Hello, I’m Nishat.
I’m a writer, editor and incurably devoted reader with a particular fondness for literature, language, culture, and the small details of ordinary life that are usually far more interesting than they are given credit for.
I am an English graduate, although most of my education as a writer has happened in the less orderly fashion familiar to anyone who reads too much: through novels carried around until their spines surrendered, essays discovered at ridiculous hours of the night, sentences copied into notebooks, arguments with books I supposedly loved, and the gradual realisation that good writing need not choose between being intelligent and being enjoyable.
This website grew out of that conviction.
What I write about
Books will inevitably appear here rather often. I write about classics, contemporary reading culture, literary trends, the peculiar ways books continue to shape our lives, and the pleasure of returning to an old novel only to discover that either it has changed completely or, more inconveniently, you have.
But I am interested in considerably more than literature.
You will also find pieces about culture, history and mythology. Some articles will be essays. Others will be guides. Some will begin with a question somebody might type into Google at eleven o’clock at night and end, I hope, with an answer worth having.
Why I started this site
There is now more writing around us than at perhaps any other point in history, and an extraordinary amount of it seems determined to say as little as possible in as many words as possible.
I wanted somewhere to do the opposite.
This is a place for writing that has been thought about before it has been published. I care about research, clarity and accuracy, but equally about rhythm, voice and the pleasure of reading a sentence that does not feel as though it has emerged from a corporate meeting.
That does not mean every article here will be solemn or elaborate. Quite the contrary. Some subjects deserve serious examination; others deserve curiosity, humour or simply a useful answer without unnecessary ceremony. The aim is not to make everything sound literary. It is to make everything sound human.
The sort of work you’ll find here
My interests are broad, but the writing generally falls somewhere among:
Books & Culture
Literary essays, reading recommendations, cultural criticism and explorations of the curious afterlives books acquire beyond their own pages.
Literary Essays & Criticism
Long-form pieces on books, writers, myths, genres.
Reviews & Close Readings
Reviews interested less in issuing verdicts than in what a book is doing, where it succeeds, where it frays, and why certain parts of it refuse to leave quietly afterwards.
Classics, Gothic & Fantasy
Old houses, difficult women, ghosts, manners, magic, myths, and books that have survived long enough to acquire arguments of their own.
Art & Culture
The occasional excursion into museums, adaptation, visual culture and the places where literature wanders into other forms and becomes something slightly different.
There will almost certainly be subjects that wander between these categories. I have decided to regard this as a virtue rather than an administrative failure.
And professionally…
Alongside Moorland & Mayfair, most of my work now sits on the editorial side of the desk: copyediting, manuscript work, editorial research, peer review, and writing concerned with literature & culture.
I also take on selected freelance writing and editing projects, particularly long-form editorial, literary, educational and cultural work.
If you are here because you are looking for a writer or editor, you can find more about my services on the Work With Me page.
If you are here simply because something I wrote interested you, that is just as welcome.
Either way, I hope you find something worth staying for.
