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 Malcolm Gaskill on witchcraft, gender-politics and being shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2022  The Wolfson History Prize revealed its shortlist for 2022 in April, showcasing the best historical non-fiction titles from the previous year including Malcom Gaskill’s The Ruin of All Witches, a dark, fascinating, real-life tale of witch-hunting in colonial New England. A leading expert in the history...

Isabelle Baafi Turkish Delight   i know .........everything .........how blood finds its way......... in the dark ........why earth spins .........but never gets dizzy .........which grown-ups are safe .............to smile at .........a wink means ........they dream about you....... a nosebleed means you told a lie.........once you learn a word .........you see it everywhere .........dirty is everywhere................. but only you see it .........a secret is a kind of...

Leon CraigStubborn Objects  I saw four things     in beautiful fashion journeying together.     Dark were their tracks, the path very black…Exeter Book Riddle 40, Paul Franklin Baum translationThree fingers and a quill move swiftly, leaving the written word black behind them, they are faster than birds when travelling over paths of gold. When trying to describe the writing of Parallel Hells,...

Jem CalderReward System  The following text is reproduced with permission from Jem Calder‘s debut collection of short stories, Reward System, examining office culture, pandemics and break-ups, and a young generation wondering 'what now?'. To order a copy, visit Faber.Six white males between the ages of twenty-seven and fifty-five are seated in a room. Their Friday late-morning conference call is over,...

Safiya Kamaria KinshasaCare for me like you would a leg injury  i would like for my presence to be a reminder you are not as young as you used to be, you can’t just dissolve from my questions & spit shot glasses. when you were soreyou grabbed your muscle, pulled, waded through denial, then recognised being gentle leads to pleasure. i used...

Guy Ware Tolstoy's Mice  He says, I don’t do that any more. .........I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have asked. Only … I’m sorry. .........Who is this apologetic woman at his door? Not at the door, not now. He has invited her in, with a gesture more than with words. She is inside, in any case, in the kitchen. He fills the kettle. Because that’s...

André Naffis-SahelyThe Bond The dry August air reeks of wood and ash and the smoke plumes leaving the rocky bowl of the San Gabriels sink to kiss the lawn.The dogs bark themselves hoarse, their frightened black throats as charred as the wounded hillsides. No refuge for coyotes, raccoons, or the striped skunkas they scatter like sparks from a camper's hearth. What is power if not the ability to...

David Hering The Crying Suite Lachrynoma: cancer of the tears. I was sent down to a stone building behind the hospital, where the man at the desk handed me my catcher and led me to a panelled room. They were using the old chapel as a ward. Twenty beds, ten each side, stretched back along the nave. A defibrillator lay on...

Submissions are now OPEN for The London Magazine's Short Story Prize 2022.  The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of its long history, from Jean Rhys to Raymond Carver and V.S. Pritchett. Our annual Short Story Competition seeks out new voices to join them. Established to encourage emerging literary talent,...

Emma Larkin on her new novel, Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok Emma Larkin is a writer and journalist living in Thailand. The author of two critically acclaimed non-fiction works, Finding George Orwell in Burma and Everything is Broken, Larkin, who writes under a pseudonym, paints a powerful picture of Burma’s turbulent political landscape. Set in her childhood stomping ground...

Paddy CreweMy Name is Yip  The following text is reproduced with permission from Paddy Crewe's debut novel, My Name is Yip, an original, voice-driven story of courage, friendship and adventure through the wonders and horrors of the American frontier. To order a copy, visit Penguin Random House.Silent Roars & Silent HowlsOne week after my birth I was yet to produce...

Elena ZolotariovNailbed  I started biting my nails at the age of five. I remember the tingling sensation, neurons responding. I remember being aware of the pain. Biting harder. I did not stop, even though they told me to. I enjoyed the tearing of the skin. How does a five-year-old know they are alive unless they feel pain? I felt most...

Jean Cocteau Rose and Alfred  The following piece is from the February 1969 edition of The London Magazine edited by Alan Ross. French poet, novelist, playwright and artist Jean Cocteau was a pioneering creative associated with the surrealist and Dadaist movements in the early 20th Century. 'Rose and Alfred' is an extract from the novel 'Le Livre Blanc', published anonymously in...

Jack Houstonjust dessert  it was then that they reachedacross the table & jammeda finger into the firmswirl of my custard& digit glistening withdrewto lick that indexslowly & purposefullyclean while I stareddown & watchedtheir knuckle’s circumferencesmoothly ooze closed Jack Houston works for Hackney's public libraries where he hosted an online lockdown poetry workshop. His work has appeared in The Butcher's Dog, Finished Creatures, Magma, Poetry London, The Rialto and Stand, a number of...

Jen CallejaDivination  TW: The following piece contains themes that some readers might find upsetting.When the rain wept and wailed and hammered its wet fists against the fences and flung itself down on the grass over and over again for two weeks, everyone in the valley was dismissive of it. After it had blown itself out and made way for the...

Natalie ShawIce House Love He rather liked the ice house No, he was already a little in love with the ice house No, even before they had been properly introduced No, or even metAh my frozen lake       -     all 300 tonnes! - Ah its stately melt AhThis Ice is clean Six inches thick and remarkably clean Remarkably cleanImport duty set arbitrarily high The ice men came The...

Will StoneThe Filth and the Fury – England’s Litter Problem  In spring 2021, the national road network of England lies in a state of unprecedented decay. Most roads of all kinds, major and minor have greatly deteriorated, worn out by an ever-increasing number of vehicles with an ever-decreasing level of maintenance, shabbily patched or left unrepaired some barely have any...

 Daisy Johnson at The London Book Fair  After a two-year hiatus The London Book Fair returned earlier this month, reuniting the publishing community and sharing the international opportunities of literature to a global stage. In 2022 the spotlight was shone on Catalan Literature. ‘Spotlight: Books in Catalan’ encompassed a series of panel events with some of the finest writers, illustrators...

Serena AlagappanShop Local  the stone pine is local, but a blueberry plant sprouts rampant: the wife takes to it with shears; she doesn’t mind the bees.her smash of avocado isn’t local, but it’s heaping with feta in a square city with prime dimensions.she drinks jitterless CBD infused cold brew, bred on campus, by two buddies in a frat house.before the tech bubble, she needed maps. her...

Nicola HealeyA Newer Wilderness ‘But Light a newer Wilderness / My Wilderness has made –’ – Emily Dickinson There is a world that must lie, always, just beneath and around the corner from things as they are.Where the moon is more moonly, birdsong almost hurts and words leap out of their lettery shells.Each articulate leaf and irradiated cloud appears in relief, pristine as newly minted coins.Incessant thoughts, a murder of...

Dmitry Blizniuk (trans. Sergey Gerasimov)A Winter Morning a winter morning is like a crumpled cigarette the tobacco is spilled out the sidewalk is strewn with sand the color of the yellow filter a dog’s paw prints are left across the thin bleak dirty snow a janitor is smoking beside the garbage bins like a Venetian gondolier from a Dali's painting – and the beauty of the morning oozes...

Erik MartinyAn Interview with Quentin Leclerc   Quentin Leclerc is an up-and-coming author, one of the rising stars of Les Editions de L’Ogre, an indie French publisher that prizes linguistic creativity. I interviewed him about his latest novel and an iconoclastic manifesto he wrote with author Fabien Clouette.With the Breton author Fabien Clouette, you penned a playful literary manifesto called SPEEDBOAT....

Dorothy RichardsonData for a Spanish Publisher  Editor's NoteThis essay was sent to me on January 3, 1951, by the author of the twelve-part sequence novel 'Pilgrimage', by way of providing biographical information for an article on her life and work which I was preparing for the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'. In an accompanying letter, Miss Richardson wrote, in part: 'Always so far,...

Fernando SdrigottiPier  It's four thirty but the sun still stings - it must be forty and it's so humid you could drown. We drag our feet on the burning pavement and try to shelter under the trees but they aren't old enough to give shade; eventually we stop zigzagging and just walk in a straight line. The cicadas and the...