Welcome to Bibliomaniac, the online home of me - Carly-Jay Metcalfe - as I ponder literature, life, writing, medicine, ageing, my recalcitrant fleshy vessel and the curious and sometimes perilous machinations of my perimenopausal brain. Things will be up and running here shortly, but in the meantime if you want to
Enshittification + n*zis + right wing fuqery + AI = bye bitch 👋🏼 I’ve been feeling uneasy about Substack for a while for all the reasons listed in the post description above. And because I’m trying to be the change I want to see in the world, leaving is an easy decision.
A poem I wrote for Cam, who you met on my last post 🌈 Dilectus And so, it is weeks now. Not a year, not months; the anticipation of chemotherapy expired. Just the work of grief, the clipping of loose ends, the tucking under of seams, weaving them in until the
On fashioning selfhood in chronic illness If you’ve been following along, you might remember that in my first Substack I wrote about the maelstrom - no, the full-blown clusterfuq - that has been 2024 and 2025. My aim for the year was disarmingly simple: to survive. And if I could
