On the 2nd November, the website Bookshop was launched in the UK, with the intention of financially supporting local, independent bookshops, particularly during these arduous times. Since lockdown was implemented in March, Amazon’s profits have almost doubled to a sickening quarterly profit of $5.2 billion. It seems many of its customers find the ease of […]Read More
“It was a cool evening in late summer when Wallace, his father dead for several weeks, decided that he would meet his friends at the pier after all.” Brandon Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life, is a precise and intimate narrative about coping with childhood trauma. Set over the span of just a few days, Taylor […]Read More
Irish author Anna Burns has won the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award, for her fierce novel Milkman. This award stands as one of the world’s most valuable literary prizes, presenting Burns with a colossal £100,000. In fact, Burns is the first writer from Northern Ireland and the fourth woman to win the prize since it […]Read More
This is itI’m not coming after youI’m going to lie down for half an hourThis is itI’m not going downOn your memoryI’m not rubbing my face in it anymoreI’m going to yawnI’m going to stretchI’m going to put a knitting needleUp my noseAnd poke out my brainI don’t want to love youFor the rest of […]Read More
Last week, an incredible shortlist for the Dublin Literary Award was announced. Anna Burns, Olga Tokarczuk and Tayari Jones, previous winners of the Booker Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Women’s Prize, are among eight of the women to be nominated. With three novels in translation, the award includes writers from Canada, France, […]Read More
The winners of the Orwell Prize have just been announced. This is an extremely reputable award which celebrates political writing as an art form. As Orwell once wrote, “I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is […]Read More
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”– James Baldwin Upon first reading James Baldwin, I was immediately struck by the vibrancy of his writing, his poignant portrayal of racial injustice and his ability to create deeply complex and authentic characters. As a revolutionary writer and […]Read More
As this July marks the 25th anniversary of Elliott Smith’s self-titled second album, Kill Rock Stars (Smith’s record label) have announced their plans for its reissue as a deluxe edition, to be released on 28th August 2020. It will also include a 52-page coffee table book of previously unseen photographs by JJ Gonson, with handwritten lyrics and reminiscences from Smith’s colleagues and friends.Read More
“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” — Audre Lorde In recent years, poetry has […]Read More
During these dubious and unprecedented days many of us will be spending isolated, I often find that the antidote for my anxiety comes in the form of an engrossing and powerful novel. As these next few weeks will undoubtedly be unsettling, here is a compilation of novels which offer a mental escape from these harrowing and fraught times. Read More
By the end of the first page, we are immediately immersed into the unconventional mind of Janina, dismissed by everyone around her as merely a mad old woman, yet endlessly insightful and imperfectly attuned to the world around her. This comic tale of death and vengeance is richly philosophical and oddly humorous, written in witty, melancholic prose, it is an ode to anyone whose sanity is questioned purely because they refuse to conform to society’s ‘norm’. Read More
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