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Claire Dean

@clairedean.bsky.social

260 followers 230 following 100 posts

Writer & maker. Short stories, zines & book arts. Also a conservator. Mostly to be found cleaning and repairing old manuscripts, maps & plans in an archive. #BSL sign name, bird 🐦‍⬛ 📍Lancashire, North of England

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 2d

A podcast has just been released of my story 'Feather Girls' read by MyAnna Buring: wordtheatre.org/weekly/

Weekly Stories · WORDTheatre

wordtheatre.org

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 10d

haha, thank you. Can't wait to read and explore the Ephemeral City! 😊

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 11d

The heart-shaped wood in the Lune Valley Gorge #CommuterGaze

A purple bracken covered hillside with a heart-shaped copse of trees (mostly green but some just starting to turn autumnal brown) and a blur of traintrack, river and trees in the foreground.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 12d

Glad to hear they're letting you WFH! This was me in one of the buildings I work in a fortnight ago 😂. When I retrained, I didn't realise saving old paper things was going to be so full of adventure!

Claire in hardhat getting rained on with plastic shrouding the shelves behind.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 12d

Very much this (although I don't get sent home, I have to rescue things from the leaky/crumbling bits).

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 13d

October commute

View from train window crossing the River Leven estuary in Morecambe Bay. Strata of sand, grey water, grey sky and a window full of raindrops.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 18d

Barrow looking beautiful on my dinnertime wander yesterday.

Red brick promenade, railings, bright blue sea in the Walney channel and house in the distance on Walney island under a blue sky with small white scudding clouds.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 25d

At my dayjob in an archive today, workmen started bringing me the retro rubbish they found in the loft, including a 1960s fag packet and a 1990s coke can. There was also a 1980s page 3 (not pictured 😂)

White and blue pack of 10 embassy regal (empty) and crumpled red coke can.

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · 29d

Drawing the seaweed pools on Hest Bank Wharf at today's #MorecambeBaySketchClub

Sketchbook with charcoal swirls held just above a pool full of sand, stones, broken shells and seaweed

Gutweed-covered stones rise from a pool with grey sea and sky above.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 12

Hope the move goes well! I don't know what to do with myself today!!

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 12

Moved my eldest for university yesterday. He's still in the north but right across at the other side 😭

Image of roadworks, no entry sign, the silver humps of the Sage Gateshead building, Newcastle in the distance, all under a stormy sky with rainbow.

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 12

Beautiful! X

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 10

Hello, you're very welcome to use my anti-AI bookplate any time if useful bsky.app/profile/clai... (at some point I'll get round to drawing and printing more bookplates against AI!)

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Feb 25

Grateful to my union @societyofauthors.bsky.social for fighting the UK government's plans to gift the work of writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers and more to AI companies (on top of the work they've already stolen) #MadeByHumans #PayTheCreator #BookplatesAgainstAI

A bookplate that shows a ramshackle techbot stealing stories from books to mash them up and churn out uniform AI story cubes. Text says 'This book belongs to'. Handmade by Claire Dean.

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 9

Thanks, Robert!

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 9

This is a bit exciting :) Tickets available here: www.brasseriezedel.com/events/wordt...

MyAnna Buring reads 'Feather Girls' by Claire Dean. Photos of MyAnna and Claire. Seasons of Yearning. Best British Short Stories. 20th September 2pm at The Crazy Coqs. Word Theatre UK.

Seasons of Yearning. Word Theatre UK. Headshots of five actors and five writers. Full event details via link in post

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Sep 6

Sometimes my dayjob brings niche excitements, like how ridiculously happy I was to get a reduction in rat wee staining with minimal moisture migration using low cost, cut-to-size gellan gum gel yesterday.

1920s landscape design plan on thin paper showing a pencil, ink and watercolour gate and walls with two large brown stains and nibble marks along the bottom edge

The same plan with the brown stains much reduced.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Aug 27

Thrilled that an old story of mine 'Feather Girls' is being performed at this event!

WORDTheatre @wordtheatre.bsky.social · Aug 20

Join us for Seasons of Yearning, the next installment in our Best British Short Stories Series, at The Crazy Coqs on Saturday, September 20th at 2pm.

Tickets & more information in our bio!

Reposted by Claire Dean

Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · Aug 11

Pls stop what you are doing and read this entire report on Israel's murder of journalist Anas al-Sharif and five colleagues in Gaza City.

"He characterized Israel’s threats as 'Silence or Death,' and he vowed not to be silent."

It ends with his final message. www.dropsitenews.com/p/anas-al-sh...

The Israeli Assassination of Journalist Anas al-Sharif and Five Colleagues in Gaza City

“We understand these are our last days.”

www.dropsitenews.com

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Aug 25

My wonderful parents-in-law. Married 60 years ago in Yorkshire ❤️

A wedding photograph outside a church. A black Jamaican family and white Yorkshire family united and happily smiling at the camera.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Aug 17

Sketched the lovely cool, still-damp seaweed today at #MorecambeBaySketchClub

A sketchbook open on a continuous line drawing in black ink of curtains of seaweed on the rocks above the mud. The sea is in the far distance with the hills of the Furness peninsular behind.

Long strands of brown seaweed hanging down over the rocks and pooling on the mud.

Reposted by Claire Dean

Nightjar Press @nightjarpress.bsky.social · Aug 15

We’re delighted that @deadinkbookshop.bsky.social is now stocking Nightjars. Little interview about it here deadinkbookshop.com/blogs/requir...

Nightjar Press: An Interview with Nicholas Royle

We’ve just started stocking short story chapbooks from Nightjar Press. If you, like us, are fans of the gothic, the weird, the surreal, and the supernatural, we recommend you check them out here in th...

deadinkbookshop.com

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Aug 12

Early morning cloud train to Carlisle

View from train window: the green hills of the Lune Valley Gorge with a layer of white cloud part way up, running alongside the train track. The sun shines through the haze in a blue sky.

Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Aug 9

According to a brilliant book I'm reading (The Lichen Museum by A.Laurie Palmer) these little wonders make up about 8% of the biomass of the world. Growing quietly everywhere and nearly always unnoticed.

A stone wall with three whitish crustose lichens growing on it. Ivy climbing above and leafy trees in the background.

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Reposted by Claire Dean

Prof. Liz Oakley-Brown @earlymodlancs.bsky.social · Jul 30

- 400 jobs to go at Lancaster University

- 1 in 4 people will be made redundant

But where's the financial evidence for this extreme action?

Please read 👇

Sign the petition 👇

chng.it/7F52bThYqn

Sign the Petition

Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable

chng.it

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Claire Dean @clairedean.bsky.social · Jul 31

Beach architecture by honeycomb worms

A reef constructed of sand and broken-shell tunnels extended out from barnacle-covered rocks over a pool of seawater