This is Reasons to Remain. It’s effectively me, but proofread.

My name’s Aran Ward Sell. I’m a writer, researcher, educator and learning technologist. From January 2024 to December 2025 I am W. B. Yeats Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, IN, USA.

I’m a triple University of Edinburgh alumnus: PhD, MSc and MA. I climb trees when available, play the guitar and sometimes make songs, drawings and poetry. I have worked for universities, public libraries and online florists, and lived in rural Ireland, small-town Scotland, Edinburgh, Brisbane, Edinburgh, London, Edinburgh, and, now, South Bend, Indiana. Someday I aspire to live in Edinburgh.

This blog began as a travel journal when I lived in Queensland, aged 20 (see picture, below). Since then it’s become a hub to tie together strands of Aran which have spiderwebbed across the internet. “Reasons to Remain” was the title of a poem I wrote a long time ago, which I turned into a URL without even pausing to think that everyone would read it as “Reason Store Main”. The name of this website has nothing to do with Brexit.

I have forgotten almost all of that poem.

In 2023 I made most of the old posts on this site “Private” as I sought to rethink how much of my Juvenilia was out there on the open web. If there is a particular old post, story or poem that you’d like access to, drop me a line using the methods below.

-A.

I am nothing if not accessible. Access me via comments here, or via:

• Email: aranws [at] gmail [dot] com
• Social Media / other websites: usually AranWS. BlueSky: aranws.bluesky.social

I will reply with such ebullience that you’ll wish you hadn’t bothered.