is now.
I’ll be back from the UK on the 12th February, so there will also be opportunities for people to come chat at other events in Seattle (Third Place Ravenna), online (City Lights, in conversation with Nisi Shawl), and Edmonds (Edmonds Library). Do check my Events Page for details and updates.
So. If you want to say Hi and get a signed and/or personalised copy of She Is Here, or a matching set of Aud books, or any of my other books (Slow River, Ammonite, Hild, Menewood, Spear, With Her Body, and So Lucky1)—either drop by that afternoon/early evening to get them signed in person or call in/email your order now and have it mailed to you first thing the morning of Tuesday, 27th January.
Also, I was tickled to see a squib in Autostraddle the other day: “Between new Jeanette Winterson and new Nicola Griffith, we’re getting fresh work from some of the greats in the queer literary canon this month! This new book contains essays, poems, art, and stories. Griffith can indeed do it all.” Chortle.
Ha! My new name: Nicola A-Great-of-the-Queer-Literary-Canon Griffith. Oh, I soooo deserve that pint!
Check the Phinney Books page for what’s available—it changes from time to time. Some of my books are heading for reissues later this year and consequently are becoming harder to find in some places. But if they’re available, Tom will find them for you. ↩︎
In the first issue of 2026, Clarkesworld has “Extraordinary Things: A Conversation with Nicola Griffith” by Arley Sorg. It begins with an extensive introduction by Arley—hitting highlights of my life from six months old to being named the 41st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. The whole thing is, well, it’s not short—but hopefully it chunters right along…
Just in time for holiday book sales, the New York Times had a thing on the Aud books (“This cool, beautiful, knife-sharp trilogy … filled with unforgettable scenes”) as did the Wall Street Journal (“a pioneering trilogy of hard-hitting thrillers”). So I had the pleasure of seeing both The Blue Place and then, a couple of days later, Stay, briefly sport one of those little red Bestseller stripes on Amazon.
ScreenshotScreenshot
I’m so pleased to see Aud finally starting to reach the readers she deserves. Life is good.
New Year’s Eve. I’d planned to do a roundup of big moments of 2025 but when I woke up this morning the world was still and silent and shrouded in mist, and on both decks a few indomitable flowers are still blooming, still getting ready to bloom, still offering their nectar to their winged neighbours, still full of hope for better weather to come.
So I decided I wouldn’t look back with this post, only forward—like this undefeated geranium I photographed this morning on the kitchen deck (and, damn, it was cold out there!).
Ready, just in case
There were several flowers still blooming, though in some cases (the begonia) only just even though others (especially our Hot Lips cultivar of salvia) seemed quite quite determined to ignore the It’s-the-end-of-the-year-stupid messages surrounding them on all sides and just go right ahead and live their best lives in their own way for however long they may still have.
Brave begonia
Flamboyant fuchsia
Service-oriented salvia
Happy Hot Lips
And so, Dear Reader, that’s what I wish for you for 2026: be brave, be bold, be beautiful; bloom the best you know how, in whatever way suits you, and in the time of your own choosing.
May 2026 be kind to us all, and may we all be kind to each other.
Like last year, the number of people who came to read something on this site was higher than the average for the last eleven years—but down 0.5% from last year’s record high. Those numbers, of course, come nowhere near close to the numbers I used to get at Ask Nicola in the heyday of blogging, but given the advent and then rise of social media, these numbers feel pretty good.
I posted more often—120 posts, including the end-of-year roundup coming tomorrow—though a large number were brief and informational: notices of events and appearances, links to interviews, con reports, and so on.
Image description: Map of the world showing density of visitors by country. The USA is coloured dark blue, the UK a mid-blue, and most of the rest of the world a pale blue—with some countries (mainly in central Africa and the far north) showing blank.
As you can see, people come from a lot of countries. The Top 3 countries from where my readers log on haven’t changed at all from last year, but the rest played musical chairs, with South Korea dropping off the Top 10 list and being replaced by Sweden.
US
UK
Canada
Germany
Australia
Netherlands
Ireland
France
Sweden
India
How you got here
Referrers
As usual the vast majority of you got here via web search. I was delighted to see how much impact Bluesky is having—it’s currently my favourite social media hangout—and for the first time Threads makes the list. Wikipedia continues to be a useful source—I did clean up the main NG entry a little, though there are still quite a few errors and omissions, but I just don’t have time for the individual books pages. If anyone out there is looking for a nifty project, well, there you go. (The critical response part of the main page is just terrible—really fucking sad—some of my books don’t even have pages, and the ones that do have got a lot wrong.)
search engines
Facebook
Bluesky
LinkedIn
WordPress
Threads
Wikipedia
Browsers
Again, Chrome was the most popular. In fact, this list hasn’t changed at all from last year.
Chrome
Safari
Other
Firefox
Edge
Search terms, screen sizes, and operating systems
The search terms themselves were very boring: my name and its variants, mainly, with some book titles or characters, with a few disability-related terms and one or two Old English words. Overall though, there were disappointingly few amusements to be found, unlike, say, 2010 on Ask Nicola.
The screen sizes you used to get here stayed in the same order but the percentage changes were significant—last year, mobile was over 60% but this year desktop was close to half:
Mobile—49%
Desktop—48%
Tablet—3%
The OS order stayed the same: iOS beating out Android by a wide margin, Windows only just edging out Mac, Linux trailing and iPad falling back into the rest of the also-rans.
iPhone
Windows
Mac
Android
Linux
What you liked when you got here
This year once again I didn’t talk much about the cats (except Charlie’s run-in with a bird of prey and his resulting sartorial choices)—there was too much other stuff going on. I did post photos of them a fair bit on social media. I radically reduced the posts about H5N1 because there was little that was truly new to report.
Top 15 New Post and Pages
Usually here I only talk about Posts, but this time I want to include new Pages.* In 2025, more posts than usual were either virally (literally about viruses✤) or politically orientated, while the rest were mostly writing-related, whether about specific books or personal triumphs related to books. For the first time since we got them, none of the top results were about our cats, Charlie and George:
The Top 15 most-visited posts this year were a bit different—fewer than a quarter (26.6%) were new,* and of the perennial favourites, two bangers of the past—Lame is So Gay, Huge New: MS is a Metabolic Disorder—have slid so far down the rankings they’ve almost vanished, whereas it’s clear we have a new heavyweight champion, The Paradox of Tolerance. Given the current administration and Congress, this does not surprise me:
But of course posts aren’t the only landing sites. People seem to use several of my Pages quite a bit, so this year I’ll break out the Top 10 Pages in a separate category. You’ll be shocked—shocked!—to learn that these are mostly about books or about me. (And I was tickled to find my PhD thesis also got some love.) In the interests of space, I lumped together those who arrived via ‘Nicola Griffith’ and ‘Bio’ and ‘About’ into one (because they all feed into the same page), and left out the general Books page in favour of specific book pages. I admit to being a bit wistful that no matter how I slice and dice the numbers, Slow River doesn’t get much traffic. (However! All is not lost! I’l have some news on the front soon.)
Headline: the same as last year—this blog is not going anywhere; I’m here to stay.
For several years, traffic to my posts dropped steadily—and, for a few years, precipitously. Most obviously, though: readers stopped leaving comments. If I was not also on various social media platforms I might have felt as though I were shouting into the void. But what was (and is) happening was that people were talking about the posts, just not here. They left brief notes on Bluesky, and Mastodon, and Facebook, and—to a much lesser extent—Instagram. But five years ago, early in the pandemic, the number of visitors to this site stabilised, and then 3 years ago started going up. This year the numbers are almost as high as last year—which was a record, the best ever for this WordPress iteration of my site, which has now been up 11 years. (Hmmm. Probably time for a redesign. There are just always so many other things to do…) The number of comments has also stabilised—as I type this I have almost exactly the same number as last year, which means after this post and the next go up, I will have more than last year, though—like the visitor numbers—they’re just a fraction of what they were before social media.
(FYI, this year I sadly neglected my research website, Gemæcce. I posted there only four times this year, yet 2025 had the second highest number of visitors since the WordPress site began.)
My guess is that this is a reflection of what’s been happening with social media: a continuing fragmentation and loss of centre, plus the ever-increasing thicket of trolls and bot-based lifeforms, not to mention the barbed bramble of adverts blocking the path to conversation. Blogs like this, with no advertising, can be a haven of calm.
However, it’s also a reflection of the different ways I’m using different platforms. Specifically, when in the past I might have posted about a review or a particularly nifty photo of Charlie or George, now I’ll post those on Instagram (which automagically shares with Facebook). When I get momentarily incensed about some political buffoonery, I tend to post on Bluesky And then, of course, there’s Patreon.
On Patreon I wrote over 60 posts, and some were very long—such as the post about What I’m working on, and the one about a seventh-century battle. Some would have been perfect for this blog (or my research blog) but as I’m running Patreon to bring in the money to pay for independent publicists in an on-going effort to break down the walls surrounding my various literary gardens (Aud in one, Hild in another, SFF in yet another, and disability fiction in yet another other) that is a considered choice. I’ll just remind you that some of those posts are available to everyone, members or not; quite a few to members who join for free; and probably only about half are reserved for those who pay as little as $3 a month. And here’s the thing: it’s working! Those independent publicists along with the ones working for my publishers have scored some coups this year—including a… Well, I’ll be talking about that very soon! Stay tuned 😎.
I’m relatively content with the new equilibrium. I enjoy writing the posts and people seem to enjoy reading them. So I’m not going anywhere: this blog is here to stay. Xitter’s implosion has made no discernible difference to my traffic—I deleted my profile there nearly two years ago with no regrets—but is, rather, another demonstration of why we all, and creators in particular, need to own our own platforms. Even if I thought all those other social platforms really were being run as public utilities for the greater good (ha ha ha), I like being able to say things too long for Bluesky (currently my favourite) or Mastodon and not pretty enough for Instagram. This is the best place to do that. This site is my permanent archive; if there’s something you need to know about me, my fiction, my essays, events, disability, and so on, the odds are high that a simple search of this site will find it for you, right here. (If you read posts on a desktop, you’ll find the search box at the top of the right sidebar. If you’re reading on your phone, you’ll find it both in the top right, opposite the menu bar, and at the end of every post.)
Will I start a newsletter (or post on Medium or Substack)? No. For the simple reason that this blog functions as a newsletter. All you have to do is subscribe (in desktop view, just look at the top of the right hand sidebar; in mobile platforms, scroll right to the end of an individual post), and every new post will be delivered directly to your mailbox the minute it’s published. No muss, no fuss—just like any other newsletter, except that a) you don’t have to pay, you will never have to pay, b) I’ll never share your data with anyone for any reason, c) there will be no adverts. Plus, on a blog you can talk back if you like, safe in the knowledge that I’m in full control of the comments. Speaking of which, I’ve set my posts to close comments after 28 days. If you come across an old post and really want to comment, just contact me via the Contact form (which where you’ll also find links to my literary, film and TV, legal, and speaking representatives) and we’ll figure it out.
Right now I have no particular plans for big changes here. I like this blog; I’ve been doing this or something like this for 30 years. I still enjoy it. So hopefully I’ll see you around.
Happy Christmas! Here’s the tree Kelley lovingly decorated this year, a 7-foot Noble Fire spangled with lights, tinsel, and many baubles old, new, homemade and loving gifts.
Every year Kelley decorates a tree. Every year I try to find a new way to blow it up. I don’t use so-called AI. Just old-fashioned augmented reality SFX apps that run on my phone. But as everyone else is using the machines to do this sort of thing for them, no one is updating apps. So in the end, it came down to our nemesis from Long Ago, Old Flamebreath, making very short work of the pretties. Very short work indeed.
May your holiday be warm and toasty. Just not that toasty.
Via Roisín Astell on X when it was still Twitter and I still used it (the original is from the early 14th-century Verdun bibliothèque municipale MS 107, f.8r).
As usual, things are busy here at Chez Nickel—mostly good busy, for a change. But rather than a long post about, well, something (that I’m sure would be deeply interesting and also surprising and witty and generally enviably marvellous), here’s an image of a medieval hedgehog, animated to suit the season.
Long term readers know that Hild (one of whose pet names is Little Prickle) has an affinity for hedgepigs. I’ve drawn them in several guises, including pencil sketches:
All the acorns are belong to me—but I’ll share with you
And a cartoon hedgepig being amazed and delighted by the night sky:
Starry eyed hedgepig
And that’s what I want for you, dear readers, in this folded-down for winter holiday season: all the parties and dancing you might wish for, an abundance of the treats you covet, and myriad marvellous moments of amazement and people you love to share it all with.
Nicola Griffith 
