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“Reading... is a way of becoming the person you’re interested in being.”

Plus a farewell to a writer who first published in middle age

Author

Leonie Mercedes
October 17, 2025

Good morning, darlings. Here’s your three-part nudge for the day:

a prompt

Write on the following for 5–10 minutes:

Think on a setback you had this year. In what way was it the best thing that ever happened to you?

a thought

“Reading… is a way of becoming the person you’re interested in being.” – attributed to an unnamed writer in this obituary of Carmen Callil, founder of feminist publisher Virago

farewell

Maxine Clair, writer (1939–2025)

“It was a solid middle-class job [as chief medical technologist at a hospital], but it left her unfulfilled. That year, she used her income tax refund to take a long vacation in the Caribbean, where she dug deep into her own malaise in search of a new direction… ‘When I came back it was very clear: I was going to be a writer.’”

Thanks for coming, dear makers and shakers. See you tomorrow ☕