‘Wear something that makes you feel silly!’ Can Austin Kleon’s tips put the spark back in my life?

If you’re in a rut, kids can show you the way out. That’s the latest message from the author of the bestselling Steal Like an Artist. I asked him to help me rediscover my playful, creative side …

‘Far right groups prey on it’: Olivia Laing on the weaponisation of loneliness

A decade after The Lonely City was first published, the writer reflects on what’s changed – and how the feelings that drove them to write their bestseller are key to understanding our turbulent politics

Search for lesbian grandmothers who inspired children’s book

Mama G wants to dedicate her book, The Proudest Bird in the World, to pair after chance Blackpool Pride encounter

‘Happiness is not just about GDP’: ambitious plan or utopia?

Some will question its credibility – but the alternative future to the one imagined in the Global Justice Report is far more bleak

Carlo Petrini obituary

Italian activist, author and pioneer of the Slow Food movement

Stripteases, ecstatic embraces and a dog in a dress: the full-on photos celebrating queer dancefloors worldwide

A thrillingly unsanitised new photo book captures the liberating power of queer clubs in all their sexy, messy, kinky, cacophonous glory. ‘I wanted it to feel like a night out,’ says the woman behind it

Fairyland review – moving memoir of queer parenting and new kinds of family in 70s San Francisco

Andrew Durham’s tender adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s book finds warmth, humour and heartbreak in an unconventional family unit shaped by love and loss

I was punched on the school bus. Being violently bullied changed me – and affected one of the biggest decisions of my life

I’ve worked hard to leave the intimidation I experienced in the past. But when I met the man I wanted to marry, those childhood memories took me by surprise

Anna Ritchie obituary

Archaeologist whose excavations in Orkney included Knap of Howar, with domestic buildings more than 5,000 years old

‘My body is fat, not wrong’: how body neutrality – not positivity – helped me shed a lifetime of shame

If I’d been taught this way of thinking as a child, I can’t begin to imagine how much easier things could have been

Gisèle Pelicot tells Hay festival she has found love and trust again after rape ordeal

French campaigner was drugged by her ex-husband and sexually assaulted by dozens of men over almost a decade

‘I thought I was the saviour of the planet’: how Game of Thrones’ Hannah Murray found a wellness cult – and lost her mind

She landed a role in hit TV show Skins at 17 and went on to star in the fantasy epic. Then she was drawn towards a mysterious spiritual community. How did she end up being sectioned?

Children’s reading should prioritise pleasure over learning, says laureate

Frank Cottrell-Boyce tells MPs to focus on early-years reading, with more support for parents and nursery workers

How to become emotionally mature – at any age: ‘We often don’t realise the hurt we’re causing’

Lindsay C Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents was an enormous unexpected hit in the pandemic. Now the psychologist is back with her advice for raising happy, healthy children

Illness narratives are broken – and they’re failing women like me

People want my life with premenstrual dysphoric disorder to be told as a neat arc. But chronic illnesses are more like messy, looping spirals – and realising that gave me hope