Into 2026

I'm not going to write a summary of what I've been doing in 2025 — you don't need to read another one of those. But I thought I'd post some links to recently published works in case there's anything that tickles your fancy.

Songlines is proving a lovely place to publish about folklore, and folk and traditional music (and -adjacent). Recently I wrote a piece on Gatherings, a new six-part series about calendar customs, filmed and produced by Dave Brewis, who has been visiting these kinds of events in the UK and France for twenty-five years. In the same issue, I had a profile on fiddler, singer and songwriter — and visionary, in my humble opinion — Mikey Kenney. I've been catching up with Mikey periodically over the years, since he first came to my attention around 2007/8, and his latest album, Tiny Little Light, is his best. In fact, it was my favourite record released last year, and I even gave it five stars in the same issue. I'm not sure I've ever given a five-star review, so it's some achievement... Mikey had something nice to say in return:

Sophie always asks the questions that give me the best chance to explain myself and my work. You won’t discover what compels a musician by simply asking about their processes and Sophie is a master of unearthing the catalysts and somehow condensing great wealth into small word counts!

I was quite chuffed with that. Thanks, Mikey!

If you've got a Songlines subscription, you can read these pieces online.

I've also been publishing some academic work. I wrote a chapter entitled 'Following the Rove' for The Routledge Handbook of Heritage and Creative Practice, edited by Nick Cass, Sarina Wakefield and Anna Powell (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2025, pp. 108-122). It's a mega book that took a long time to come to fruition, and as a result, my chapter transformed into a summary of my PhD, which has been a very useful thing to write. During the process, we realised that one of the editors, Nick, actually lives near me, so it's been a really lovely thing to be involved with. Now I'm just looking forward to getting my hands on a copy...

Also, just before Christmas, the latest issue of the Journal of Festival Culture Inquiry and Analysis was published. In it is my article on the importance of food in folklore, and of the dole to the calendar custom. It's completely open access, meaning anyone can read it — you don't have to belong to an 'institution' (which sounds so unpleasant, I always think).

So that's me up-to-date, though there's plenty more brewing: a new short story, and some publications relating to the NFS are on the horizon. All the best for 2026.