‘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.
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.
Wheels by Amy Eustace
‘My first panic attack happened on the way to the hospital. A darkness like the one in the belly of the car wash. A feeling like falling, endlessly, through an airless abyss.’
Short fiction by Amy Eustace
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.
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.
Fiction | Heat Signature by Idra Novey
‘In my calculations for our one-year stay here, I didn’t consider whether the layered emotional outfits I’ve assembled for my parenting persona in Rio might not fit here.’
Short fiction by Idra Novey.
Essay | Cusk, Experimentalism and the Limits of Autofiction by Zuhri James
‘For all its claims to fluid, amorphous prose untethered to plot and traditional character development, autofiction – and herein lies the irony – remains firmly representational, if not entirely conventional.’
Zuhri James on Rachel Cusk and autofiction.
Interview | Jacqueline Feldman: ‘It’s salutary to spend time around people who have arranged their lives in radical ways.’
Julia Steiner interviews Jacqueline Feldman about Precarious Lease: The Paris Document: a book of literary reportage on Parisian squats of the early 2010s.
Fiction | The Overpass by Jiaqi Kang
‘All those who disappeared had to come back. Or at least, they had to announce their intention to disappear before they disappeared. Otherwise, how would anybody know?’
Awarded second place in the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize 2025, ‘The Overpass’ by Jiaqi Kang.
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.
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.