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An irreverent reworking of Medusa’s myth. I first wrote this over a decade ago and unearthed it while researching her story again.

Thoughts on writing for a disappearing nature: how monsters became my refuge from environmental loss. Like many writers, I occasionally look back at things I've written or created during my childhood or teen years, and cringe a little. Especially my overuse of double-barrelled adjectives, Occasionally, I am a little awed by them – the ability to allow raw emotion to stream onto the page in an unselfconscious way. That is an ability I no longer have, or at least, no I longer

Why do unicorns and mythical creatures still captivate us? This essay explores what monsters - from medieval bestiaries to modern pop culture - reveal about the disenchantment of the modern world and the needs of our imaginations.   If you go hunting through the bestiaries of the Middle Ages and the encyclopaedic natural histories of the Renaissance and early Enlightenment, you’ll discover a cornucopia of fantastical beasts. Some are familiar, others seem utterly absurd: man

Welcome to The Manticore. Thank you for stepping into my virtual cabinet of curiosities. This blog — named after the chimerical mythical...