Explore Essays and memoir
Sort by:
Sort by:
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.
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.’
Introduction
Sigrid Rausing
‘I don’t think we have quite processed yet what those months of isolation did to us – a time of fear and daily death tolls and also of unprecedented curtailment of our freedom of movement. But there were consolations.’
Editor Sigrid Rausing introduces the issue.
