Writer and editor
Nell Hartigan
Nell writes Longhand. She spent eleven years as a magazine production editor before leaving to rent a bench in a shared workshop, where she makes furniture badly, books adequately and bread reliably.
Nell Hartigan has written Longhand since the first essay in March 2025. Before that she was a production editor at a trade magazine, which taught her two lasting things: how a sheet of paper becomes a book, and that deadlines are mostly a matter of agreement.
She now splits the week between a rented bench in a shared workshop in Halebridge, a kitchen with a bad oven, and a desk by a window. She is a competent bookbinder, a patient but unskilled woodworker, and a baker who has stopped looking at the clock. None of these facts is the point. The point is that she writes about the work only after doing it for long enough to be wrong about it twice.
Essays by Nell Hartigan
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Sharpen First
Every woodworking teacher says it, and every beginner skips it. A long morning with a chisel and a stone, and why the first hour of any job belongs to the tool.
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Bread Without a Timer
A year of baking one loaf a week taught me that dough is not a recipe but a conversation, and that the clock on the oven is the least informative thing in the kitchen.
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Imposition, by Script
Printing a small booklet at home means putting the pages in a strange order. A dozen lines of code can do it, and the exercise explains why a folded book reads the way it does.
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Casing In
Glue, board and cloth, a night under a weight, and the moment a pile of thread and paper becomes a book.
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Sewing the Text Block
Linen thread, a needle, and the quiet discovery that every stitch has to be right before the next one can begin.
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Folding the Signatures
Grain, folds and a bone folder, and the discovery that a crease is a decision you make once.
Weekly letters
All issues- No.8
Saved for later
What went into the drawer this month: a finished book, an essay on stones, and a short list of small questions.
- No.7
A plane in October
An hour with an old plane and a board of ash, an announcement about what is coming, and a very small confession about a stool.
- No.6
Flour, again
Feeding a starter that does not care about your schedule, a loaf with a lopsided crust, and the finger test.
- No.5
Notes from the book press
The cased book comes out of the press, what the spine remembers, and a small defence of the thing you cannot unmake.