Explore Essays and memoir
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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.
The Hour of the Wolf
Fatima Bhutto
‘Though I have had dogs all my life, Coco is my first real companion.’
Fatima Bhutto on grief.
In the Heart of the Hall of Mirrors
Chris Dennis
‘If the heart has a great hall then it must also have a dungeon.’
Memoir by Chris Dennis.
