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Timothy Phillips
‘I was in Sarandë as part of a journey across the entire length of the old Iron Curtain, from Norway to Azerbaijan.’
Timothy Phillips on the legacy of the Iron Curtain in Albania.
Notes on Craft
Dee Peyok
‘I wanted to learn everything there was to know about the singer and his words.’
Dee Peyok on craft and the Cambodian musician: Sinn Sisamouth.
Super-Infinite
Katherine Rundell
‘His poetry sliced through the gender binary and left it gasping on the floor.’
Katherine Rundell on John Donne.
On Washing Up and Hoverflies
Beatrice Searle
‘It may be the satisfaction of full hands that brings forth the full feeling essential for words.’
Beatrice Searle on stonemasonry.
To That Silence, I Told Everything
Xiao Yue Shan
‘To survive, difference was something that had to be mastered.’
Xiao Yue Shan on migration, absence and discovering a library at the end of the world.
Through the Smoke, Through the Veil, Through the Wind
Roger Reeves
‘In the middle of disaster, we made the unimaginable – joy.’
Roger Reeves on loss, memory and the legacy of slavery.
Notes on Craft: Does this Count?
Ben Pester
‘Is the act of complicating a perfectly nice daydream a craft?’
Ben Pester on the craft of imagination.
What Feathers Know
Stephen Rutt
‘I see a gull in a car park and they can see the place where it metabolised water into feathers, food into energy, oxygen into blood.’ Stephen Rutt on what isotopes can tell us about birds.
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘What precisely is the sibling relationship, and how does it shape our lives?’
The editor introduces the autumn issue.
Siblings
Karolina Ramqvist
‘I asked her why she hadn’t told me I had a sister before, and she said she’d thought it was for my father to tell, since she was his child.’
Karolina Ramqvist on finding her estranged siblings, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel.
A Little Closer
Angelique Stevens
‘We were twelve and thirteen and smoking cigarettes in our basement with friends – Mom and Dad at work, Hall & Oates on forty-five.’
Angelique Stevens recalls the year her sister went missing.
