So Mayer
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suchmayer.bsky.social
So Mayer
@suchmayer.bsky.social
5.1K followers 2K following 6.1K posts
They/them. Overthinker. Reads things, writes things. BAD LANGUAGE out now with Peninsula Press 🐉 THE WORD FOR WORLD (co-ed) out now with @silver-press.bsky.social 🌳 Website & newsletter: somayer.net. Won't age-verify so no DMs.
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suchmayer.bsky.social
#GOTB (get out [for] the book)

BAD LANGUAGE launches coming up SOON! Come speak dragon to power...

London: Weds 12 Nov, 6.30 at @burleyfisher.bsky.social
Belfast: Tues 18 Nov, 6.15 at No Alibis
Bristol: Weds 26 Nov, 6 at @bookhaus.bsky.social

Deets👇🏻
www.somayer.net/2025/09/18/n...
A sign that says LAUNCH for BAD LANGUAGE in the gold-on-blue deli font of Zohran Mamdani's campaign comms.
November 9, 2025 at 4:43 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Wow the Guardian have finally found a bad use-case for AI, bc it conflicts with govt policy on building. Except it turns out the headline AI is not being used to prevent housebuilding, but a mosque conversion. This is a story about wealthy people monetising racism & Islamophobia.
The government's plan to use artificial intelligence to accelerate planning for new homes may be about to hit an unexpected roadblock: Al-powered nimbyism. A new service called Objector is offering "policy-backed objections in minutes" to people who are upset about planning applications near their homes. It uses generative AI to scan planning applications and check for grounds for objection, ranking these as "high" "medium" or "low" impact. It then automatically creates objection letters, Al-written speeches to deliver to the planning committees, and even Al-generated videos to "influence councillors". Kent residents Hannah and Paul George designed the system after estimating they spent hundreds of hours attempting to navigate the planning process when they opposed plans to convert a building near their home into a mosque. For £45-a-time, they are offering the tool to people who, like them, could not afford a specialist lawyer to avoid labyrinthine planning laws.
November 9, 2025 at 3:02 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
This one is by David Pearson & he is the GREATEST. Im considering getting a tattoo of my own book cover 😂 it's such an incredible honour to have his art wrapped around my words (I love the author portrait on the inner back flap as well). Extremely accurate.
A black pen and ink drawing of a pencil (hexagonal, sharpened) where you would expect an author photo above the bio in the back of a book.
November 5, 2025 at 1:18 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Nine years ago, I achieved my key childhood dream & met Baroness Benjamin. It was the day of the US 2016 elections & she told me "People are good, everything will work out." Today I am remembering that so much bc ofc she was right.

(Also txxx to my sister for saving this after I wiped my photos.)
A short white person with a dark bob and a toothy grin standing next to Baroness Benjamin, a Black woman with natural hair in a high pony, who is wearing a silver heart pendant and grinning.
November 5, 2025 at 12:42 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
With #AltText
Screenshot of a BBC News story posted on 4 Nov 2025, 10.53za headline reads "Train hero who saved passengers during attack named." There's a photo credited to LNER, showing a man with strong eyebrows & a trim beard & moustache combo smiling in front of some rippling water. The photo caption reads "Samir Zitouni is credited with saving lives on the train." And the standfirst in bold reads: "A rail worker credited with saving multiple lives during a mass stabbing on a train has been named as Samir Zitouni."
November 4, 2025 at 12:33 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Catflap #5 is *finally* out of the bag! Pre-orders from next week.

Thrilled to share this glorious line-up, inc.

Nat Raha @fullnommunism.bsky.social
Juliet Jacques
CAConrad
Marion Hawkes & Katiee.eem
+
@chitawei.bsky.social
@pscalpello.bsky.social
@cipherpress.bsky.social's Jack Thompson
& more
Front cover of catflap magazine issue 5: it's pale pink with the title and text in a deep burgundy, with a lime green whoosh curving around the title. The magazine's streamline is "Smart Queer Writing With a Disco Heart" and the list of articles reads CAConrad ON SONG Nat Raha ON THE DANCEFLOOR Marion Hawkes & Katieeeem ON THE DECK Juliet Jacques PUTIN ON DRAG Back cover of catflap magazine issue 5: it's pale pink with a list of contributors in deep burgundy text, embraced by a lime-green whoosh. Contributors list: Emma Hurson Juliet Jacques Nat Raha CAConrad Marion Hawkes Katiee.eem Chi Ta-wei Tobias Wray Benjamin Lindsay Peter Scalpello Tara McGinn Gemma Cooper-Novack Cat Brogan Jack Thompson
October 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Wrote a bit about how finishing a book is simultaneously like staring at the ceiling and taking a leap into a future you don't quite believe in, via astral projection, Virginia Woolf & Helen Chadwick. Also a solution to the subject/object problem!

Read "project" here 👇
www.somayer.net?na=view&id=5
Viral Landscape by Helen Chadwick. A large-format saturated colour photograph of cliffs around a bay on the Pembrokeshire coastline with a transparent slide of cell cultures superimposed. The lefthand side of the image features a yellow colour block, making it look like a microscope slide.
October 24, 2025 at 6:40 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Giving Ursula what she always wanted.
If you could make a change to anything you've written over the years, what would it be? In The Dispossessed, I would mention the communal pickle barrels at street corners in the big towns, restocked by whoever in the community has made or kept more pickles than they need. I knew about the free pickles all along, but never could fit them into the book. From TLS 20 Questions to Ursula K Le Guin.
October 21, 2025 at 8:28 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Celebrating Ursula K. Le Guin's birthday at The Word for World exhibition at Architectural Association, with an edible landscape by artist Rain Wu.
The sweet table by Rain Wu: rows of individual mirror dishes, each with a single white chocolate almond, a dab of beetroot paste & a toothpick for drawing patterns on the almond. At the far end of the table, an almond polenta cake shaped like a valley in East Taiwan. Communal pickle barrels. The Valley of the Na from Always Coming Home, with mountains of polenta topped by Parmesan crisps (an essential in Italo-Taiwanese menus), a river of roasted corn nibs, and spiral village heyiya-ifs of romesco, with heyimas mounds of veggie garlic polenta topped with a single pink peppercorn. A book table with copies of Silver Press and Spiral House's Le Guin titles: The Word for World; Space Crone; Steering the Craft; and So Far, So Good. Plus Architectural Association tote bags.
October 21, 2025 at 8:04 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
My friend Masha sent me these from Vaginal Davis's show in New York!
October 18, 2025 at 5:37 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
You must come & visit, the whole space is INCREDIBLE & they are very up for poetry events. Also...
Incredibly amazing cookies and pastries at Oula cafe, at Ibraaz.
October 17, 2025 at 6:36 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
My boss let me stock up the children's book section at Ibraaz with a rainbow of books by global majority authors & artists! Come and revel, 11-6, Sat & Sun.

#BookSky #KidLit #KidLitUK
Shelves of children's picture books and chapter books. Faced out books include Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Maya Angelou with paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat; Esma Farouk, Lost in the Souk by Lisa Boerson & Hasna Elbaamrani, with pictures by Annelies Vandenbosch; Chooch Helped by Andrea Rogers with pictures by Rebecca Lee Kunz; Safiyyah's War by Hiba Noor Khan; Tyger by SF Said.
October 17, 2025 at 6:24 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Bring back this Dada specifically.

Claude McKay & Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven giving LOTE realness.
Claude McKay and the German avant garde artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven in Paris in 1921. Photograph: Everett Collection Historical/Alamy. Claude, a tall, slender Black man, is dressed in a floor-length robe that looks like it's made of a heavy embroidered curtain, and a crown-hat that may be made from a cushion, and is carrying a sceptre, invoking the traditional depiction of the Magi. The Baroness is wearing an embellished slip with stockings and boots, and a feathery, gauzey hat. They look amazing and also incredibly gay.
October 16, 2025 at 11:54 AM
suchmayer.bsky.social
There's a new independent bookstore in town. @burleyfisher.bsky.social x @palfest.bsky.social at Ibraaz on Mortimer St. A global majority cultural space 5 mins from
Oxford Circus. Come b(u)y!
Mirrored steel bookshelves full of books! Some faced out titles include Violent Phenomena, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, June Givanni: The Making of A Pan-African Cinema Archive, Their Borders Our World, Saraswati.
October 14, 2025 at 8:49 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Bristol pals! I am coming to talk about language, power & dragons to launch BAD LANGUAGE @bookhaus.bsky.social. I'll be talking to the amazing @noreenmasud.bsky.social so it will be AWESOME.

Weds 26 Nov, 6pm
Book your tickets here👇

www.bookhausbristol.com/events/#e139...
Cover of Bad Language by So Mayer, featuring a hand-drawn large letter B in the style of a medieval manuscript illuminated. The B is composed of a dragon coiled around a tree, and looking at the reader with one red eye. The dragon is grey on a deep blue background.
October 13, 2025 at 5:07 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
DO NOT MISS The Word for World: The Maps of @ursulakleguin.com, Architectural Association, Bedford Sq, London. It's truly beautiful. (I've never been involved w a project that's had massive banners before, it's v exciting).

Spend time with the maps, inc my niche fave, The City Ansul from VOICES 💙
The Architectural Association, a Georgian house of dark brick on Bedford Square, with two-storey high banners outside reading The Word for World and Ursula K Le Guin. A cyanotype white-on-blue banner with fern prints at the top and a map below hangs in a gallery. Other similar banners featuring different maps are glimpsed behind it.
October 10, 2025 at 10:16 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Got to hold my new book & it has dragons. Adult non-fiction can has dragons too!!!
So Mayer, a short, grey-haired white person, holds up copies of Bad Language. There's a sign that says Second-hand Books behind them.
October 10, 2025 at 9:43 AM
suchmayer.bsky.social
It's real & it's here. I'm real & I'm here. There were times during the writing where I didn't think that those sentences could simultaneously be true. So yes I am grinning like a dork.

Pre-order BAD LANGUAGE from Peninsula Press. It's not secondhand yet... 👇🏻

peninsulapress.co.uk/products/bad...
So Mayer, a short, grey-haired white person, holds up copies of Bad Language. There's a sign that says Second-hand Books behind them.
October 9, 2025 at 12:32 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
1 hr queue to renew? On a gorgeous autumn day? Other pastimes are available!

(Sarah Schulman's book out in the UK from Peninsula on 5 Nov.)
A copy of the UK Peninsula Press edition of Sarah Schulman's book The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, bookmarked by a distinctive yellow and white striped paper bag from Ta'mini Lebanese Bakery.
October 6, 2025 at 2:01 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Ahhhh she is linking to her own SS, which both funds & covers The Nerve:
Cadwalladr had already launched her own Substack publication How to Survive the Broligarchy (using income from this to fund her time on The Nerve). She said: "I've loved going truly independent but I've always believed that journalism is a team sport.
October 6, 2025 at 10:19 AM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Sigur Rós with the London Contemporary Orchestra tonight. I've been waiting 23 years to see them live & it was incanfuckingdescent. It's a big holy day tomorrow & this was my spiritual commitment: to hope(landic). And light. And also organists in sequinned jackets.
Packed seated audience on the floor of a concert hall, with the house lights on and the stage lit by beams showing an orchestra getting set up.
September 30, 2025 at 10:29 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
The film we need right now (again) in a special edition approved by @lizziela.bsky.social from @criterion.bsky.social with all the usual excellence including a transfer of the legendary REGROUPING, Borden's first film & a feminist mindfuck in its own right.
Blu-ray case for Born in Flames, with a sticker saying "director approved special edition." The cover image features a black and white close up of Honey, a dark-skinned Black butch wearing headphones, and the title written in red graffiti style capital letters.
September 30, 2025 at 2:26 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Belated Shana Tova, folks. Dunno about the book of life, but this one is in the book of all-time great cakes.

Florence Greenberg's recipe but with almond milk, double the ginger, and an added carioca shot.
A perfectly-risen, glossy-topped honey cake in a cake tin.
September 24, 2025 at 11:19 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
#BiVisibilityDay was yesterday but we can still celebrate the glory we have witnessed.
Behind the scenes image from shooting of The Leopard. Claudia Cardinale is smiling and dimpling, wearing a straw hat with an upturned brim decorated with grasses, her long dark hair falling down her back. She is embracing and being embraced by Alain Delon, his hair falling over his forehead. He is in shirtsleeves and a wristwatch, clearly rehearsing a scene.
September 24, 2025 at 4:30 PM
suchmayer.bsky.social
Vale Claudia Cardinale, half of the most devastatingly gorgeous onscreen couple (and 65-year offscreen friendship) of all time.

On his death she said "The ball is over. Tancredi has gone to dance with the stars." 🌌

(Heart-stopping photo gallery: www.parismatch.com/People/claud...)
Black and white still from The Leopard: an impossibly gorgeous young couple in evening dress (Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale) in an ornate ballroom. She is leaning affectionally on his shoulder as they talk to an older man with mutton-chop whiskers (Burt Reynolds).
September 24, 2025 at 4:21 PM