Explore Essays and memoir
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Aliens and Us
Ken Thompson
‘Japanese knotweed is a terrific late-season source of nectar for both bees and hoverflies, but that’s not much of a headline, is it?’
Upirngasaq (Arctic Spring)
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
‘Everyone benefits from a frozen Arctic. The future of the Arctic environment, and the Inuit it supports, is inextricably tied to the future of the planet.’
Kōbō Abe
Thomas McMullan
‘Against the immensity of things, look at what you can grasp, he seems to say. Grasp it tightly.’
Thomas McMullan on the writing of Kōbō Abe.
Paris Desert, Tokyo Mirage
Hitomi Kanehara
‘What I thought was the world yesterday, today I couldn’t even touch its outline.’
Two essays by Hitomi Kanehara.
Cheating
Ahmet Altan
‘I get into the police car with four officers from the Anti-Terrorism Branch. They are taking me to the prison.’
Inferno
Catherine Cho
‘My son was eight days shy of his 100-day celebration when I started to see devils in his eyes.’
Catherine Cho’s Inferno is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.
The Death of Distance
Samrat Choudhury
‘It might take only one soldier being shot across the Chinese–Indian border for war to begin. The howitzers, tanks, missiles and fighter jets are lined up, ready and waiting for action.’
The Only Way Out Is Through
Hana Pera Aoake
‘Hiding in kumara pits on the side of volcanoes, I was born with an egg inside me ready to be baked.’
On Meeting Margaret Busby
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Margaret Busby was Britain’s first Black woman publisher. At the age of twenty, she was also one of its youngest.
Work, or the Swet Shop Boys
Hilary Plum
‘My work life – like, maybe, yours – is built around another, non-paying vocation.’
Cooking from Memory
Barclay Bram
Barclay Bram reports from Chengdu – on the attention to detail in Sichuanese cooking.
Notes on Craft
Amina Cain
‘I would rather work in front of, or behind, a story. I want to leave a chain of images that remain in the reader’s mind.’
