‘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.
Essay | Low-quality Sonic Snapshots by Marie Thompson
‘Personal assistants are typically imagined to be female – it is a role that has historically been undertaken by women. Likewise, many of the smartphones’ various ‘assistants’ are gendered as female – they are part of a long historical lineage of robotic femininities.’
An extract by Marie Thompson from Bodies of Sound: Becoming a Feminist Ear.
Interview | Mingling with Caleb Parkin
‘Hope can be quite a toxic construct. It’s often invested in preserving the present, but what version of the present are we hoping to continue?’
Tom Nutting speaks to poet and educator, Caleb Parkin.
Interview | Gustav Parker Hibbett: ‘I grew up with other people being the authority in defining my identity.’
Jamie Cameron speaks to Gustav Parker Hibbett about form, identity and what it felt like to be shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for their collection, High Jump as Icarus Story.
Review | ‘Song is a strong thing’: On the T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist by Dominic Leonard
‘Whether in subject, form, style or quality, a shortlist can at least set out the stall of contemporary poetry and say: this is, for better or worse, what’s going on.’
Dominic Leonard reviews the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize shortlist.
Review | With One Hand Waving Free: Ken Fuller’s Latest Political Thriller
‘A lyrical poetry emerges from the forward-rolling action and dialogue.’
Rachel Birchley review Ken Fuller’s new novel, With One Hand Waving Free
Poetry | Aphorisms on Poetry by Lee Seong-Bok
‘Because poetry must use language, which is inherently opaque and unstable, it has to be more precise than mathematics. For poets, there is no higher morality than precision.’
Lee Seong-Bok on poetry.
Interview | Jon Day: ‘I hate the idea of going places.’
‘Great things to learn as a writer: how to meet a deadline, how to be edited, how not to be precious about your prose.’
Rose Brookfield interviews Jon Day.
Review | ‘They, too, are singular’: On Twins by Nicola Healey
‘Viney’s exhaustive and detailed study, encompassing the uses of twins in myth, literature, art and science, searches for ‘how twins fulfil and defy these and other expectations’.
Nicola Healey reviews Twinkind: The Singular Significance of Twins by William Viney.
Review | Eyes that Have Seen by Sylee Gore
‘The defining sensibility of Cole’s visual argot is a timeless ephemerality. His photographs twin the incidental with a profound belief in beauty.’
Sylee Gore reviews Pharmakon by Teju Cole.
Review | Suspensions of Disbelief by Stuart Walton
‘Eire’s aim in this capacious, deeply researched and often perplexing book is to account for episodes of the miraculous from a historian’s perspective, seen through the retrospective lens of what has become known, if not universally, as the post-secular age.’
Stuart Walton reviews They Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire.
Review | Belonging to the Dead by Gary Kaill
‘Two recently published novels embrace ‘death is not the end’ as both axiom and narrative foundation stone, and traverse the great beyond to dizzying effect.’
Gary Kaill reviews The Earth is Falling by Carmen Pellegrino & It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over, Anne de Marcken.
Review | Bolaño’s Exquisite Corpse by Tommy Gilhooly
‘The short stories in this collection cannot, therefore, be read as lesser examples of Bolaño’s novels.’
Tommy Gilhooly on The Collected Stories of Roberto Bolaño.
Review | War and Peace? by Luke Warde
‘There is much in War that compels, especially what it reveals about Céline’s incipient, and already grim, worldview.’
Luke Warde reviews ‘War’.
Review | The Cesspits of London by Hugh Dunkerley
‘The portrayals of Victorian London in The Night Mechanic are as visceral and powerful as many of those conjured by Dickens.’
Hugh Dunkerley reviews ‘The Night Mechanic’.
Interview | Rose Electra Harris: Big Canvas, Bright Colours
‘One of the things that I get torn about is that I feel really lucky that I’m an artist, but often wonder if it’s quite a selfish thing to be doing.’
Zadie Loft speaks to Rose Electra Harris.
Review | All Is Not Well by Zadie Loft
‘In the first half, Helen’s pursuit of and infatuation for Bertram seems sweet, comical and harmless; by the second, her actions have been shown to be what they always were: sexual harassment and assault.’
Zadie Loft reviews All’s Well That Ends Well.
Fiction | I Just Died by Theo Macdonald
‘Sometimes he would sit on the sofa in his dressing gown and mumble something about the emotional labour of the commute.’
New fiction by Theo Macdonald.
Interview | Orlando Reade in Conversation by Marina Scholtz
‘I was told very early on by people in publishing that there is no market for literary criticism – none.’
Marina Scholtz speaks to Orlando Reade.
Review | Wild Seas, Wilder Cities by Judy Waite
‘The potential for individuals to make a difference is celebrated and echoed throughout this collection.’
Judy Waite reviews ‘Wild Seas, Wilder Cities’.
Essay | Evading Capture: On Writing Two Experimental Memoirs by Jen Calleja
‘There can be many different ‘correct’ translations of the same text: I think that we each have not only multiple stories we can tell about our lives, but many forms for them, too.’
Jen Calleja on writing experimental memoir.
Poetry | Two Poems by Miruna Fulgeanu
‘Yes I understand the world; it doesn’t mean I want / to do it. It’s hard!’
Two poems by Miruna Fulgeanu.
Fiction | Reasons for Not Speaking by Amaan Hyder
‘But these are not just white people, these are queer people. And what is that supposed to mean? Is queer some reliable thing?’
Short fiction by Amaan Hyder, winner of The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2024.
Essay | Syzygy, or, How to Talk to Your Dog… by Joey Connolly
‘The sheer volume of material we encounter renders our engagement with any part of it increasingly difficult.’
Joey Connolly on information overload and syzygy.