The Real Bermuda Triangle is on the Internet

New York Times

                June 28, 2025

            The Real Bermuda Triangle is on the Internet

            "Surekha Davies turns the tables and looks at humankind through the burning eyes of the monsters it has created in its seemingly limitless effort to isolate otherness. A triumph of scholarship that is as erudite as it is entertaining."—Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times–bestselling author of The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I

I could do with a serving of fried apple hand pies from Herbsaint in New Orleans right about now.
Hallo, readers!
This week I discovered that there’s a Bermuda Triangle on the Internet. Newsletters to some subscribers and not others sometimes get eaten while transiting said triangle. On a really bad day, krakens erupt from the waves and swallow newsletters before they can send out a smoke signal.
If you didn’t receive last week’s newsletter about the fiftieth anniversary of the movie Jaws, you’re probably among the readers who didn’t receive the half-dozen newsletters published since early April. If you’d been wondering why I disappeared mid-book tour, this is why! I had not fallen overboard (in the triangle or anywhere else).
But you can access the full newsletter archive here for everything from what I’m reading to a painting containing witches in flight to my tour adventures! In New York City, for instance, I met science historian and cosy murder mystery author Brandy Schillace and a wonderful gang of MA students from Fordham University who trekked to across the length of Manhattan for an event. 
Here are some evergreen announcements from the Bermuda Triangle season: 
I published book excerpts in Shakespeare & Beyond (about the boundary between human and animal in Renaissance Europe) and Literary Hub (about how so-called AI is changing how we understand the human).
Interviews about the making of HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY appeared in Modern Medieval and Unseen Histories.
Spin-offs from my thinking for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY appeared in the LA Times and The Page 99 Test.
Some of my events were recorded! I spoke with Prof. Karin Wulf, director of the John Carter Brown Library and history professor at Brown University. On the fabulous Peculiar Book Club, I spoke with zoologist Bill Schutt. The first virtual book launch event was hosted by the Society for Renaissance Studies, with smart and thoughtful conversation from Leah Redmond Chang, Ricardo Padrón, Caroline Dodds Pennock, and Tamara J. Walker. My first in-person event was at the fabled Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC; and I gave a book lecture at New York University.
My next event will be at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where I’m on a panel with with Omar El Akkad (One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This) and Nicola Kelly (Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All), with Yassmin Abdel-Magied chairing, on Friday August 15th.
I spoke on a forest of podcast episodes! These include: Historians At The Movies (I talked about Monsters, Inc.); Drafting the Past (the creative and writing process behind HUMANS); Shakespeare Unlimited (monsters in the early decades of European oceanic exploration and colonialism and Caliban, my favourite among Shakespeare’s monsters); Intelligence Squared (Star Trek, astrobiology, and an eighteenth-century giant); Vulgar History (a feminist sci-fi novel from the 17^th century), and Talking Tudors (monster-making in the sixteenth century). A complete list is here.
Reviews of HUMANS appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Statesman, Science, Nature, and Nerds of a Feather.

            You can also find me on www.surekhadavies.org,
BlueSky (@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social),
Instagram/Threads (@surekhadavies),
and LinkedIn (@surekhadavies-53711753/)

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