Explore essays and memoir
Dead in Venice
Masahiko Shimada
‘If I wasn’t a fish spawned in the Brenta river, why was I so compelled to keep returning?’ Masahiko Shimada on his many trips to Venice.
Talking Italish
Antonio Melechi
‘For my mother and father, the past and present had both become foreign countries.’
Brontez Purnell Is Everything
Michelle Tea
Novelist, zinester, dancer, go-go-boy, punk, filmmaker, actor, performer, Brontez Purnell is everything.
Amit Chaudhuri | First Sentence
Amit Chaudhuri
‘A scene in which nothing is ostensibly happening will absorb me; so will a paragraph that contains no vital piece of information.’
The Tamarind is Always Sour
Keane Shum
‘By law, the more than one million Rohingya in Myanmar are almost all excluded from Myanmar citizenship, making them the largest stateless group in the world.’
On Jesus’ Son
Eli Goldstone
‘Jesus’ Son is a song, a glorious clear hymn, full of the notes of bad decisions, of rotten fucking luck, of causing real and lasting damage to yourself and to the people around you.’
Remembering Denis Johnson
J. Ryan Stradal
When people ask me what Denis was like, I always think about how he listened far more intently than just about any writer I’d ever met.
Russia on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Liza Alexandrova-Zorina
‘The Russian people suffer from a victim complex: they believe that nothing depends on them, and by them nothing can be changed.’
Microtravel: Home and Away
Vahni Capildeo
‘The place I thought I knew best had become unknown territory, by the perhaps not-so-simple process of taking a few steps.’
I Am Lying
Miranda Doyle
‘Findings show that the bigger the brain, the more frequent the deceit.’ Miranda Doyle on why we lie.
Any Idiot Can Write a Book
Nell Stevens
A production company is looking for contestants to participate in a new TV show, modelled on The Apprentice. They are seeking unpublished writers who have completed a novel.
All That Was Familiar
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
The story of two women fleeing Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria.
Between Them
Richard Ford
‘It was my child’s outlook to think most things were right. And yet if life’s eternal drama is of events seeking a more perfect state, their life and mine was not that.’
Terra Nova
Robert Moor
Robert Moor remembers hitch-hiking across Newfoundland: ‘The way to pronounce Newfoundland, Bill and Sue instructed me, is to remember that it rhymes with understand.’
Things I Didn’t Know
Wiam El-Tamami
‘When people would ask me what I was doing in Istanbul, I would explain that I’m a freelance writer and translator, and I move a lot. I move intuitively, I would say: places call to me.’
I come from a place on your bucket list
Deepti Kapoor
Deepti Kapoor on travel, authenticity and the peculiarity of being Indian in Uganda.
Elif Batuman | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Elif Batuman
‘The power imbalance built into travel writing is just a heightened version of an imbalance that’s there in all writing.’
Yet Trouble Came
Phillip Lewis
Phillip Lewis on writing emotional autobiography. ‘A sincere observation followed by a sincere utterance is the most powerful and effective form of communication.’
The Bonds of Trauma
Daniel Magariel
‘An often-unacknowledged truth about families that deal with addiction is that the bonds of trauma can be as challenging to quit as the habit itself.’
Morwari Zafar | Is Travel Writing Dead?
Morwari Zafar
‘What satellites and the internet don’t do is give a voice to experience. And that’s where travel writing endures.’
The Back Way and the Way Back
Will Boast
Despite emerging from two decades of misrule under Yahya Jammeh, many Gambians still aspire to go ‘the back way’ into Europe.
