Yvvette Edwards

Book lover. Author. The Mother. A Cupboard Full Of Coats. Represented by Salma Begum.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Norwegian neuroscientist spent 20 years proving that the act of writing by hand changes the human brain in ways typing physically cannot, and almost nobody outside her field has read the paper.

Her name is Audrey van der Meer.

She runs a brain research lab in Trondheim, and the paper that closed the argument was published in 2024 in a journal called Frontiers in Psychology. The finding is brutal enough that it should have changed every classroom on Earth.

The experiment was simple. She recruited 36 university students and put each one in a cap with 256 sensors pressed against their scalp to record brain activity. Words flashed on a screen one at a time.

Sometimes the students wrote the word by hand on a touchscreen using a digital pen, and sometimes they typed the same word on a keyboard. Every neural response was recorded for the full five seconds the word stayed on screen.

Then her team looked at the part of the data most researchers had ignored for years, which is how different parts of the brain were communicating with each other during the task.

When the students wrote by hand, the brain lit up everywhere at once.

The regions responsible for memory, sensory integration, and the encoding of new information were all firing together in a coordinated pattern that spread across the entire cortex. The whole network was awake and connected.

When the same students typed the same word, that pattern collapsed almost completely.

Most of the brain went quiet, and the connections between regions that had been alive seconds earlier were nowhere to be found on the EEG.

Same word, same brain, same person, and two completely different neurological events.

The reason turned out to be something nobody had really paid attention to before her work. Writing by hand is not one motion but a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements coordinated with your eyes in real time, where each letter is a different shape that requires the brain to solve a slightly different spatial problem.

Your fingers, wrist, vision, and the parts of your brain that track position in space are all working together to produce one letter, then the next, then the next.

Typing throws all of that away. Every key on a keyboard requires the exact same finger motion regardless of which letter you are pressing, which means the brain has almost nothing to integrate and almost no problem to solve.

Van der Meer said it plainly in her interviews.

Pressing the same key with the same finger over and over does not stimulate the brain in any meaningful way, and she pointed out something that should scare every parent who handed their kid an iPad.

Children who learn to read and write on tablets often cannot tell letters like b and d apart, because they have never physically felt with their bodies what it takes to actually produce those letters on a page.

A decade before her, two researchers at Princeton ran the same fight using a completely different method and ended up at the same answer. Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students across three experiments, where half took notes on laptops with the internet disabled and half took notes by hand, before testing everyone on what they actually understood from the lectures they had watched.

The handwriting group won by a wide margin on every question that required real understanding rather than surface recall.

The reason was hiding in the transcripts of what the two groups had actually written down.

The laptop students typed almost word for word, capturing more total content but processing almost none of it as they went, while the handwriting students physically could not write fast enough to transcribe a lecture in real time, which forced them to listen carefully, decide what actually mattered, and put it in their own words on the page.

That single act of choosing what to keep was the learning itself, and the keyboard had quietly skipped the choosing and skipped the learning along with it.

Two studies. Two countries. Same answer.

Handwriting makes the brain work. Typing lets it coast.

Every note you have ever typed instead of written went into your brain through a thinner pipe. Every meeting, every book highlight, every idea you captured on your phone instead of on paper was processed at half depth.

You did not forget those things because your memory is bad. You forgot them because typing never woke the part of the brain that would have made them stick.

The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.

Pick up a pen. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

BBC PAID HIM 6X MORE. THE TRIBUNAL SAID THAT WAS ILLEGAL. THE BBC SAID IT WAS COMPLICATED.

Samira Ahmed @SamiraAhmedUK presented Newswatch on @BBC for years. Same format. Same length. Same job. Read viewer feedback on camera, wrap it up, go home.

Jeremy Vine @theJeremyVine did exactly the same thing on Points of View.

She got £440 per episode. He got £3,000.

Ahmed spent years trying to fix it quietly through internal BBC processes. The BBC said there was no problem.

She filed for tribunal. In January 2020, the tribunal ruled unanimously in her favour. The BBC could not explain the difference. They tried. They argued Vine needed "a glint in the eye" and to be "cheeky."

The tribunal said that was not a skill. It was a story the BBC told itself.

The total underpayment was close to £700,000. Sarah Montague, another BBC woman, settled separately for around £400,000.

The National Union of Journalists flagged around 70 more cases waiting resolution internally. After Ahmed won, 700 BBC women received pay rises.

The BBC's statement after losing? They regretted it had gone to tribunal.

Not that they paid a woman six times less than a man for the same work for years. Just that it became public.

Sources: @guardian, @BBC, @IFJGlobal, Others

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities - so long as they do it under the guise of “partisanship” rather than explicit “racial bias.” And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.

The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers - not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

[Jhalak Prize @jhalakprize]

TOMORROW: launch of the special edition of the @jhalakreview celebrating 10 years of the Jhalak Prize at @WstoneIslington. An opportunity to build community and imagine new futures. Last few tickets remain:
https://t.co/cl07flczDB
#jhalakprizeat10 #beyondrepresentatoin

[Melissa Sigodo @melissasigodo]

The Black bookshop Afrori Books has now surpassed its target by over 500 books and is safe from closure. 🙌🏾👏🏾👏🏾
https://t.co/sG25lhvBzU

[lemn sissay OBE FRSL @lemnsissay]

If you are going to buy any books between now and the end of May then please buy them from Afrori Books. They need the support to stay alive. They need to sell 1,000 books by the end of May.

#afroribooks

https://t.co/mbaeUqkXMN

[Historical Africa @historical_Afr]

Respect!!

[Victor Glover @AstroVicGlover]

Home, again! Mission complete. I hope we glorified God, humanity, our families and our terrific teams a @NASA and @csa_asc. Time to share the good news!

[Bocas Lit Fest @bocaslitfest]

📣April’s Bocas Book Bulletin is here! Featuring new Caribbean releases, Bocas Lit Fest news, awards/prizes, & @paperbasedbooks March bestsellers!
https://t.co/n6wp4cx7Ku
#bocas2026 @expressupdates
@YvvetteEdwards @kaiekellough @shakirahwrites @simonschuster @peepaltreepress

[Winnie M Li @winniemli]

18 yrs ago, I was violently assaulted & raped while walking alone. Every year on the anniversary of that day, I go on a solo hike to remind myself that there is still beauty in this world & I can enjoy it. This yr, I pushed myself & did a few days of the Southwest Coast Path…

[BRITTLE PAPER @brittlepaper]

.@BernardineEvari chairs "Black Women Speak Volumes Between Generations" at the British Library in March 2026! The panel celebrates two books centering older Black women's experiences with @YvvetteEdwards, @MsJoyFrancis, and Andi Oliver. Get tix now! 🎤
https://t.co/0ZxNMVHPLi

[Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan @MayorofLondon]

Congratulations to London resident Nnena Kalu from Wandsworth on winning the prestigious Turner Prize, the first artist with learning disabilities to receive this honour.

London is proud to celebrate her amazing achievement. https://t.co/lUDe057Aoa

[Jhalak Prize @jhalakprize]

#Book peeps: ONLY 3 weeks remain till submissions close for our three awards for landmark 10th anniversary year. What are you waiting for? Send in those amazing books!

#publishing #books #representationmatters

https://t.co/EwWsYuQTHe

[Yvonne Battle-Felton @YBattleFelton]

Looking for a new read? Wasafiri is one of my favorite magazines for new writing. If you haven’t read it, check it out. #Read, #write, #share

[Jhalak Prize @jhalakprize]

Publishers: send us your fabulous books so we can celebrate them!
Authors: nudge your publishers and agents! Or get in touch if you want us to chase them.
#jhalakprize26

[Dawn Butler ✊🏾💙 @DawnButlerBrent]

🚨 Yet another horrific Block of the Month. This is only a sample of what I’ve received. #ButlerBlocks

I’ve suffered a relentless wave of racist abuse this #BHM2025 — and again after challenging the Reform MP’s racist comments.

Lets unite in calling this behaviour out.✊🏾

[Jhalak Prize @jhalakprize]

Publishers, agents, authors: we are now open for submissions! Send in those beautiful books!
#jhalakprizeat10

[Dr. Allison Wiltz @queenie4rmnola]

They lynched a Black man, and if it weren't for Kapernick paying for a private autopsy, many would have believed the official statement. Police lie. Authority figures lie. We as people have to demand accountability

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

He was apparently a former spiritual adviser to Trump. And he got ten years in prison for his child sex crime but will only serve six months.

Where’s the outrage from MAGA?

If Dems were ruthless, they’d be all over this. Imagine what Fox would do if it was Biden’s adviser?

[Edu Royale @edu_royale]

I finnished this portrait! Oils on canvas. Sold.