aprilroach
✍🏾 Spec-fic writer, journalist
📚 Rep: Sara Langham, DHA Books
⭐ Board member, The Lit Platform
⭐ Runner up Commonword Fiction Prize 2018
- Love the subtle humour in Martha Wells' Murderbot series. Murderbot's obsession with binge watching TV is just too relatable 😅 #booksky #amreading
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- I can definitely see the connection!
- Particularly loving this anthology of black horror because it's introducing me to so many new writers. Already adding books from Erin E. Adams, Rebecca Roanhorse and Lesley Nneka Arimah to my TBR. #Booksky #amreading
- Still thinking about that transcendental blues scene in #Sinners. It made me feel so happy because a genre I LOVE - horror/speculative fiction/afrofuturism - was executed so fantastically. But sad because I fear that the hype will be fleeting or that it won't cross over to other media. 1/
- I'd love to walk into a bookshop and see works by Rivers Solomon, Tananarive Due and Nnedi Okorafor STOCKED on the shelves. I'd love to see shows like Lovecraft Country not get cancelled after one season. More please! 2/2
- The rest of my Jamaica reads: A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay and Trisha Tobias' Honeysuckle and Bone. I fell in love with the grumpy Miss Pauline and enjoyed discovering the mystery behind her moving stone house. 🇯🇲🇯🇲 #Booksky
- Image 1: The book "A House for Miss Pauline" by Diana McCaulay held up to the camera, with the Little Ochie seafront in the background. Image 2: The book "Honeysuckle and Bone" by Trisha Tobias held up to the camera with the waterfalls of Breadnut Valley Estate, Jamaica, in the background.
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- My apologies!
- New favourite thing: When authors share the music they listened to while writing their novel. Still have Fiasco's Drogas Wave album on repeat after P. Djeli Clark mentioned it at the end of Ring Shout, and now I'm enjoying reggae tunes that inspired Alex Wheatle's Cane Warriors ☺️🎶🎵#booksky
- Just watched #Sinners movie and it's hard to put into words how good this film is. That blues scene, the music, the characters, the singing... 10/10! As an afrofuturism fan, it's so exciting and encouraging to see this kind of storytelling win. More please!
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- I had the exact same feeling when I left the cinema, I could easily watch it again. There's a lot to take in!
- There are so many caves in Jamaica, during our trip we visited the Green Grotto Caves which date way back to the 17th century, used by the Arawak Indians (Tainos), the Spanish when they hid from the British and smugglers running arms to Cuba. We spotted snakes and sleeping "rat bats" 🦇 #travelsky
- Lately I've been reading alot about the Maroons, former slaves who escaped plantations to form their own communities. This week I visited Maroon village Accompong town in Jamaica. Descendants of the Maroons welcomed us into their community and shared the history of their people.
- Reading Alex Wheatle's Cane Warriors on the beach in Jamaica, looking out at the blue waters and learning of the many sacrifices the freedom fighters made is such an experience. It's an important, sometimes harrowing read, but one that ends with hope. #Booksky
- Can you guess why this is called the "dead and wake" or "shame" plant? 🇯🇲🇯🇲 #travelsky
- Finally in Jamaica when mangoes are in season! Deep in cockpit country, we saw it all from ackee trees, plaintain trees, mango and breadfruit trees and sugar cane. 🥭🌴🌴
- What makes Black Mirror such uncomfortable viewing is that the concepts are so close to our own reality. I knew that in Common People, ads and exclusive subscriptions would be a thing before I saw it happen, it's just too real, almost like we're too aware of how tech can be used to exploit 😬
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- It has!
- Loving the emergence of this horror / body-horror trend. For me it all started with Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland which I can't recommend enough! #booksky www.thebookseller.com/news/sporror...
- Finally watched Anora and it really is good. Felt almost like 3 movies in one, loved the comedy switch in the middle and then that ending that took the story to a much deeper place.
- It's been a while since I enjoyed a Shakespeare adaptation this much. Much Ado About Nothing was funny and entertaining, great chemistry and banter between Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell. I'd watch it again!
- Love loved the All About Love exhibition of Mikalene Thomas' works at Southbank Centre's Hayward Gallery 💕
- How many books did I buy during my five day trip to New York? A lot! Or not enough depending on which way you look at it... Have you read any of these books? #Booksky
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- Same! It's a great souvenir
- My New York read was Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle. A bit slow going in places but I loved reading about Harlem in the 1960's – Striver's Row and Riverside and then visiting these streets on a walking tour and seeing how different it is today. #travelsky
- The skyline in New York is something else 😍 #travelsky
- 18 miles of books at NYC's the Strand Bookstore! I think I could've spent all day in there... #Booksky
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- It's so cool!
- So great to see those original manuscript pages of James Baldwin's writing at the New York Public Library exhibit. Particulary this scene from Giovanni's Room which his editor told him to cut and Baldwin said no! #Booksky
- Throwback to seeing the incredible Nao perform my new favourite song of hers in Brixton last week 💃🏾🥰
- A great Paris-based read for a short weekend trip to Paris. Giovanni's Room was such a beautiful, sad read, James Baldwin writes about love in such a painful, tender way. I can't wait to read more of his books. #Booksky
- I got to meet the one and only Nnedi Okorafor yesterday! So many great insights into her writing process, including the fact that she pantsed her way through a first draft of Death of the Author, which blows my mind! #Booksky
- I love how so many people are discovering the prophetic Parable of the Sower books by Octavia Butler - an absolute must read for so many reasons. I'd also recommend Urusula K. Le Guin's iconic short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. Are you one of the ones who stays or walks away? #booksky
- My husband knows me well, I don't need flowers for Valentine's Day, I need scifi Africanfuturist novels about superhumans. 🥰💕 #Booksky #valentinesday
- DeepSeek sent investors in jitters in late January, raising questions about the shape of demand for data centers. I spoke to experts who said cheaper models could become an accelerant, adding fuel to the fire for a sector that investors were already betting would continue to boom. 👇🏾
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- I haven't read it myself, but I've heard The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North has similar vibes.
- When you start reading a new book and the writing is just so good it immediately humbles you and has you questioning everything you've ever written/read... #booksky
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- Model Home by Rivers Solomon, a literary horror novel. I'm only a couple pages in but the writing is very visceral and engaging!
- A nice reminder on why it's so special and magical to write for children:
- Okorafor's Death of the Author was just as good as I'd hoped it be. I just wish I'd buddy read this one though because I need to discuss THAT ending with someone!! It left my mind reeling... #Booksky #metafiction
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- The Photograph is great, Really Love is pretty sweet too
- Some great coverage on DeepSeek from CNBC's @ryanbrownecnbc.bsky.social looking at how the tech behind the Chinese startup and advances toward commoditization is paving the way for a shift to the era of next-generation AI agents. 👇🏾👇🏾
- Also a look at what industry experts have to say about how DeepSeek compares to OpenAI, creator of viral chatbot ChatGPT which sparked the AI revolution.
- Bishop asks Trump to show mercy to LGBT people and migrants
- Finally got my hands on Nnedi Okorafor's new novel Death of the Author. This book has been on a little journey from the US to the Netherlands and finally to London. Definitely my most anticipated read for 2025, can't wait to start it! #Booksky #amreading
- Also I love how the inside cover of the book pays homage to the book within a book element of the novel. Two books in one 📚📚
- The wealth of the world’s richest people is accelerating at a faster pace than previously predicted. @oxfamamerica.bsky.social expects to see five trillionaires within a decade. The richest 1% of people own nearly 45% of all wealth, while 44% of humanity are living below the poverty line.
- One of the perks of having a super star book influencer as your sister is the free books! Thanks @oliviascatastrophe.bsky.social 😍 #Booksky
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- Of course you are ✨✨
