What is Witness Marks?

Witness Marks are the tiny scars left inside mechanical clock movements by every horologist who has ever worked on them. They are clues to time past and proof of the skill and knowledge of long-gone individuals; they are signposts to how future time may be spent.

I’m Melissa Harrison, a novelist, nature writer, critic, children’s author, app creator and podcaster, among other things. My most recent novel, All Among the Barley, won the European Union Prize for Literature. I have a new novel due out in May 2026, called The Given World.

I’m interested in the natural world and in agriculture, in history, poetry, art and creativity, and the ways we all must find to live with and among the past. I write to you each month from a little Suffolk cottage, once the one-up, one-down house occupied by a farm labourer, now my home. Its brick floor has been worm into dips by hundreds of feet, while the bressumer beam above the fireplace is scratched with apotropaic marks; drinking water once came from a freshwater well, now under my wood store, while what was once a shared privy on a ditch bank is now my garden shed. Each day I walk among woods and fields and farmland, attuning myself as closely as I can to the seasons and the weather, and the life of the village I live in. This newsletter is a way of sharing with you the things that I find.

Why subscribe?

If you subscribe to Witness Marks you’ll receive a monthly newsletter direct to your inbox, along with an audio readout. However, if emails make you feel a bit harried you can set Substack up in such a way that you only read the newsletters you subscribe to in the app, or on the website.

Free or paid?

The first part of Witness Marks – the news and miscellany – is free, along with an audio voiceover.

Paying subscribers also get access to the second part of the newsletter, a Village Newsletter from Ixenford, a lightly fictionalised version of my own Suffolk village. They can also listen to me read my first novel, Clay, aloud, and discuss each chapter; these audio posts have their own section at the top of my Substack page. Finally, they can also dip into the full Witness Marks archive at any time.

I couldn’t afford to set the time aside to write this newsletter without paying subscribers. At £3.50 a month I’m charging the lowest Substack lets me. I am incredibly grateful to have your support.