On writing

How should researchers acknowledge their selfhood in their writing? Kate Rossmanith addresses this question as both a compositional and philosophical issue, unpicking the assumptions behind the most common strategies for self-examination.

Evelyn Araluen on the pursuit of Aboriginal literary sovereignty.

Astrid Lorange reflects on what it might take – conceptually and politically – to rewrite gender as a practice of liberation rather than capture.

What a time to be reading about Annie Ernaux’s self-obliterating affair with S from the Soviet embassy in Paris, not that you’d sense that something’s in the air from the English-language reception to Getting Lost, Ernaux’s diary of the relationship, published in English last September. In the diary and in its generally admiring reviews S is described as a diplomat, apparatchik, attaché, ‘faithful servant of the USSR’ (Ernaux) and Brezhnev nostalgic/Stalin apologist when drunk. Also: ‘He is somewhat, not to say very, anti-Semitic: “Isn’t Mitterrand Jewish?” ’ Pretty standard stuff. Come on. He would have been KGB.

Can the analogy between poetry and work help us understand capitalism in the contemporary moment? Is poetry itself a form of work? 

In the blurb-saturated present, authors can decry blurbs as corrupt and silly all they like. When they publish new books, however, they will still be obliged to solicit blurbs, and most will provide them for friends and colleagues on request.

What is it that would make sticking the label of ‘writer’ onto my lapel feel justified? 

When it comes to contemporary fiction written for adults, everybody (writers and readers alike) seems to agree that it is no longer appropriate to make the forks sing, the flowers dance, or the cheeseburger speak. 

What do people think they’re doing when they’re writing novels? I’ve never found an answer that feels completely satisfying.

… King Lear in quarantine, I found myself thinking, trying to ignore the fridge and keep an eye on the younger child building Lego structures and smashing them, trying to make notes on my phone for that article about reading in quarantine, reminding myself to finish another essay about libraries, trying to imagine how it would make sense now that all the libraries were closed.