Putting things on pause...

I need to suspend writing for The Transatlantic World of James McCune Smith for a while

Dear friends,

As you will have observed, I haven’t managed to get another piece written for this newsletter for some time. A few months after I started this newsletter to accompany my research and writing for the James McCune Smith biography I’m working on, I was overjoyed to be offered and to accept a wonderful opportunity. I’m now a Research Fellow in English and Creative Writing at Northumbria University, Newcastle, as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2026). My three-year project for the fellowship is to identify, collect, and edit a complete collection of works by McCune Smith.

(As complete a collection as possible anyway - since McCune Smith often wrote anonymously, it’s not always possible to definitively identify everything he wrote, and lost works that I can’t find may be discovered in the future. But, the goal is to make the collection as complete as possible.)

That means I’m now working on two books, not one. And, over the past few weeks, myself, my husband, and our dog have moved and have been getting settled in our new home near lovely Newcastle upon Tyne. As you may imagine, life has gotten incredibly busy.

So, until the first full draft of the biography is submitted to my publisher, I have no time at all to write anything else. Regrettably, therefore, I need to put this newsletter on hold until then.

I’ve paused payment collection for all you generous paid subscribers. If collection of your subscription fee has gone through (it’s automatic) but you feel it was collected after too long a stretch since the last installment of this newsletter, please let me know and I’ll work out how I can refund your last payment.

I hope to be writing for this newsletter again within a few months! In the meantime, I’ll try to keep you abreast of news and developments here.

Love, Amy