Explore Essays and memoir
Sort by:
Sort by:
Uwaa: the sound of the feeling that cannot be spoken
Polly Barton
An excerpt from Fifty Sounds, a memoir by Polly Barton, translator of Aoko Matsuda and Kikuko Tsumura.
Mould
Alice Ash
‘There was fur on the window frame, and we drew into it with our fingernails: dark, mushroomy bursts.’
A new essay by Alice Ash.
Lice
A. K. Blakemore
‘I often had head lice as a child. Outbreaks circulated around my primary school on a seasonal basis.’
A new essay from the author of The Manningtree Witches.
On Vulnerability
Katherine Angel
‘Is anyone an authority on themselves, whether on their sexuality or anything else?’
An excerpt from Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again.
Notes on Craft
Natascha Bruce
‘The reader doesn’t need to have answers, but they do need to have theories.’
Having and Being Had
Eula Biss
‘What does it say about capitalism that we have money and want to spend it but we can’t find anything worth buying?’
Best Book of 1886: The Masterpiece
Summer Brennan
‘Zola’s characters are, in every sense of the term, art monsters.’
Best Book of 1959: Mrs Bridge
Sindya Bhanoo
‘When the book was published, my own parents were children in India, then a newly independent nation.’
Best Book of 1946: The Years of Anger
Robert Chandler
Robert Chandler on why The Years of Anger by Randall Swingler is the best book of 1946.
On Diane di Prima
Iris Cushing
‘Sex flowed into art, art flowed into livelihood, livelihood flowed into poetry, poetry flowed into friendship, friendship flowed into sex. The entirety of this life was sacred.’
Garden Time: The Palm Forest of W.S. Merwin
Robert Becker
‘This place, where the temperature drops noticeably as you walk into it from the road, survived William Stanley Merwin as equal parts oasis, stage set and work of art.’
The Possibility of an Emperor
Patrick Barkham
‘I had always been told that the purple emperor was rare because old woods were rare.’
