Explore essays and memoir
In Search of Beauty: Blackness as a Poem in Saudi Arabia
Sulaiman Addonia
Sulaiman Addonia on the slow process of rediscovering the beauty of black skin after moving to Saudi Arabia as a child.
Exhale
Beth Gardiner
‘After all my travels, I can see now what I couldn’t when I started. In the suffering pollution brings, there is also the glimmer of a different future, its outlines visible through the haze.’
How Do You Write a Memoir When You Can’t Remember?
Wendy Mitchell & Anna Wharton
Wendy Mitchell, who has been living with dementia since 2014, discusses the process of writing her memoir with her ghostwriter, Anna Wharton.
The Power of a Name
Rebecca Tamás
‘When English is the dominant everything, you can’t help wanting to fight for the little speck of the rest of your self.’
On Meeting Mrs Obama
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
‘Michelle’s story, while deeply rooted in the American story, speaks to experiences that are universal.’
Radicalisation in the Digital Age
Marc Weitzmann
Marc Weitzmann on how radicalisation happens in the digital age.
The Poem in the Pocket
Héctor Abad Faciolince
‘The note stated that it was by Borges, and I believed that, or at least I wanted to believe it.’
Ghostlands
Jennifer Kabat
Jennifer Kabat on the Anti-Rent War, one of the earliest moments of rural populism in the US, and something few know about outside the Catskill Mountains.
On High Heels and Lotus Feet
Summer Brennan
Summer Brennan on high heels, foot-binding, and our ongoing performances of gender.
A Night in the Engadine
John Kaag
John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche, camps out in the mountains of the Engadine where Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
10 Schools of Philosophy that should be better known (in the West)
Julian Baggini
The author of How The World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy explains ten of the most overlooked philosophies from around the world.
Martin Goodman | Notes on Craft
Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman on why it took him twenty years to write his latest novel, J SS Bach.
The Nine Circles
Margo Rejmer
‘The body wants to escape suffering at all costs. The body wants to live.’
Introduction
Devorah Baum & Josh Appignanesi
‘Troubling though they may be, feelings also tell us something about power and its limitations.’
Touch
Poppy Sebag-Montefiore
‘Touch had its own language, and the rules were the opposite of the ones I knew at home.’
Lazy Boy
Josh Cohen
‘I don’t see him staring back at me from the La-Z-Boy, I see me, I see a crystalline image of my own burned-out soul’
Politics in the Consulting Room
Adam Phillips & Devorah Baum
‘In politics people think they know what they want, and in psychoanalysis the assumption is that they don’t know.’ Adam Phillips in conversation with Devorah Baum.
Distilling Existence: A Study with Wilson Amunga
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor & Bernd Hartung
‘If the river makes a sound now, it is a drawn-out moan.’ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor on distilleries in Kenya, with photographs by Bernd Hartung.
The Guests
Hisham Matar
‘Strangely, it was Joseph Conrad who introduced me to Edward Said and not the other way around.’
Feeling Southern: A Patagonian Story
Fabián Martínez Siccardi
‘I was harbouring a southern feeling, a deep connection with the South of this real world, where I was born and will probably die.’
#TeamBaddiel vs #TeamBabel
David Baddiel
‘Social media has allowed everyone in the world to raise their own little flag of self’
The Tension of Transience
Chloe Aridjis
‘How unusual that April night had been, yet how normal it had seemed at the time’
How I Became an SJW
Anouchka Grose
‘I had become a pacifist in the time it took to run between the bedroom and the bathroom of a London flat.’
American Orchard
Diana Matar & Max Houghton
‘This unsettling imagery points to a dereliction of civic duty.’ Max Houghton introduces photographs by Diana Matar.
Populism and Humour
William Davies
‘As reality has grown more absurd, the job of satirists has grown harder.’
Harmflesh
Margie Orford
‘This burning girl that I am with skin stretched white hot across unfair flesh. Harmflesh.’
Two Keiths and the Wrong Piano
Hanif Kureishi
‘My response to the music had reminded me that concealed inside myself was a more excitable and open self raring to get out.’
Confessions of a White Vampire
Jeremy Narby
‘Many of the people I was living with considered me a white vampire, who killed to extract human fat.’ Jeremy Narby on the Amazonian myth of the white vampire.
First Course
Zoe Tennant
‘Indigenous chefs will tell you that their dishes are Indigenous, not Canadian. With the plate, these chefs demonstrate that the food is the land, and that the land is still theirs.’ Zoe Tennant on Indigenous cuisines.
