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Explore Essays and memoir

Notes on Craft

Juliet Jacques

Juliet Jacques on writing her trans and non-binary characters into being.

Pourquoi avec son Père?

Jeet Thayil

‘To read Baudelaire, he said, is to gather up the world and bring it inside.’

Jeet Thayil on remembering Baudelaire in Paris and Cochin.

Ill Feelings

Alice Hattrick

‘Unravelling refers to a textile that was once complete’.

A Burning Bird

O Thiam Chin

On intimacy and national service.

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

Editor Sigrid Rausing introduces our summer issue.

A Series of Rooms Occupied by Ghislaine Maxwell

Chris Dennis

‘What is the metaphor of the room? Of the house. Of the neighborhood.’

Chris Dennis on incarceration.

Traces

Ruchir Joshi

‘Calcutta is an hourglass and each person is a grain of sand. Each day, we all pour through the opening.’

Photographs and memoir by Ruchir Joshi.

Horse

Sandra Newman

‘It was a rescue horse, but a horse.’

Memoir by Sandra Newman.

Fire and Ice

Debra Gwartney

‘The rental house is where he would die.’

Debra Gwartney on the last days of Barry Lopez.

Confusion of Tongues

Fernanda Melchor

‘For a long time I avoided saying his name.’

Tell It Slant

Hilton Als

On Renata Adler’s Speedboat.

Notes on Craft

Oli Hazzard

Poet Oli Hazzard on writing his debut novel Lorem Ipsum, which is made up of one single 50,000-word sentence.

Tiki Girl

Amanda Lee Koe

‘One learns not to hold on too tightly to anything in Singapore’

The Safe Zone

Nina Mingya Powles

An essay from Small Bodies of Water, the winner of the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize.