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Explore Essays and memoir

The Right to Intimacy

Raphaela Rosella & Nicole R. Fleetwood

‘Rosella and her co-creators curate an archive of pain, of endurance, of love and belonging, of alienation and disconnection.’

Nicole R. Fleetwood introduces the photography of Raphaela Rosella.

Hölzung

Muhammad Salah & Esther Kinsky

‘But what is an unencumbered gaze? And where does it begin to see?’

Esther Kinsky introduces a photoessay by Muhammad Salah.

Being-in-the-World

Geoff Dyer

‘Even experienced users get scared because it’s so far out.’

Geoff Dyer on ageing and understanding the self.

Notes on Craft

Amy Bloom

‘Revision for me is relief. It is reassurance.’

Amy Bloom on the pleasures of revising.

The Lapwing Act

Patrick Galbraith

‘We claimed the places that were theirs and they were forced to take refuge on what we left behind.’

An excerpt from In Search of One Last Song.

A World Run by Mothers

Saba Sams

‘In all the years I spent dreaming of motherhood, not once did I dream of men. If anything, I expected that romance would be my downfall.’

Saba Sams on the women who raised her, and becoming a mother at 22.

Notes on Craft

Celia Paul

‘A painting is like a letter: they both live in the constant present.’

Celia Paul on writing Letters to Gwen John.

The Forgotten War

Leila Guerriero

Leila Guerriero investigates the collusion that left so many graves unmarked decades after the Falklands War.

The Fire

Tom de Freston

A fire breaks out in Tom de Freston’s painting studio.

Notes on Craft

Preti Taneja

‘Traditional hand-craft becomes literary practice; becomes critical theory.’

Preti Taneja on intertextuality.

Personal Growth

Marina Benjamin

‘Refusal is the last recourse of the powerless.’

Marina Benjamin on her years of not eating, and not growing.

Notes on Craft

Nataliya Deleva

‘I didn’t want to write Arrival from a place of exile or outcast.’ Nataliya Deleva on writing in her adoptive language.

The Trip to Rose Cottage

Cal Flyn

‘People washed up here, and remained.’

Cal Flyn visits the abandoned island of Swona.

Literary Exhibitionism

Nataliya Meshchaninova

‘In my diary I was always sassy, proud, and forbidding.’