‘How is it possible to move on from such widespread collective trauma, and forget the innumerable dead? This is the question at the heart of Mrs Dalloway.’
Elizabeth Gourd on Mrs Dalloway, 100 years on.
Interview | Uncommon Ground: An Interview with Patrick Galbraith
‘If people really engaged with the countryside, really understood it, I think there would be fewer calls for more access.’
Tommy Gilhooly speaks to Patrick Galbraith.
Interview | The Call is Coming from Inside the House: An Interview with Krystelle Bamford
‘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.
Interview | John Cornwell on Death in Devon and Ted Hughes’s Theory of the Troglodyte
‘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.
Essay | Staying Mute by Sara Ahmad
‘If a Brazilian electrician, pursued by the police as a result of a series of blunders, can be shot in cold blood in front of the British public – how thin is the membrane separating victim and terrorist?’
Sarah Ahmad on the 7/7 bombings, 20 years on.
Fiction | Duchess by Gráinne O’Hare
‘When I passed the baby to her to hold, she did so with the bored detachment of a taxi driver holding a name card at an airport.’
New short fiction by Gráinne O’Hare.
Essay | Exile City by Kasra Lang
‘If the city makes no offers of belonging, it makes no demands either, unlike in America, which insists on a daily pledge of allegiance. In that sense London is the exile city par excellence.’
Kasra Lang’s essay on Joseph Conrad and Hisham Matar.
Interview | Hanna Thomas Uose on Immortality and Tech Bros
‘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.
Interview | The Rest of Our Lives: Benjamin Markovits in Conversation
‘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.
Fiction | My Secession by JL Bogenschneider
‘It took years – time, distance and eventually death – before I even approached a comprehension of my father, and of course, in lieu of any verification on his part, it could only ever be speculation. Still, and but so, I tried.’
Short fiction by JL Bogenschneider.
Interview | Textures of Ambivalence: Harriet Baker on Woolf, Warner and Lehmann
‘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.
Fiction | Still Life with Neighbours by Eddie Creamer
‘It was as if I was being allowed an insight into the very core of their lives, and I felt closer to them than to the people I actually lived with.’
Short fiction by Eddie Creamer, runner up in The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2024.
Fiction | shee-shee-shee by Kerry Hood
‘I know about things left too long to boil, things too hot to ever touch. I know there’s a kind of human who can take a single moment and make it better just by living it.’
New short fiction by Kerry Hood.
Review | Becoming a Two by Lucy Thynne
‘In the diaries’ dailiness, they allow for capaciousness, an expression – as with a regular routine of writing – of a relationship’s good days and bad.’
Lucy Thynne reviews Helen Garner’s Collected Diaries.
Fiction | The Inspection by Joshua Jones
‘Maybe they just won’t look up, he said. Many people go their whole lives without looking up.’
New short fiction by Joshua Jones.
Review | Art as Archive by Meesha Williams
‘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.
Interview | ‘Left Hand, Right Hand’: Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity
‘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.
Fiction | Roses, Falling by Rupert Dastur
‘I cannot believe what I’m seeing, but there is no doubting it: roses are falling from the sky; the sort to fill vases or lay on gravesides: red and white, peach and pink, full-headed, green tear-drop leaves spaced along thorny stem.’
New fiction by Rupert Dastur.
Fiction | Dengue Boy by Michel Nieva
‘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.
Fiction | Margot by Marni Appleton
‘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’.
Interview | Tony Tulathimutte: ‘A short story can do almost anything a novel can.’
‘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.
Interview | The Search for Truth: Michael Amherst in Conversation
‘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.
Fiction | Anywhere Apart from Here by Beth Preece
‘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.
Poetry | Realism by Jo Bratten
‘Let’s talk about our terrible / childhoods, I say. Over tiramisu, Chekhov asks me to marry him / and I say yes, of course.’
New poetry by Jo Bratten.