W. J. Davies
@wjdavies.bsky.social
Writer. Essays, fiction and reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, Slightly Foxed, Exacting Clam, Review 31, Poetry Birmingham, minor literature[s]. Author of Beckett and the Second World War (Bloomsbury) https://linktr.ee/wjdavies
On release day, a first review of "Stirrings Still" from Tyran Grillo: ecmreviews.com/2026/09/03/s...
Samuel Beckett: Stirrings Still (ECM New Series 2801)
Samuel BeckettTrevor BačaStirrings Still Paul Griffiths narratorJACK QuartetChristopher Otto violinAustin Wulliman violinJohn Pickford Richards violaJay Campbell violoncell…
ecmreviews.com
My short story, 'By Water', is published in the autumn issue of Exacting Clam. Thank you to the editors, particularly for making it free to read online. Do subscribe, not least so you can more reliably mark the passing of the seasons. @exactingclam.bsky.social www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-22...
By Water | Exacting Clam
exactingclam.com
My short story, 'By Water', is published in the autumn issue of Exacting Clam. Thank you to the editors, particularly for making it free to read online. Do subscribe, not least so you can more reliably mark the passing of the seasons. @exactingclam.bsky.social www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-22...
By Water | Exacting Clam
exactingclam.com
For this week's TLS, I reviewed Andrew Gallix's debut novel, Loren Ipsum: www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
‘I was the first book blogger’
Andrew Gallix’s debut novel, Loren Ipsum, is all-consuming. It has devoured modernism, postmodernism, punk and Paris, and regurgitated it all in a
the-tls.com
I reviewed Guillermo Stitch's The Coast of Everything for 3:AM Magazine. Free to read here: www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-coas...
The Coast of Everything – 3:AM Magazine
‘You must choose’, Samuel Beckett wrote in his novel Molloy, ‘between the things not worth mentioning and those even less so. For if you set out to mention everything you would never be done.’ For Bec...
3ammagazine.com
For this week's TLS, I reviewed Andrew Gallix's debut novel, Loren Ipsum: www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...
‘I was the first book blogger’
Andrew Gallix’s debut novel, Loren Ipsum, is all-consuming. It has devoured modernism, postmodernism, punk and Paris, and regurgitated it all in a
the-tls.com
I reviewed Guillermo Stitch's The Coast of Everything for 3:AM Magazine. Free to read here: www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-coas...
The Coast of Everything – 3:AM Magazine
‘You must choose’, Samuel Beckett wrote in his novel Molloy, ‘between the things not worth mentioning and those even less so. For if you set out to mention everything you would never be done.’ For Bec...
3ammagazine.com
Non-fic review this time. Joe Luc Barnes' Farewell to Russia follows his travels through the fifteen countries that used to make up the Soviet Union. Boozy, funny and full of insight into places many of us know too little about. Read for free at @review31.bsky.social review31.co.uk/article/view...
An Old Master Too Large to Ignore
Review 31 is an online literary review.
review31.co.uk
Many thanks to @davidcollard.bsky.social for hosting this event last night, and this after traipsing around London and Dublin with me to launch the book there. By the end of the week I felt we were a couple of carnies. Very enjoyable. Must dry out. #booksky
For this week's TLS, I wrote about Malc's Boy, Shaun Wilson's debut and the first publication from Conduit Books. www.the-tls.com/literature/f...
A ‘necessary’ novel of violent masculinity
Shaun Wilson’s debut novel, Malc’s Boy, is an arresting work of autofiction concerning a father-son relationship amid a culture of male violence in
the-tls.com
Monthly Dispatch #31 — ft. Daniel Gianfranceschi, Sharon Zhang, Steinar Løding @zissenberg.bsky.social @wjdavies.bsky.social David Vichnar @nameofauthor.bsky.social @gpayares.bsky.social Antonio Moresco, Jennifer K. Dick & more... OUT NOW minorlits.substack.com/p/monthly-di...
Monthly Dispatch #31 — January 2026
A letter from the editor[s]
minorlits.substack.com
last week @ minor lits... — @wjdavies.bsky.social on masculinity minorliteratures.com/2026/01/20/f... — an extract from @nameofauthor.bsky.social @incastellated.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2026/01/21/a... — Daniel Gianfranceschi relinquishing control minorliteratures.com/2026/01/22/r...
Relinquish Control, To All We Cannot Attain — Daniel Gianfranceschi
T was I and not u and not me neither u T was masterfully planned, ahead, wif a head, not mine neither urs neither their and not I but T was planned and planned T was, whether this life or not, this…
minorliteratures.com
I spent some time with last year's Nightjar Press chapbooks and ended up writing about creepy birds and the contemporary gothic. Review 31 kindly took it on. Free to read here: review31.co.uk/essay/view/1... @review31.bsky.social @nightjarpress.bsky.social
Contemporary Gothic
Review 31 is an online literary review.
review31.co.uk
I spent some time with last year's Nightjar Press chapbooks and ended up writing about creepy birds and the contemporary gothic. Review 31 kindly took it on. Free to read here: review31.co.uk/essay/view/1... @review31.bsky.social @nightjarpress.bsky.social
Contemporary Gothic
Review 31 is an online literary review.
review31.co.uk
Fake Men Having Fake Fights, my article on wrestling, manliness and storytelling, is out now with @minorliteratures.bsky.social
minor literature[s]@minorliteratures.bsky.social · 8mo ago"In 1998, I watched Mark Calaway hurl Mick Foley from the roof of a 16-foot-high cage ..." Fake Men Having Fake Fights: On Wrestle-Lit and Masculinity — @wjdavies.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2026/01/20/f...
Fake Men Having Fake Fights, my article on wrestling, manliness and storytelling, is out now with @minorliteratures.bsky.social
minor literature[s]@minorliteratures.bsky.social · 8mo ago"In 1998, I watched Mark Calaway hurl Mick Foley from the roof of a 16-foot-high cage ..." Fake Men Having Fake Fights: On Wrestle-Lit and Masculinity — @wjdavies.bsky.social minorliteratures.com/2026/01/20/f...
If you see this please share (i.e. repost, not just like)! The Barbellion Prize is a unique award for writers with disabilities. We need to raise £20k to secure its future, so please make a donation, no matter how large, no matter how small, here: barbellionprize.org/donate/ Thank you!
donate | The Barbellion Prize
barbellionprize.org
1/2 The Guardian's list of forthcoming 2026 fictions (www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...) overlooks these indie highlights (alphabetically, by title): Anti-social Behaviour by Aea Varfis-van Warmelo As If by Isabel Waidner The Coast of Everything by Guillermo Stitch
Books to look out for in 2026 – fiction
Maggie O’Farrell, Yann Martel and Julian Barnes are among the authors publishing new novels this year
theguardian.com
My pick for @review31.bsky.social's Books of the Year 2025 is Alex Pheby's Waterblack, the third volume in the Cities of the Weft trilogy. Superb, strange fantasy that has reinvigorated the genre. @alexpheby.bsky.social @galleybeggars.bsky.social review31.co.uk/essay/view/1...
Review 31's Books of the Year 2025
Review 31 is an online literary review.
review31.co.uk
" . . . there’s always been Dada—in every generation." W. J. Davies talks to Catherine Schelbert, translator of Hugo Ball’s Flametti, on the occasion of a new radio play edition of the novel. https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-19-winter-2025/dandies-at-least-among-themselves/
'Dali and the Lobster' Fiction by the inimitable David Rose in our DADA issue. Subscribe for full access. https://www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-19-winter-2025/dali-and-the-lobster/
Bluemoose 2025. Two books listed for major prizes. Christ on a Bike by @orlaowenwriting.bsky.social Dublin Lit Award The Accidental Immigrants by @jomcmillan.bsky.social OrwellPrize 6 part BBC Two TV Series: Leonard and Hungry Paul by @ronanhession.bsky.social From Hebden Bridge with love.
Congratulations to @cdrose.bsky.social. We Live Here Now is one of the funniest and most inventive novels I've read in a long time. Well deserved!
Goldsmiths Prize@goldsmithsprize.bsky.social · 10mo agoWe are delighted to announce that the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2025 is C.D. Rose's We Live Here Now! 🎉🎉 Congratulations Chris! 👏👏
Just in time for Christmas, Exacting Clam comes along with its Dada special issue. I've an interview with translator Catherine Schelbert, @br0phy.bsky.social reviews a new Ashbery bio, and C J Patrick has some exquisite poems on show, plus more besides. www.exactingclam.com/issues/no-19...
No. 19 — Winter 2025 | Exacting Clam
The Discerning Mollusk’s Guide to Arts and Ideas: THE DADA ISSUE. Contributions by Liza Achilles, Terena Elizabeth Bell, Greg Bem, Eric Bies, Christopher Boucher, Ian Boulton, James Brophy, Niamh Mac ...
exactingclam.com
Thanks to @slightlyfoxed.bsky.social for including my piece on Peter Ross's Steeple Chasing in the upcoming winter Foxed Quarterly. foxedquarterly.com/shop/slightl...
Slightly Foxed Issue 88
In this issue: Laurie Graham relishes a story of mushrooms and murder • Sam Leith pays homage to The Once and Future King . . .
foxedquarterly.com
My interview with Peter Robinson about his new Selected Poems, Return to Sendai, is available to read for free with The High Window: thehighwindowpress.com/2025/09/26/p...
Peter Robinson: Return to Sendai
***** Peter Robinson is currently Professor English and American Literature at the University of Reading, and poetry editor for Two Rivers Press and The Fortnightly Review. The author of many books…
thehighwindowpress.com
Sound advice from the cleric Sydney Smith, courtesy of Stephen Bayley in this quarter’s Slightly Foxed @slightlyfoxed.bsky.social.
Stuff these, Dirk Bogarde’s spoken word album Lyrics for Lovers is on Spotify.
W. J. Davies@wjdavies.bsky.social · last yr.New records out today by CMAT, Blood Orange and The Beaches. Glorious.
New records out today by CMAT, Blood Orange and The Beaches. Glorious.
It's true! Julia Roberts will be narrating Leonard and Hungry Paul. She read the book when it came out and her agent got in touch to say she really liked it. But I never thought things would go this far. Delighted. www.bbc.com/mediacentre/...
Julia Roberts to narrate new BBC series Leonard and Hungry Paul
The feel-good series follows two board-gaming friends in their thirties who meander through leafy suburban life finding solace in their quiet routines
bbc.com