The Bookish Mindset

If you don’t follow me on social media then you might have missed that I was at Portsmouth Comic Con last weekend. It’s been running for many years now and is held in the iconic Guildhall in the town centre.

Along with local independent bookshop Pigeon Books, I curated a line up of six brilliant authors across four events over the weekend. Let’s dive into them.

Graphic Novel Workshop with Salomey Doku and Lewis Hancox

Taught as an introduction to writing your own graphic novel, these two artists hosted a brilliant workshop on Saturday morning. We had a great range of students with us and our teachers for the morning took us through their processes and individual styles.

The Rise of Romantasy Panel with Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and Stephanie Burgis.

Hosting this panel felt like a dream. I’m such a huge fan of The Principle of Moments and love Esmie so much (yes, absolutely fangirling and I’m okay with it). It was a pleasure to host Stephanie as well, it was my first time meeting the incredibly successful self published author and I loved what she brought to the panel. The panel went really smoothly and we had a great conversation about the escapism of fantasy and it’s boundlessness as a genre.

Time Tub Travellers Workshop with Claire Linney

Having been a fan of Claire’s books and social media channels for some time, I was so excited to invite her down to Portsmouth to host one of her workshops. It was incredibly engaging and I loved learning about the symbol of her time travelling bath tub and African language ties.

Fantasy Interrupted Panel with Claire Linney and Zen Cho

I’ve loved Zen’s work for some time now (Spirits Abroad and Black Water Sister are my favourites) and it was so exciting meeting her. The panel had a really great reception and we had some excellent questions asked too! It was the most popular of ours of the weekend and it was so good to see so many friendly faces.

The whole weekend was a dream and flew by so quick. It was the first year Portsmouth Comic Con had a literary agenda and it was so great to be part of that maiden voyage. It was definitely a success from our side, so watch this space for more bookish events in the future!

Time is running out to enter my reading challenge, check it out here! Read nine books from nine prompts over the first six months of the year and be entered into a draw to win a bundle of bookish goodies.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my patreon and consider supporting my content on there too. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 07/05/2025