Issue 21 – SPRING 2023
M. JOHN HARRISON takes his hard drives to the river
New poems by JESSA BROWN and EVE GRUBIN
‘Signs and Wonders’ by TIMNA FIBERT: The winner of this year’s Galley Beggar Short Story Prize
Bear versus cone: Art by STAFFAN GNOSSPELIUS
Marina Benjamin’s clean sweep of the past, reviewed by CATHERINE TAYLOR
MICHAEL CAINES meets the Great White Bard
Tempus fugue-it: WILL EAVES rediscovers what works best
New Englishes: JEN CALLEJA on current views of the translator’s task
Issue 20 – WINTER 2022
Indie presses: A celebration for 2022
MARION RANKINE on the Anthropocene’s conscientious objectors
ROBERT EAGLESTONE on statuesque culture wars – in Streatham and beyond
New poems by MARK FIDDES, GEOFF PARKER, PHILIP HANCOCK and YUSEF AZAD
New fiction in translation by TINE HØEG (translated by MISHA HOEKSTRA) and HELENE BUKOWSKI (translated by JEN CALLEJA)
‘I’m not going to see you again . . .’: A letter from WILL EAVES
Issue 19 – WINTER 2022
Inspired by Sappho: A women’s revolution, according to KATE WEBB
New poems by YANITA GEORGIEVA and GEORGIE EVANS
Performing extremes: SAM MOORE on the art of Ron Athey
HARRY McNAMARA on a brother’s grief
ANEESA DAWOJEE’s fighters of South London
Crushes and capitalism: New poetry reviewed by SUPRIYA DHALIWAL
New fiction by WILL EAVES and JEN CALLEJA
Issue 18 – SUMMMER 2022
DESIREE REYNOLDS’s debt to Toni Morrison
YARA RODRIGUES FOWLER interviews JANEL PINEDA (plus new poems by the latter and MAITREYABANDHU)
A spiritual journey in verse, traced by SARAH-JEAN ZUBAIR
Lockdown lipograms by ALAN JENKINS and GWENDOLINE RILEY
A South African story retold by LIAM BISHOP
JONATHAN GIBBS on his Personal Anthologies
WILL EAVES on letters from South Sudan
Back to the writing workshop with JEN CALLEJA
Issue 17 – SPRING 2022
JACOB ROLLINSON on the calamity in Xinjiang
Kay Dick’s dystopia revisited by RUBY HAMILTON
MARCEL BEYER in search of Linton Kwesi Johnson
GEORGIE EVANS’s journey through suburban socialism
‘Anaesthetics’ by NUZHAT BUKHARI
‘Arrival’ by GURNAIK JOHAL, winner of this year’s Galley Beggar Short Story Prize
Two new poems by NANCY CAMPBELL
BRUNO DIAZ takes a creative writing course
JEN CALLEJA on the words that don’t quite work
WILL EAVES on Florence Sunnen’s marvellous archetypes
Issue 16 - WINTER 2022
ANJALI JOSEPH on re-reading Madame Bovary
At the (virtual) SMALL PUBLISHERS FAIR
New poems by TIM MACGABHANN and IAN SANSOM
FRED KELLY goes back to Andrew O’Hagan’s Glasgow
A very British story of moral panics, health kicks
and NUDISM
SAM MOORE on hearing Dodie Bellamy’s hybrid voice
Messianic Dune: The new film and the book considered
by YUSEF AZAD
Pick a card, any card: P.J. CARNEHAN on Sophie Herxheimer
JEN CALLEJA adopts an approach
WILL EAVES is haunted by M.R. James
Issue 15 – AUTUMN 2021
NEIL GRIFFITHS on the critical work of Arts Emergency
Inside the black box – a fight for justice, by YARA RODRIGUES FOWLER
SANA GOYAL on mothering in the age of Trump
‘Stripe’: A new story by DAVID ROSE
RITA KEEGAN at the South London Gallery
New poems by CAROLINE CLARK, SUZANNAH V. EVANS and PHILIP HANCOCK
PHILLIPPA SNOW on malady and metaphor
Getting out and about again, with KATIE DA CUNHA LEWIN
New poetry reviewed by MAITREYABANDHU and DZIFA BENSON
CHARLES BOYLE on Elizabeth Bowen’s last novel
WILL EAVES is hearing voices again
JEN CALLEJA is publishing Maltese literature
Issue 14 – SUMMER 2021
‘What more Slaves do we need to make us profitable?’: GABRIEL GBADAMOSI’s drama about a vicious trade
KIRSTY GUNN on Norah Lange’s peculiar genius
A Venetian vignette by ELISABETTA BALDISSEROTTO
Percival Everett’s achievement, according to TOM CONAGHAN
South London perambulations with KEITH MILLER
RISHI DASTIDAR revisits the New Acoustic Movement
CAL REVELY-CALDER on a dispassionately observed decline
MARION RANKINE on Isobel Wohl’s novel about a crisis
New fiction by KATE HORSLEY and JOACHIM MEYERHOFF (the latter translated by JEN CALLEJA)
ORA RAMMALA on portraying people ethically
New poetry by YUSEF AZAD and GEOFF PARKER
A bite to eat with WILL EAVES
Issue 13 – SPRING 2021
New fiction by EDWARD HOGAN and ELSA COURT
New poetry by MOHAMMAD RAZAI and SUZANNAH V. EVANS
CHRISTOPHER SHRIMPTON on Ann Quin’s singular uncertainties
A poetic weather report (via Alice Oswald and Paul Keegan) by SARAH MOORE
GABBY MORRIS takes the Druidic path
JANE DARCY asks what we can learn from the old (Russian) masters
JEN CALLEJA is sentenced to translating a single sentence
A musical interlude by WILL EAVES
ALEX CHRISTOFI on Mary Gaitskill’s feline reckoning
Issue 12 – WINTER 2020
‘The Waste Books’: A new poem by YUSEF AZAD
‘Nacre’: An essay by SASKIA VOGEL
KUNYALALA NDLOVU on statues in the age of Black Lives Matter
BILLIE WALKER asks if you can be a reader of crime thrillers still believe ACAB
ADANIA SHIBLI on not writing a book review
P. J. CARNEHAN on a tour of suburban London
JALEH BRAZELL on the art of Artemisia Gentileschi
‘The Scarred Tissue of a Ship’s Hull’: An essay by FRANCIS NENIK
LIAM BISHOP on new fiction from Montenegro, and CATHERINE TAYLOR on the reissued wartime stories of Rose Macaulay and Sylvia Townsend Warner
JULIA PARRY on an affair with Elizabeth Bowen
WILL EAVES on the William S. Burroughs treatment
JEN CALLEJA on the translating of Haruki Murakami
. . . and ‘Max’s Pizzeria’: A short story by AMBER MUSAWI
Issue 11 – AUTUMN 2020
‘Edit History’: A new story by JEN CALLEJA
FELICITY JAMES reports from a West London dream-world
Theatre in (and after) the crisis, as seen by ANNETTE BROOK, WILL RATHBONE and REBEKAH MURRELL
ALISTAIR HALL’s gallery of London street signs
Revisiting Bret Easton Ellis (yes, under lockdown) with SAM MOORE
New poems by SAM GUGLANI and WILL EAVES
RACHEL GENN doesn’t want to go to rehab (no, no, no)
KOUSHIK BANERJEA tells tales of growing up
The Brighton drift – as drawn by KATRIONA CHAPMAN
Issue 10 – SUMMER 2020
New poems by AMINEH ABOU KERECH, GEOFF PARKER and BRIDGET FROST
JEN CALLEJA on the first English translations of Thai fiction
Dispatches from the Megacity by AYODELE OLOFINTUADE and JESSICA ZAFRA
ALICE WICKENDEN and ROB PALK on their personal cases of trust betrayed . . . and ROSIE ŠNAJDR on an incel’s progress
9 x 9: NICHOLAS ROYLE on Giles Gordon
KATIE DA CUNHA LEWIN on bookshop bargains
EMMA BOLLAND on Vahni Capildeo, KAT PAYNE WARE on Stephen Sexton and WILL EAVES on Lisa Gorton
GIANMARCO DEL RE goes from Brazil to Denmark Hill
Issue 9 – SPRING 2020
PETER BLEGVAD imagines, observes and remembers
From Brexit-land to Brooklyn, with ISOBEL WOHL
PETER WILLIS sells Books in Peckham
Visiting the DEUTSCHE BÖRSE PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE exhibition at the Photographers Gallery
‘The underworld, the deep sea . . .’, according to FANNY HOWE
New fiction from around the world reviewed by BRIGETTE MANION, HALIMA HASSAN, MARION RANKINE and CLAIRE KOHDA HAZELTON
JEN CALLEJA on the lifeline that is literature is translation
Issue 8 – WINTER 2019
Alia Trabucco Zeran on the Chilean frontline
War zones and worse: P. J. Carnehan and Phoebe Thomson on fiction
Moving the Ovalhouse, as seen by Amber Massie-Blomfield
The art of New Contemporaries
Charles Boyle at the Small Publishers Fair
So hot right now: Sean Mahoney on men’s mental health
Jonathan Gibbs goes back to the House of Autofiction
‘At the Magazine Party’: A new poem by Jordan Davis
Three from the Sea: A trio of (fish) tales by Florence Sunnen
Stephanie Sy-Quia on DNA, sugar and slavery
‘What is ability?’ (asks Will Eaves)
Issue 7 – AUTUMN 2019
Tackling the arts emergency, by Bridget Minamore
New poems by Lisa Gorton and Kat Payne Ware
The Ritzy, the riots and the rest: Brixton, 1981, as witnessed by Kate Webb
Jonathan Barnes encounters the uncanny Nightjar
A woman of colour and a crisis of mental health: Rowan Hisayo Buchanon reviewed by Vera Chok
Alex Christofi asks what’s so great about Thomas Bernhard
A Jewish family and its stories by Dana Von Suffrin, translated by Jen Calleja
Catherine Taylor: Chantal Akerman and Annie Ernaux on mothers and daughters
Will Eaves on (the) parental art
Alex Marraccini on poets who dare to eat a peach (maybe even more than one)
Issue 6 – SUMMER 2019
“Nabqa in the old fort”: An unpublished story by Naguib Mahfouz
Thomas Bunstead on the path to Extinction Rebellion
A new poem by Bridget Frost
Poetry’s identity problem, as identified by Dave Coates
Rachel Genn on two encounters with the Cold War
Stephanie Sy-Quia meets Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo lawyer
Rishi Dastidar on a lost novelist, hiding in plain sight
Two classic novels: Grazia Ietto-Gillies tips her hat to Herne Hill
Jen Calleja goes through translation hell
Alan Turing: his crisis and ours, by Will Eaves
Issue 5 – SPRING 2019
Alice Wadsworth and Christopher Impey go behind bars
Marion Rankine and Leon Craig on new fiction
New poems by Barbara Barnes and Maitreyabandhu
Luke Thompson on the self-declared genius of Colin Wilson
Doing the rounds with Kevin Boniface
Will Eaves celebrates the art of Ken Kiff
“Befriended”: a story by Jen Calleja
Alexandra Marraccini ventures into anti-Georgic zone (aka, Sussex)
Issue 4 – WINTER 2018
Not the Books of the Year
Gwen Burlington on Chris Kraus’s art of the hustle
Three poems by Pascale Petit
“Oleander”: a story by Jacqueline Bishop
Iain Sinclair on Jeff Nuttall’s Bomb Culture
Katy Darby on the rise of the novella
Bruno Diaz and Paul Mendez on gentrified (and pre-gentrified) Brixton
Will Eaves takes the Via Fossia
Jen Calleja at home with (Saint) Jerome
Issue 3 – AUTUMN 2018
And the wooden spoon goes to . . . the Man Booker Prize? asks Alex Cristofi
A poetic progress from Benjamin Zephaniah to Hera Lindsay Bird, courtesy of Sarala Estruch and Jade Cuttle
Alice Wadsworth and Best Practice on zines versus zero hours
Foye McCarthy’s transcendental meditations
New fiction by Richard Lea and Henriette Vasarhelyi
Jen Calleja on two life-changing novels
Will Eaves on music and friendship
New poems by Edie Michael and Mohamed Assaf
Issue 2 – SUMMER 2018
Oliver Harris on three tales of South London
Versions of the self: Jonathan Gibbs on Sheila Heti and Brigette Manion on Annie Ernaux
Halima Hassan gets a cleaner’s eye view of the NHS
Sophie Herxheimer meets Alice Notley
Rishi Dastidar’s acute case of Judith syndrome
Catherine Taylor on Iris Murdoch’s Shakespearean fantasia
Tess Davidson savours an Irish banquet
Into the woods with Tim Bird and Will Eaves
Freelance woes and Japanese joys of Jen Calleja
Poems by Fríða Ísberg and Momtaza Mehri – and a lament from Palestine
Issue 1 – SPRING 2018
The story of an imprisoned writer by Hamid Ismailov
Marion Rankine on the surreal trail of Leonora Carrington
New prose poems by Inua Ellams and Angelina D’Roza
Vera Chok in praise of Nikesh Shukla
Rishi Dastidar goes looking for Douglas Coupland
Alexandra Marracini heads back to the (neo-medieval) future
Jen Calleja on the perils of translation
Will Eaves attends a screening (long ago)