In this poetic prose piece, Jane Hartshorn’s experience of Compulsive Skin Picking Disorder leads her to explore – through physical encounters, popular culture, and past relationships – the connections that we try to see between the disparate elements of our lives, in twists and turns that often have no neat resolution.
Skiing down the snowy mountains of Virginia, Clare Moore learned to explore, to venture, to extend the limits of the possible and confront what Simone de Beauvoir once termed as the ‘timidity’ inhibiting women physically to be in the world.
In this moving and powerful piece, Author Ayo Deforge discusses bodily agency, freedom of choice and consent, and the French state’s unrelenting control over citizens’ bodies during the pandemic.
In her essay, author Katy Wimhurst explores how the experience of chronic illness challenges established (and often ableist) conventions of storytelling, opening up fiction – and indeed language itself – to new, imaginative possibilities.
Naima Rashid reflects on the pleasure and importance of the café space to her writing practise – a room of one’s own away from the demands of home and hearth.
Tara Fatehi Irani’s outdoor performance, Mishandled Archive, dismantles and remantles the archive, embodies and rebodies memories, and, in its fragmentary state, gives us something to hold whilst holding us, writes So Mayer, in their stunning reflection on the artist’s work. With contributions from Elhum Shakerifar and Sam Fisher.
In this courageous and powerful piece, Irenosen Okojie discusses the emotional abuse and exploitation Black women creatives have experienced in various arts industries and calls for greater accountability amongst white male perpetrators.
Unable to speak the same language, Leila Gamaz and her Algerian grandmother communicated through food. Here, Gamaz remembers their time cooking together and the meals savoured by all the family.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has inspired a wave of popular culture references and art historical speculation, but who was the true inspiration behind that smile, and could da Vinci’s famous painting be the trans icon we never knew we needed?
In this poetic record of responses to her close friend and collaborator, Polly Constance captures the broken forms of contact and socially distanced care many of us have encountered during lockdown.
In this personal essay, Suzannah Ball meditates on what death means for those left behind, the experience of intergenerational grief and the effect of small but continuous losses on our lives.
