‘He told me to come round, said this time he wanted to watch me with others.’
Fiction by Leeor Ohayon.
Essay | Tory Britain’s Literary Post-Mortem by Katie Tobin
‘In the time that has lapsed between Evenings and Weekends’ period setting and today, the world has been rocked by a global pandemic, and seen Britain usher in four new Prime Ministers, one of whom was outlasted by a Tesco lettuce.’
Katie Tobin on austerity’s literary legacy.
Poetry | Two Poems by James Appleby
‘I’ll be young with you still. One stroke of pen / cancels a decade: our unfaithful room / evicts new tenants, guts our suitcases.’
Two poems by James Appleby.
Poetry | Tyrant by Meredith MacLeod Davidson
‘Did you know the T-Rex / was quite likely an excellent swimmer? / Its skeletal frame light enough to float.’
New poetry by Meredith MacLeod Davidson.
Essay | Notes on Context by Callum Tilley
‘Entwining deeply personal stories into a tense political context allows for the exploration of the effects of this context at an individual level that, while fictionalised, is also infused with reality.’
Callum Tilley on politics in art.
Essay | Voice Memories by Ian Wang
‘They are less interviews than they are extended passages of domestic caterwauling. A sound editor would have an aneurysm.’
Ian Wang on voice memories.
Review | Blue Correspondents by Oluwaseun Olayiwola
‘For all the shagginess of its visual form, from the actor’s remarkable ability to clip presence from scene to scene, to the visual grandeur of the stage’s concomitant nuts and bolts, it is a suave progression of circumstance and feeling.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola reviews Bluets at the Royal Court Theatre.
Reviews | Kafka’s Sentence by Jack Barron
‘Just as there are good and bad interpretations, there are simply good and bad misinterpretations, and discriminating between them is the key to seeing Kafka’s obscurity clearly. ‘The Metamorphosis’ is as much about unimaginability as it is boundlessly applicable allegory.’
Jack Barron reviews Kafka’s Diaries and Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka.
Interview | John Barnie on Welsh Identity, Dystopian Verse and the Anthropocene
‘When you are writing you are immersed in the moment. All that matters is the poem.’
Rose Brookfield speaks to John Barnie.
Interview | Eline Arbo on staging Annie Ernaux’s The Years
‘But still, it has this core of universality because it is written in the collective form. We can project our own lives into her stories because she allows us to do so. She invites us in with this ‘we’.’
Eline Arbo on staging The Years, at the Almeida Theatre from 27 July.
Fiction | Flamboyant by Patrick Cash
‘He wondered if it became, at some point, too late to reclaim who you want to be. Maybe some people are just Frankenstein’s personalities, stitched together through the limbs of borrowed traits.’
New fiction by Patrick Cash.
Essay | Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess by Adam Zamoyski
‘The joy of taking on a subject not previously covered by historians is that one can approach it with an open mind, uncovering and assessing virgin sources like an archaeologist.’
Adam Zamoyski on Izabela Czartoryska.
Interview | ‘Is writing about climate change a futile act?’: Daisy Hildyard on The Second Body and Emergency
‘For me, there’s something about fiction and the way meaning is not necessarily on its surface that creates room for a depth; a complexity that I can’t achieve in nonfiction.’
Rose Brookfield speaks to Daisy Hildyard about The Second Body and Emergency.
Fiction | Request for a More Complete Obituary by Viken Berberian
‘‘I was tired of being the other,’ you said during one of our Scrabble games. ‘You know, these days they even discriminate against bald, clean-shaven white men with weird- sounding names. Well, I am not exotic. I am exhausted.’’
New fiction by Viken Berberian.
Interview | Shanay Jhaveri on Night Fever: Film and Photography After Dark
‘The book really circles around the multiplicity of experiences of the night. It is a time for hedonism, but also for work and protest. They exist simultaneously and even unfold concurrently.’
Shanay Jhaveri on Night Fever: Film and Photography After Dark, out now with Koneig Books.
Essay | Literary Professionals and Other Mythical Creatures by Fernando Sdrigotti
‘To insist on seeing writing as a profession is both delusional and symptomatic of the LinkedInfication of everyday life – that very neoliberal desire to establish hierarchies between culture producers: the pros and the amateurs. This validation-seeking division is senseless, for what’s so wrong with amateurism?’
Fernando Sdrigotti on Literary Professionals.
Interview | Konstantin Akinsha and Katia Denysova on Modernism in Ukraine
‘This blend of cultural retrospection and daring artistic experimentation, fusing the international visual language of avant-garde art trends with distinctive national themes, characterizes Ukrainian art of the period.’
Konstantin Akinsha and Katia Denysova on In the Eye of the Storm, opening 29 June at the Royal Academy.
Interview | Jamieson Webster on Disorganisation & Sex
‘There’s something so powerful about what he can do with an object.’
Katie Tobin speaks to Jamieson Webster, author of Disorganisation & Sex.
Interview | ‘One word after another’: A Conversation with Hugo Williams by Jamie Cameron
‘‘God, it’s a good job though isn’t it?’ Hugo offers. I tell him I feel the same way. We both agreed: you can’t beat it.’
Jamie Cameron in conversation with Hugo Williams.
Interview | Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green on Breathing With Trees
‘I love the immediacy of the first marks on blank paper. This is often where I can see my own energy coming through.’
Annie-Rose Fiddian-Green on Breathing With Trees, now showing at Brooke-Walder Gallery.
Poetry | Needle by Michael Martin
‘I’m the way she likes anyone left behind — / undeserving, falling.’
New poetry by Michael Martin.
Poetry | Medieval Mystic Margery Kempe in Tesco by Laura Varnam
‘She’s losing tins of custard powder & / baby formula and she’s crushing the body / & blood of Christ under her arm while / John Junior tucks into a doughnut.’
New poetry by Laura Varnam.
Poetry | Vanishing Points by Christopher M James
‘The train driver’s one straight line, as / he calls to mind his schoolboy love / or stillborn child whose name haunts / like an abandoned station.’
New poetry by Christopher M James.
Interview | Michael Deagler on Early Sobrieties by Marina Scholtz
‘Sobriety does get quite uninteresting fairly fast, but if any period of sobriety is interesting, then it’s this.’
Marina Scholtz talks to Michael Deagler about his forthcoming novel, Early Sobrieties.