‘There’s a certain hubris in being shocked by tragedy and then turning it into a myth. It’s like, something that happens to everyone becomes this epic, world-shattering thing because it happened to you.’
Krystelle Bamford interviewed by Lilia Fetini.
‘To explain meanings that are already known goes against the most important demand of literature.’
From 1965, an essay on realism by Alain Robbe-Grillet (trans. Barbara Wright).
‘I could be anyone you want me to be. / I might come round to your point of view.’
From 1994, poetry by Michael Donaghy.
‘Why do people enjoy true crime? I think the procedural aspect of it, the detective work – which is a natural page turner – that makes it very enjoyable, and it takes you right out of yourself – if it’s good.’
Tommy Gilhooly speaks to John Cornwell about his true crime classic Earth to Earth.
‘Poetry on the grand scale, poetry in the raw, poetry on the attack, but best of all, Beat Poetry in the Albert Hall.’
From 1965, Hugo Williams reviews Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall.
‘Within the next 15 to 20 years, I would bet there’s going to be a group of people who are on some form of fairly effective longevity medication.’
Isabel Brooks speaks to Hanna Thomas Uose.
‘The reason I want to write novels rather than philosophy is that I want whatever point the novel makes to have a kind of undertone of disagreement with itself.’
Jamie Cameron speaks to Benjamin Markovits.
‘I was taking a revisionary feminist approach to literary archives, in the sense that I wanted to argue for the value of these domestic texts, that they can indeed tell a whole of a life.’
An interview with Harriet Baker, winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award.
‘Writing is such an un-natural activity that one has to keep in practice, like sport, or playing a musical instrument.’
From 1979, an interview with Susan Sontag.
‘To exaggerate something is like putting a magnifying glass on it. You exaggerate your rage, you exaggerate your love, and you can see it more clearly.’
Mark Bowles on corporate jargon, his love of espresso and whether or not his book can be called an anti-English novel.
‘Maybe they just won’t look up, he said. Many people go their whole lives without looking up.’
New short fiction by Joshua Jones.
‘Where dominant narratives and imagery tend to sanitise motherhood, all white sheets or postpartum glow, Gore’s depiction is tender and painful in a way that feels truthful.’
Meesha Williams reviews Sylee Gore’s Maximum Summer.
‘From the moment Don Quixote loses his mind from reading too many tales of chivalry, adopting their plots, characters and style for his own adventures, the modern novel has been grounded in a relationship with other texts – a process that generative AI now seems to be accelerating.’
Simon Okotie on the future of the novel.
‘We are both more in favour of speaking rather than shouting, and as visual hunters we are happier when seeking than we are when parading the spoils of the hunt.’
An interview with Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity.
‘With relief, with childlike awe, she understood that her entire life had been determined by a grammatical error.’
An extract from Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva.
‘We must / Go through the ritual / Formulæ of farewell, // The words, the looks, / The embraces, knowing / That this time they are final.’
From 1964, a poem by W. H. Auden.
‘It wasn’t that I didn’t love Margot. I did, desperately, but watching people make fun of her made me feel better about myself. It was one of the only things that did.’
Short fiction by Marni Appleton. An extract from ‘I Hope You’re Happy’.
‘I tend to enjoy writers who are good at writing gasbags; those who are in love with the sound of their own awful voice.’
Lilia Fetini speaks to Tony Tulathimutte.
‘The phrase “the end of print” is a sales tool for the digital world.’
On The London Magazine Podcast, Jeremy Leslie discusses magCulture, his favourite magazines and why ‘end of print’ narratives are nonsense.
‘I’m surprised that we’ve reached this weird cultural moment where we’re constantly trying to work out what is true, what is based on someone’s experience, particularly in relation to work that maybe meets the definition of autofiction.’
An interview with Michael Amherst.
‘I hope there is something just beyond the purview of my language that goes further than just wanting to be a woman and not always having been one.’
New short fiction by Beth Preece.
‘When he looked at the canoes again they had changed into the shapes of swollen dead animals.’
From 1988, short fiction by Booker-prize winner, Ben Okri.
Julia Steiner interviews Jacqueline Feldman about Precarious Lease: The Paris Document: a book of literary reportage on Parisian squats of the early 2010s.
‘Not until later does he pose to himself the question: why does he imagine it is a woman bound in the basement and not a man?’
New fiction by A. E. Macleod.
