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“There is no need for a passport when you arrive in Melilla from Spain. This is Spain!” says the officer. “And when I go through the fence?” “That would be a different matter,” he says, looking uncomfortable. As an afterthought, he adds, “You cannot use euros beyond the fence!”

Over the white cliffs of Dover, Europe is moving on without the United Kingdom. This volume visits the continent’s high mountain roads, small city streets, and new borders through travel writing, short fiction, and poetry. These travel stories from Europe beyond Brexit will make you sigh with content, gasp with surprise, pause with reflection, and laugh with delight.

This collection includes stories by Mark Anthony Jarman, Coreen Grant, Ewan Morrison, Andriana Minou, Billy Letford, Alex Russell, Renee C Winter, Kieron Blake, and Ian McKenzie. They are joined by the poetry of Katrina Dybzynska, Timothy Dodd, VC McCabe, Susanna Lang, Deborah Tyler-Bennett, and Peter David Goodwin as well as artwork from Monsie, Christopher McColl, and Ann Marie Sekeres. This volume also features interviews with the editor of the Wild Women anthology, Open Book’s Mariella Frostrup; the international-bestseller travel author, Sara Wheeler; and one of most respected travel writers, Pico Iyer.

With Brexit, the borderless map of Europe has become a little bit smaller. But for Brits, their backyard is now a whole lot smaller. Yet travel too is changing with increasing emissions and the climate crisis. Jet planes are out; trains and electric vehicles are in. Novelty international holidays are going; longer exchanges are here to stay. And “that is the essence of travel writing,” explains Mariella Frostrup. The travel stories in this volume take us out our front door, over the cliffs of Dover, and into a new day.

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#cyberpunkNOW Available in Print!

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If you’ve been waiting to hold a print copy of the London Reader, the first standalone Anthology Edition is here in time for the holidays!

Introducing #cyberpunkNOW and the Dystopian Moment, The London Reader Volume One! Available now from Amazon in paperback as well as on kindle.

Alongside cyberpunk stories from the present and near future, #cyberpunkNOW and the Dystopian Moment features interviews with the founders of cyberpunk and sci-fi greats, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Volume One also includes a brand-new dystopian tech-thriller story from Lena Ng, author of Under an Autumn Moon.

The London Reader is cooperatively produced, so #cyberpunkNOW is owned by its contributors. When you buy a copy, you get a great collection of stories, poetry, and interviews, and the authors inside share the purchase price.

Read great writers. Support great writing.

Check out #cyberpunkNOW…

Cyberpunk 2077: What does the game say about the world today?

Interview with jakub szamałek, lead writer for cyberpunk 2077.

JAKUB SZAMAŁEK is a Polish novelist and video game writer. He has written six books in his native polish and now works as a writer for the game company CD Projekt RED , which produced The Witcher series and recently Cyberpunk 2077 . He is a graduate of Oxford University and holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. We reached out to Szamałek to ask him about the influence of cyberpunk fiction on the game, the shape of game narratives, and how he sees the cyberpunk genre now.

The London Reader: Your first crime novels were informed by history, but since then you’ve turned to exploring the impact of new technologies on our lives. What led you from history into writing novels (and games) that explore the near and coming future?

Jakub Szamałek: For a long time, I had very little interest in new technologies. Whenever I’d hear anything about megabytes, megabits, or megahertzes, I’d just zone out of the conversation. I assumed, naïvely, that if I don’t concern myself with new technologies, they won’t play a big part in my life. This was flat out wrong, of course; the internet has spilled out of the computers and permeated every aspect of our everyday existence.

I remember the very moment I realized this, the end of my sweet ignorance. I was on parental leave, pushing the pram with my sleeping seven-month-old daughter, and listening to the radio. A soft-spoken cybersecurity researcher told the shocked interviewer how paedophiles use new technologies to share pictures and videos of abused children or to find and groom their next victim. I felt my skin crawl; the contrast between what I saw in front of me, my sleeping daughter, and what I heard, was harrowing. I realized that I can no longer afford to be ignorant, that I need to know more about the net that surrounds us, ever more tightly, if not for my own sake, then for the sake of my daughter.

When I got back, I emailed a few friends of mine—programmers, white hat hackers, cryptographers—and asked them how can I catch up, what should I watch and read. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. Since then, I’ve trained with open intelligence gurus, consulted malware analysts and gone to an academic conference on AI at one of the world’s top universities. Though I’m no expert, I’ve grasped enough to realize that new technologies have, in a very short span of time, deeply affected our society, and most of us don’t even realize it. Most people still think—just like I did, a few years back—that new technologies are a niche interest, a hobby for nerds. I felt that we need a wake-up call, but one that would be as accessible as possible, with a wide reach. And so I started writing Hidden Web, a series which combines deep research with a fast-paced tech-thriller.

LR: Hidden Web tracks the jarring impact of technology through shocking scenes like a live-streamed murder and through immediate issues such as fake news, troll-farms, and the influence of money and social media on political campaigns. What drew you to these themes? Are you concerned about the impact technology will have on democracy? Have any of these pressing subjects made their way into your work on Cyberpunk 2077?

Jakub Szamałek: Well, after 2016 it’s hard not to be concerned about the impact of technology on democracy. Its influence is multifaceted: it changed how news stories are written, shared and consumed, completely redefined political campaigning and made outside meddling in electoral processes shockingly easy and cheap. And all the while, Silicon Valley behemoths pretend that they don’t see the problem and are powerless to fix it. Worryingly, it doesn’t look like things are going to improve any time soon. I agree wholeheartedly with Carole Cadwalladr that in the current internet landscape, liberal democracies cannot function normally.

But what I’m personally most worried about is the death of privacy. It’s already happened; we just haven’t realized it. In the era of Big Data and AI, even the most innocuous data can be used to uncover our secrets and decipher our most intimate thoughts. Just a few data points from social media are enough to determine our sexual orientation; a few hundred—a data trail generated over just a few days of activity—is sufficient to create a detailed psychological profile. Purportedly “anonymous” data collected by internet providers and mobile advertisers can be deanonymized with shocking ease and then used to follow our every move online—and in the real world too. Pictures of our faces, taken by omnipresent cameras, can be effortlessly tied to our identities, as demonstrated by the Clearview AI scandal. We’re creating an infrastructure for automated mass surveillance, assuming it will not be put to use. I very much hope we will not be proven wrong.

We covered some of these topics in Cyberpunk 2077—but the game universe is not an attempted extrapolation of our own world. It has its own, unique feel. Some of the topics we tackle in the game will definitely feel familiar, though—like environmental degradation or extreme social stratification and its consequences. At first glance, the world of Cyberpunk 2077 is colourful and exciting, but it has a grim, disturbing undercurrent. It’s a future I hope will never materialize.

LR: You’ve written fiction for both novels and for popular video games, like The Witcher and now Cyberpunk 2077, both originally inspired by novelized fiction. Which kind of story do you prefer to tell? And what do you find the most engaging with each medium?

Jakub Szamałek: I love working in both! What I enjoy the most in crafting narratives in video games is the nonlinearity. The player isn’t a passive consumer; she’s given agency to change the course of the story. Figuring out how to split the storyline—and where each of the branches should lead—is not unlike solving a hard puzzle: challenging, but uniquely satisfying. The best thing about writing novels, in my experience, is having total control over the story. There are no budget constraints to consider, no technical difficulties to overcome; anything is possible.

LR: The novel is an art form that is just a few centuries older than video games, and we see games such as Cyberpunk 2077 pushing narrative into collaborative spaces responding to player choices. The medium has now come full circle and there’s a whole genre of novels based around the game experience (LitRPG). Aside from the obvious reader interaction, what do you find are the main differences between telling a story in a novel and in a video game? What do the two media have in common?

Jakub Szamałek: In video games, players identify very deeply with the protagonist they control—much more so, I think, than in linear narratives, like books or movies. And no wonder: after all, they are drawn in, given the reins. Players feel like they star in the story; the boundary between them and the character on the screen dissipates almost completely. This has tremendous consequences for storytelling. For example, most readers will get through a scene in which the main character does something ethically questionable, eg tortures his antagonist, without moral qualms; they might feel disturbed or even disgusted, but they don’t assume personal responsibility for the hero’s actions. But if you put the pad in the player’s hands and ask her to actively do the same, she will feel extreme discomfort and might prefer to quit the game than to continue the story. To give another example, a book might feature a confused protagonist, who lost his or her memory, doesn’t know what to do next, and stumbles from one event to another, largely by chance. Video game players would likely find this extremely annoying since they assume the role of the protagonist; they need to know what they have to do and why.

Of course, there are many commonalities. The building blocks are the same. Irrespective of the medium, characters need to be relatable, dialogue lines must evoke emotional reactions, and plotlines have to be resolved by the end of the story.

LR: Cyberpunk is often defined as ‘high tech; low life’ and by William Gibson, the grand-father of cyberpunk’s famous quote, “The street finds its own uses for things.” Cyberpunk in part grew out of rising inequality in the 1980s that saw punk culture rebel against corporate influence. Inequality and the influence of corporations have only grown worse since then. In many ways, we’ve come to live in the world envisioned by the early cyberpunk authors, as your own novels explore. So in 2020, what is cyberpunk? What does cyberpunk represent to you? And what is cyberpunk in 2077?

Jakub Szamałek: If I were to define cyberpunk as a genre, I’d say it explores what a sudden technological advance does to a broken society. It imagines a world where the social contract has been torn to pieces and everyone—regular people, governments, corporations—fights for themselves with cutting edge technology at their disposal. The results are rarely pretty.

For me, a cyberpunk in 2020 is someone who looks beyond the cutesy logos and user friendly interfaces of modern tech giants and tries to identify their real goals and actions. It’s someone who understands that we have a civic obligation to understand how the digital sphere is run and object to injustices therein. It’s someone who knows the value of their privacy and takes steps to protect it.

In 2077, people are given a false choice: you either sell your soul to one of the giant corporations, or choose a life of crime. Without the protection of powerful businesses or gangs, sooner or later you will perish in the merciless streets of Night City. Cyberpunks are people who reject this dichotomy and try to carve out their own path. Technology, which often is a tool of oppression, also offers a way out. Cyberpunks know how to harness it to break free of the constraints of an unjust society.

LR: There is already something a little bit cyberpunk about bringing a story to life in an immersive 3D environment, but Cyberpunk 2077 is also full scale envisioning of the classic fiction genre. What familiar elements of cyberpunk show up in the game? Does it bring anything new to the genre?

Jakub Szamałek: Fans of the genre will surely recognize many familiar themes and topics: what does it mean to be human in a world where our bodies and minds can be fully mechanized and digitized? What happens when the elites have access to life-changing inventions, but others don’t? How do we function in a world where the boundary between the real and virtual is blurred?

But we also hope that Cyberpunk 2077 brings something new to the table. Most importantly, we tried to update the genre for the modern audience. Cyberpunk always explored our fears about the future, but some of these fears changed from the 1980s and 1990s, when some of the genre-defining novels were first published. For example, we’re less worried about an atomic apocalypse (perhaps wrongly…) and gang violence, but more concerned about privacy issues and the unfettered rise of tech giants. Our game attempts to explore these fears, make them the cornerstone of the story we’re telling.

The above is an excerpt from our full interview with Jakub Szamałek in the Cyberpunk in 2020 issue of the London Reader. Read it here!

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Is the LRB the best magazine in the world?

T he offices of the London Review of Books are situated on the top two floors of a Georgian townhouse in the shadow of the British Museum. To reach them, you either brave the claustrophobically small lift or walk up five flights of brown-carpeted stairs, before emerging in a light-filled room containing a scattering of terrifically bright people sitting at computers, surrounded by piles of books and an air of quiet industry.

The windows on one side of the large open-plan room overlook the nurses' accommodation for the nearby University College Hospital, where someone has left a carton of orange juice to chill on a window ledge. The LRB 's editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, likes this view. She enjoys "seeing what the nurses get up to". On the other side, the windows overlook a fine Hawksmoor church spire, with carved heraldic symbols of a lion and a unicorn at its base. Wilmers doesn't have as much time for this. Most people would proffer some admiring blandishment about architectural style – but not Wilmers. "They're too fat," she sniffs at the stonework animals. And looking at them, it's hard not to concede that they are, indeed, a bit flabby.

The opposing London vistas, and Wilmers' reaction to them, seem to sum up her approach to editing what is now deemed to be the most successful literary publication in Europe. At 75, Wilmers retains both an insatiable curiosity about people (the nurses) and a healthy disregard for received opinion (the church). Both qualities course through the pages of the London Review of Books which, under her 22-year editorship, has become a highly regarded publication with an influence that extends far beyond the rarefied world of small-circulation literary magazines.

Founded in 1979, after the Times Literary Supplement was closed by a year-long industrial dispute, the LRB has a circulation of 64,038 (by comparison, according to 2013 Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, the Spectator has a circulation of 62,581 and the New Statesman of 28,495). The website attracts 575,000 visitors a month and there are a further 2,000 Kindle subscribers. At a time when most print publications are losing readers, the LRB 's circulation is going up.

Partly, this is to do with the commissions. Alongside the usual run of densely typed book reviews, arts criticism, authors' diaries and classified advertisements offering writers' retreats in the Peloponnese, Wilmers has made a feature of the long-form essay. The essay, usually penned by a leading author and often running to well over 10,000 words, with barely a concession to the fanciful modern desire for accompanying photographs or illustration, has become the LRB 's forte. These are the pieces that consistently challenge orthodoxy and take delight in a well-constructed argument; that dare to say things the rest of us might be thinking or that simply reveal something interesting or curious.

One of her recent favourites, says Wilmers, was a piece on "the language of bribery". At its best, the LRB long-form essay is clever, mischievous, fascinating and fluent. At its worst, it might go on a bit.

"I think there's an awful lot of short opinion around," says Wilmers, "and it's quite nice to find an argument in a piece that isn't just stated."

She is sitting in a small corner room on a sofa upholstered in countrified pale-green and red stripes. For unexplained reasons, there is an abandoned iron and an Anglepoise lamp on the floor that Wilmers had to step over, somewhat shakily in ballet pumps, to get to her seat. She is a small woman with a striking face and shrewd eyes. Her physical appearance is elegant but economical, crafted with the same precision as a judiciously edited sentence.

Does she think, in a modern, media-driven world where opinions are increasingly reduced to soundbites of 140 characters or fewer, that there is a thirst for longer-form writing?

"I think that must, to some extent, be the case because otherwise, why would we be doing so much better than other papers?" And it is true that, over the past year, the London Review of Books has found itself in the unusual position of being the centre of rather a lot of attention. There was a recent public spat concerning the lack of female reviewers in its pages , but much of the interest has been generated by the introduction of a Winter Lecture series – speeches delivered by writers in person on a particular topic and then printed at full-length as an essay in the magazine.

Hilary Mantel did one in February 2013, in which she called the Duchess of Cambridge "a shop-window mannequin" . The Daily Mail promptly featured the "attack" on its front page and David Cameron was moved to comment that Mantel was "completely misguided and completely wrong".

When James Meek analysed the housing market in the pages of the LRB in January ("A housing shortage that has been building up for the past 30 years is reaching the point of crisis"), it triggered a national debate. The current issue carries an extraordinary 26,000-word piece by Andrew O'Hagan on his failed attempt to ghost the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's memoir , which was trending on Twitter before copies even hit the news-stands. The next issue features classicist Mary Beard's lecture on "the public voice of women", which has already caused a splash following her assertion that women who speak up in the public sphere are "treated as freakish androgynes".

Does she enjoy the controversies generated by the magazine? Her lips twitch into an almost-smile. Her eyes, below the silver fringe of her bobbed hair, crinkle at the corners. "I don't un-enjoy it," she replies carefully. She says she "never, ever would have predicted" the fall-out generated by the Hilary Mantel piece. "If you read the whole thing, it's really not… there's not much of an issue there. She was feeling sorry for her [the Duchess of Cambridge] more than anything."

What about the piece written in 2007 by Booker-prize winner Anne Enright concerning the parents of Madeleine McCann ("I was angry at their failure to accept that their daughter was probably dead. I wanted them to grieve") or Mary Beard writing in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that America "had it coming"?

"'People will say America had it coming' is what she said!" Wilmers corrects impatiently. "Well, everybody said we would have bombs put through our letterbox." And did they? "No. It just caught on and it obviously touched a nerve because there were people who presumably did think that."

This is, in many respects, a key part of the LRB 's ethos: it provides a space in which intelligent people can think differently; in which discomfiting thoughts can be voiced and provoking arguments can be aired with enough room to breathe.

The writer Marina Warner, who is one of the magazine's contributing editors, compares the LRB 's pages to "a lively discussion among engaged people… I like its range – and its boldness in allowing different views and strong opinions, and the length of the pieces allows for developing arguments and laying out evidence." Andrew O'Hagan agrees: "The paper is enquiring, funny, political, ambivalent, and filled with a sense of risk."

Wilmers sees the LRB as an antidote to the sameness of opinion in the rest of the media. "Newspapers say the same thing over and over again and we're all horrified and collectively up in arms and there's normally more than one side to something," she says. "So if you hear somebody saying something coherent and intelligent that's not totally out of order, it's interesting to read it."

Twitter, with its emphasis on instant reaction and opinion-forming cliques is, she thinks, part of the problem. "Why do people feel compelled to agree with everybody? It would be quite nice if there was slightly less outrage about the same things all the time."

Is Wilmers on Twitter? "No," she says and then immediately contradicts herself: "I mean, yes, I am. I've only ever been on once, when Jenny Diski asked me to do something."

Her Twitter avatar, rather confusingly, is the image of a fresh-faced young woman. "That's my god-daughter, Flora Neve," she says sternly. No further explanation is forthcoming and I suddenly feel rather foolish for asking.

For all its success, the London Review of Books struggles to make money. It owes its continued existence to the generosity of Wilmers herself, who regularly siphons in cash from a family trust fund. Her German father was the founder of a multinational utilities company and her ancestors on her mother's side were Russian Jews who included the psychoanalyst Max Eitingon and Leonid Eitingon, a Stalinist agent responsible for masterminding the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Wilmers was born in Chicago, raised in New York, then moved with her family to Brussels aged nine and was sent to boarding school in England.

Did she like boarding school?

[Deadpan] "It was better than Brussels."

Having grown up abroad, does she feel like an outsider?

"You mean, do I feel foreign?" A pause. "When it suits me."

The family money means the LRB never has to worry about paying back its loans – in January 2010, the magazine was estimated to be £27m in debt to the trust. And yet it still manages to pay its writers at a base-rate of 30p a word (rising by a considerable margin if the article is longer than average). The fee for O'Hagan's piece on Assange was rumoured to be in five figures. Marina Warner says that payment is always processed quickly "and generously, by comparison with other papers".

Is it sustainable, I ask the LRB 's publisher, Nicholas Spice? He looks vaguely shocked at the suggestion. "Oh no, it's not sustainable in financial terms," he says.

Spice has a pleasantly straightforward manner and a faintly military demeanour. He is the kind of man you suspect would be incapable of telling a lie, even though sometimes he probably should. "It loses a lot of money," he continues cheerfully. "The most important thing is that it has always had very generous support from its shareholders. And we've had the same shareholders since 1980, which is very unusual – I should think unprecedented – for a literary publication or arts organisation. The great thing is that we have been able to invest in creating a market for a very good editorial product."

The LRB has made inroads in other areas – there is a nearby London Review of Books bookshop, and a popular cake-shop that serves rosebud tea and gluten-free pistachio cakes – but even these, according to Spice, are only "near to breaking even".

"The great thing about the bookshop is it gives the magazine a location," Spice says, still looking on the brightest possible side, "and it's very good for our relations with publishers."

The seeming lack of financial constraint means that the LRB can be run in a charmingly old-fashioned, semi-shambolic manner. There is, admits Wilmers, "an element of whim" to each issue. Writers are not given much of a deadline – "we're not too fussy about time, then after a few months the piece comes in" – and the editors take a great deal of care over the copy. Every fact is checked and proofs are sent back to the writer with suggestions and queries and then, says Wilmers: "there's all that awful stuff about spacing and line-breaks, which I'm sure nobody notices, but we do".

Many of the writers have never met the staff and Wilmers herself has acquired a healthy degree of mystique.

"I've never met Mary-Kay Wilmers," says Adam Mars-Jones , a regular contributor, "and by the end of last year had come to think that was a good thing. If she liked my writing it seemed a bit rash to think she might like me as well."

The magazine goes to press on Friday night and the staff are often there into the early hours. Until recently, they ordered in supper from a local Indian restaurant much favoured by Wilmers. But she went on holiday a few weeks ago and returned to find that her staff had staged a silent coup and were getting their food from Ottolenghi instead. She doesn't like it as much. "Perhaps," she says, fiddling with the hem of her silk blouse, "it's just because I think, 'How dare they!'"

She's joking. I think.

One of the criticisms levelled at the LRB is that it can occasionally seem cosseted from the real world, run by an exclusive coterie of literary-minded north Londoners who don't have to worry about anything so vulgar as the bottom line. Wilmers is an established part of the liberal-leaning Primrose Hill intelligentsia: she was married to the film director Stephen Frears (the couple divorced in the 70s and have two sons, Sam and Will) and used to live next door to the biographer Claire Tomalin and her husband, the writer Michael Frayn. The playwright Jonathan Miller was down the road. Her best friend from Oxford (where she read modern languages) is Alan Bennett.

When I put this to her, Wilmers blinks. "Does everybody live in north London?" she asks herself, before going through a mental checklist of contributors and staff. "John Lanchester doesn't," she announces triumphantly. Spice says that most of their readers come from N and NW postcodes. Anywhere else?

"Clapham," he replies briskly.

But the LRB 's tendency to pluck writers from the same limited pool of contributors has a more serious knock-on effect: they have consistently struggled to publish as many women as men, for instance. In 2013, they used 43 female book reviewers compared to 195 male, according to figures compiled by the American literary organisation Vida . The Paris Review , by contrast, achieved a 50/50 parity of men and women, while the New York Times book review published 725 women and 894 men. It is not just the review pages: over its history, the LRB has published 82% of articles by men and just 18% by women.

The issue was recently aired in a discussion on Open Book on Radio 4. The LRB declined to participate and issued a rather imperious statement claiming that the inequality in their pages was regrettable but reflected a wider discrimination in an imperfect world. The statement included a quote from Wilmers, given in a 2001 interview on the same subject: "I think women find it difficult to do their jobs, look after their children, cook dinner and write pieces," Wilmers said at the time. "They just can't get it done. And men can… They're not so frightened of asserting themselves. And they're not so anxious to please."

Listeners were duly enraged by the intimation that female writers were too busy scrubbing dishes to use their critical faculties. When I ask Wilmers about the episode, she visibly braces. "Obviously, over the years I've been discriminated against plenty," she says. "It started when I finished university and was told to go and learn to write shorthand by the Oxford 'head of women's appointments'. So, obviously, I know what it's like. I know what the problem is. And all I can say is that we hope to do better, we hope to get more female reviewers, blah blah blah."

But how exactly do they hope to do better? "Well, we hope we will find more women writers. We will look for more women." She glances anxiously towards the closed door that leads into the office and starts mouthing to me that she's been told not to say anything by her colleagues and they don't want her stirring it all up again. And yet, being of a naturally honest disposition, Wilmers can't help herself.

Surely that comment about women being too busy doing the household chores to write was spectacularly misguided? "Yes," she concedes. "I think the situation has changed because, certainly, when I was married, I did the washing up, I did the cooking, I looked after the children… I think that's much less the case now. Men do much more so women have less to do. So I think there has been a change but I do think men are more inclined to say 'Oh fuck it. I'll do whatever I want to do now. My career matters. I'll go and write a novel', whereas women are a bit more ho-hummy about their careers.

"All that has really changed since I've been working. When I was at Oxford, there was one woman for every 10 men. Imagine that. I mean, that's quite a statistic. So yes, it's changed a lot and there are many more women writers now in the LRB than there were 40, 50 years ago."

The irony is that Wilmers did end up becoming a secretary. After peripatetic upbringing that took her from America to Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium and England, Wilmers read French and Russian at Oxford. She had ambitions to be a simultaneous interpreter but ended up as a secretary at the offices of Faber & Faber. At the time, T S Eliot was director. "I was quite disappointed with him," she says. "He'd thank people for their 'gracious' letter and I though 'Gosh, what a terrible word.'"

She left Faber and had spells at the Listener magazine and the Times Literary Supplement before co-founding the LRB in 1979, originally as an offshoot of the New York Review of Books .

And all the while, she was coping with single motherhood and the emotional grind of raising a sick child. Wilmers's youngest son, Sam, was born with Riley-Day syndrome, a rare condition that affects the development of the nervous system. Sam was subject to seizures, poor co-ordination, failing eyesight and breathing issues. Today, in his 40s, he is almost blind but "thriving" , Wilmers says fondly, "because he's got such a good character".

Her work, she says, was an integral part of keeping her sane. "I think I found it easier with the job than I would have without. I would have been that much more anxious about my son had I been at home watching him all the time."

She sees her role as editor in the same terms as the simultaneous interpreter she once wanted to be; they are both, she says, "ventriloquial occupations. It's speaking through other people. It's not that I'm not as egomaniacal as everyone else. It's just that I say a bit less."

She has written an acclaimed volume of family history, The Eitingons , but says she lacks the "inventiveness" to write a novel. I mention to her that I recently read Love, Nina , a delightful collection of letters written by Wilmers's former nanny, Nina Stibbe, while she was living with the family in the 80s. In it, Stibbe writes about Wilmers's habit of "piping up with a defining two words" while "everyone else [is] yakking and being boring and pointless".

Does she recognise that in herself? "Yes!" she says. "It's not what I most like about myself but I have to say, yes I do. But… um… it's that I don't necessarily have all the interim sentences. Those words are the two words I have. It's a bit of a defect."

But her facility for distilling a sentence makes her, according to Andrew O'Hagan, one of the great editors. "She and Karl Miller have done more for the British essay than anyone in the past 150 years," he says. "Mary-Kay works harder than any editor I know. And if this were France, they'd be posting the Légion d'honneur through her door every morning."

I wonder whether, at the age of 75, having lived through an era of unequal pay and endemic discrimination, part of Wilmers's attitude to the lack of female reviewers in the LRB is explained by a belief that people should just get on and do things rather than waste time complaining about them? "Yes, absolutely." Her feminism is, she concedes, "old-fashioned… I tend to take exception to men in a big way, but that's a slightly outmoded form of feminism."

Men as a general concept or men as individuals? "Men as a general concept, and individual men when they're behaving like men."

Is that why her marriage failed? "No. I mean, it was probably a foolish idea in the first place. I don't feel antipathy [towards men], I just am inclined to think that…" She breaks off. "It happened earlier this morning. You're talking to a male colleague, trying to get your point of view across, and then another male colleague walks across and agrees sagaciously with what the other man is saying. That always happens."

Does she say anything?

I can't imagine, given her innate need to get on and do things, that she has altogether embraced the ageing process. "I feel appalled," she admits. "I keep thinking I'll wake up and find I'm not 75 any more." She has noticed a certain stickiness in the whirring of the mental cogs – when trying to convert dollars into sterling, for instance, or when she makes mistakes on the computer "and there's quite a lot of groaning" from her colleagues.

How will she give up this job, I wonder, when the time comes? "With difficulty," she says. "But the editor of the New York Review of Books is 10 years older than me. That's what I cling to."

The London Review of Books might not feature enough women in its pages. But there's no doubt that the one at its helm is pretty formidable.

The LRB is 40. We never thought it would last this long

Sam Miller: ‘What we had felt stronger than most father-son relationships’

WB Yeats, the art teacher and a night at the sexologist’s

Karl Miller: a man of distinction

Karl Miller, founding editor of London Review of Books, dies at 83

London Review of Books: all hail this splendid magazine that reveres the written word

Why the LRB should stop cooking up excuses over lack of women reviewers

Should we celebrate scathing book reviews?

Peter Campbell's London Review of Books covers

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The London Magazine is England’s oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today–reinvigorated for a new century–the Magazine’s essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape.

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Since John Lehmann re-launched The London Magazine in 1954, we have aspired to publish the best in contemporary fiction and poetry, alongside incisive and erudite essays, features and reviews. This approach has allowed us to unearth the best emerging writers in the last seven decades.

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Commissioned articles received by a member of the editorial team are subject to editorial approval. Those accepted for the website will only receive a fee unless they are accepted for print also.

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Pomegranate London

May 1, 2023 by Every Writer

The Pomegranate London

https://www.thepomegranatelondon.com/

From the Editor

All work featured in the magazine celebrate individuals who create, practice, live and express art in its many diverse forms and settings. Each issue will include a selection of artwork, poetry, fiction, essays, and author interviews.

Zerlina Mastin designs and edits The Pomegranate London. With a BA from the Royal Academy of Dance, her non-fiction work has been published by Dance Books Ltd. She now writes short stories and is completing a novel.

Adam Sharp (editor and contributor) won the TLC Pen Factor Writing Competition in 2018 with his story Play. His work was chosen for Kit de Waal’s anthology Common People. Adam is currently writing a novel and is represented by Jo Unwin Literary Agency. His non-fiction book The Correct Order of Biscuits was published in 2020 by Trapeze.

Suzie Samant (editor and contirbutor) is a Creative Consultant in the TV industry, and an award-nominated Voice Actor. After many years writing factual scripts for primetime shows, she began writing fiction and was recently shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. She is currently working on her first short story collection.

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We are currently seeking entries for the first edition of the magazine from established and emerging writers and artists from the UK and internationally. We welcome poetry, short stories, flash fiction, self-contained novel excerpts, work in translation and essays. We are also actively seeking artwork (prints, drawings, paintings).

All submitted work should feature an artist or an artist’s tool, creation or environment (artists include, but are not limited to: writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, dancers, performing artists, actors, filmmakers, artistic directors, fashion designers).

Worldwide copyright of each entry remains with the artist, however The Pomegranate London holds the rights to publish selected works. Entries must not have been published, self-published, or featured on any website, blog or online forum.

Information

Editors Name Zerlina Mastin Print publication? Yes Circulation Do you take online submissions? Yes Submission Guidelines URL [email protected] Approx. Response Time? 7 days How often do you publish? biannually Year Founded? 2020 Do you pay? Yes

Twitter Mailing Address: Email [email protected]

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Good Night, Sweet Prince

Our critic assesses the achievement of Martin Amis, Britain’s most famous literary son.

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This black-and-white photograph is a close-up of the writer Martin Amis’s face. He is staring intently into the camera.

By A.O. Scott

On May 6, at the age of 74, Charles III was crowned king of England. A few weeks later, at 73, Martin Amis died at his home in Florida. One event seemed almost comically belated, the other tragically premature. Charles took over the family business well past normal retirement age, while Amis was denied the illustrious dotage that great writers deserve.

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It’s hard to accept either one of them as old. The point of princes is that they’re young; Amis, much like the former Prince of Wales, had enjoyed (or endured) a decades-long career as a dauphin. These near-contemporaries, who once argued at a dinner party about the persecution of Salman Rushdie, shared a curious generational destiny. They were forever sons, defined and sometimes overshadowed by famous parents, dynastic heirs trying to figure out how to be self-made men.

Amis, whose father, Kingsley (1922-95), was a very famous novelist, once described himself as “the only hereditary novelist in the Anglophone literary corpus.” We all know about Charles’s family. He and Martin were the leading nepo babies of the British baby boom.

There are writers who disdain the idea that generations matter. Amis was not one of them. From first to last — from “ The Rachel Papers ” to “ Inside Story ” — his novels bristle with characters who not only live (and sometime drown) in the flow of history, but who relentlessly historicize their own experience. Their libidos unfurl like banners in the sexual revolution and soldier on in its aftermath. Their political views and social attitudes follow the left-right zigzagging and centrist muddle of the Reagan/Thatcher and Clinton/Blair eras. Their economic prospects wane and wax with the cycles of global hypercapitalism.

The closer these characters come to Amis himself — most recently in the retrospection of “The Pregnant Widow” and “Inside Story” — the more overt this generational mapping becomes. But it’s also evident in his “State of England” fictions, including the 1996 story of that name and the 2012 novel “ Lionel Asbo, ” which recycles the phrase as a subtitle. There, the working-class protagonists situate their own frustrations and satisfactions, their aging and their coming-of-age, within an ambient dialectical narrative of progress and decline. In the shorter “State of England,” an upwardly mobile, almost-divorced bouncer named Mal reflects that

class and race and gender were supposedly gone (and other things were supposedly going, like age and beauty and even education): all the really automatic ways people had of telling who was better or worse — they were gone. Right-thinkers everywhere were claiming that they were clean of prejudice, that in them the inherited formulations had at last been purged. This they had decided. But for those on the pointed end of the operation — the ignorant, say, or the ugly — it wasn’t just a decision. Some of them had no new clothes. Some were still dressed in the uniform of their deficiencies. Some were still wearing the same old shit.

Even when Amis’s fictional attention veered toward other histories, notably and controversially the Holocaust and Stalin’s terror, a reader couldn’t help hearing the voice and sensibility of a worldly and well-placed citizen of post-imperial literary London.

By all accounts — certainly by Amis’s accounts — to be young in that twilight was, if not quite heaven, then an awful lot of fun. The 1970s, when Amis, still in his 20s, served as back-of-the-book editor of The New Statesman and published his early, funny novels, were a swirl of deadlines, love affairs, literary quarrels and long, boozy lunches with brilliant friends. Such friends! Amis’s cohort of male British writers included Ian McEwan, James Fenton, Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens, all of whom (especially Hitch) pop up frequently in his pages.

In his criticism, though, Amis’s gaze was more frequently cast backward over his shoulder, toward his father’s peers — Philip Larkin, Iris Murdoch, John Bayley, Robert Conquest — and across the Atlantic. There (which is to say here, in the United States) is where he found the surrogate dads, dashing uncles and swaggering older brothers who spurred and challenged his aspirations: John Updike, Philip Roth, Joseph Heller and above all his “twin peaks,” Vladimir Nabokov and Saul Bellow.

Even as he ascended to trans-Atlantic fame and best-selling fortune, Amis was happy to embrace his junior status, to cast himself as an admiring, critical, sometimes rebellious acolyte. This isn’t to suggest that he was modest or diffident. On the contrary: He reveled in precocity, cheekiness, iconoclasm and snark. He tapped at the clay feet of his idols with the chisel of his irreverent wit, even as he clambered onto their shoulders to see farther, and more clearly, than they ever could.

If I accept the mightiness of Bellow and Nabokov, it’s partly because Amis persuaded me, both by the precepts of his criticism and the example of his fiction, which grapples with and overcomes their influence. What I mean is that I liked him better, and trusted him more.

The best way I can find to pay tribute, to conduct an honest appraisal — no small challenge with a writer who was singularly gifted at self-appraisal — is to lay my own generational cards on the table. I’m a member of what Amis called “the Crap Generation”: “I mean the one that came after the baby boomers — those born around 1970 (the Generation Xers).” He once proposed a “polemical work” about how crappy we were, which is especially hurtful, though not necessarily surprising. We were his biggest fans.

To come of reading age in the last three decades of the 20th century — from the oil embargo through the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the way to 9/11 — was to live, it now seems clear, in the Amis Era. He cut, for guys around my age (and not only guys, as Zadie Smith might agree), a figure not unlike the ones that Bellow and the other Americans represented for him. A giant, yes, but also a familiar, provoking, somehow approachable writer. Someone you could envy as well as admire, resent as well as respect.

It was easy enough to point out the lapses, blind spots and missteps: the alternately sentimental and slobbery view of women; the taste for cruel, downward-punching humor; the occasional slippage of liberal common sense into reactionary bluster. But it was also easy to imagine arguing about all that over drinks and cigarettes, thanks to Amis’s inexhaustible intellectual brio and his undentable good humor.

That quality, even more than his satirical flair or the buoyant elegance of his prose, marks his greatest feat of self-invention. The first time I wrote about Amis in these pages , I too cleverly called him “the best American writer England has ever produced.” What I was responding to was not just his evident Americanophilia, or the scale and audacity of his ambition, but also his optimism, his open-mindedness, his energy.

Whether these are still — or ever were — defining characteristics of American culture is an argument for another day. The point is that they were decidedly not attitudes associated with English writers up until then, especially not those of Kingsley Amis’s generation.

Those guys made art out of their grudges, resentments and prejudices, none better than Larkin, Kingsley’s difficult pal from their undergraduate days at Oxford. Larkin, who detested children and had none of his own, was a spectral presence in Martin’s boyhood and the subject of some of his most searching and productive mature criticism.

Larkin, who Amis called “the novelist’s poet,” is his crucial precursor. “Inside Story,” Amis’s avowedly autobiographical last novel, broaches the idea that he may have been Martin’s actual father as well. That’s the claim made by Phoebe Phelps, Martin’s lover in the late 1970s, who tells Martin, many years later, that she heard it from Kingsley himself, who was trying to get her to go to bed with him.

All it takes to debunk this revelation is a glance at a few book jacket photos. Martin’s resemblance to Kingsley is impossible to miss. And at least superficially, the apple landed very close to the tree. Martin grew up into a comic novelist and a prolific periodical scribbler, just like dad. He was gregarious and well traveled, which Larkin was decidedly not.

But the fantasy of Larkin’s secret paternity in some ways improves on the actual literary succession. What Martin Amis inherited from Larkin, genetically or otherwise, was a streak of kindness, a tenderness that Kingsley in his writing almost entirely lacked.

Larkin, a gloomy bachelor with a wretched romantic life, a proud provincial decidedly not clean of prejudice, was a great love poet. His meanest appraisals of the human condition admit a glimmer of affection, which sometimes deepens into a glow. You find that in Amis too, sometimes where you least expect it: amid the apocalyptic tremors of “ London Fields ,” the fratricidal savagery of “The Information,” the decadence and thuggery of “Lionel Asbo.” And in everything he wrote about the writers he revered.

In his poem “Posterity,” Larkin imagines how he might look to a future biographer, a fictional academic named Jake Balokowsky. “One of those old-type natural fouled-up guys,” is how he sees Jake seeing him. It’s possible to think of Amis along similar lines, as a man of his time, even if it was a very different time. Much as it’s impossible to picture Larkin young, it’s hard to think of Amis as anything but. And now, all of a sudden, he’s no longer young. He’s permanent.

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst .

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review. He joined The Times in 2000 and was a film critic until early 2023. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism." @ aoscott

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Steven watson, founder of stack, recommends print lit mags.

Independent magazines are notorious outsiders. Generally made with lots of passion and not much cash, they’re gloriously uncommercial artefacts of our current age of creative independence, in which virtually anyone with an internet connection and an Adobe Creative Cloud license can publish their own professional quality print magazine. Of course the fact that pretty much anyone can now be their own editor-in-chief and creative director means that lots of the work committed to print isn’t all that good, but there are some extraordinary gems out there waiting to be found, and that’s what we spend our days doing.

Stack searches out the best independent magazines and delivers them to thousands of readers around the world every month—you never know what you’re going to get next, but you do know it will be a beautiful, intelligent print magazine you probably wouldn’t otherwise have come across. We pride ourselves on delivering a wide range of magazines covering all sorts of subjects, but for the following list we’ve focused on the literary magazines we’re currently enjoying the most.

The White Review

One of London’s most revered independent literary magazines, The White Review mixes outstanding fiction, essays and poetry with beautiful art and photography all wrapped up in a lovely, thick print edition. Launched in 2011, its founding aim was to provide “a space for a new generation to express itself unconstrained by form, subject or genre”, and today it publishes in monthly online editions, but it’s the roughly triannual print version that we love. The current issue looks at first glance like a sort of bookish fashion magazine, with its cover featuring a photograph by artist Elad Lassry, but the content inside ranges far and wide, covering subjects including migration and asylum, LGBTQ+ spaces, race and disability. Essential and important, but with a fantastic lightness of touch, a new issue of The White Review is always eagerly anticipated in the Stack office.

Freeman’s looks like a book but it self-defines as a magazine. “I think a magazine is tracking and engaging with culture,” explains editor John Freeman, who used to head up Granta . “It has an ongoingness, whereas an anthology freezes a moment, perhaps, and puts it in two covers.” The fifth issue is about power: it’s topical, but in a pleasurably sideways way. One of the most beautiful things here is a poem by Julia Alvarez that reimagines Penelope, happy alone, disappointed when Odysseus finally comes home: “He’s back, disguised as an old man/ to test my virtue… I would be rid of him.”

The plaything of one extraordinary tinkerer, science-fiction magazine Visions is a testament to the power of passion. Creative technologist and sci-fi fan Mathieu Triay began the project by making Marvin Visions, the typeface that he uses for titles throughout the magazine and its website. Licensing the typeface online generated enough money to pay for printing the first issue, and he uses the magazine as a platform for both new and established science-fiction writers. In the latest issue, for example, multi-award winning author Robert Silverberg’s story “Caliban” is set in an alarmingly lithe, glistening future, as seen through the eyes of a man who has become the only relic of our messy, hairy times. Silverberg locates his smooth sexualization a hundred-odd years into the future, but in “Hyperbeauty,” the non-fiction essay that follows it, master’s student Raquel Hollman seems to respond to Silverberg by showing how our world is already uncomfortably sexualized and dominated by ideals of “perfect beauty.”

American Chordata

One of the defining characteristics of New York-based American Chordata is that it looks really good. Mixing short stories and poetry with photography, the pictures aren’t specially commissioned. Instead, art director Bobby Doherty mines the internet for art all year long, and then sets his favorites next to the text in a strange, non-illustrative way, almost like collage. In the most recent issue—AC’s ninth—Tatu Gustafsson’s grainy CCTV images of a lonely figure standing by the sides of roads are dropped throughout Angela Woodward’s disturbing short story “Decoy Animals,” the writing and images each intensifying the other. [Editor’s note: Erin Bartnett, associate editor at Recommended Reading, is also the fiction editor at American Chordata.]

The Stinging Fly

An Irish literary magazine of new writing, The Stinging Fly has excellent pedigree—Sally Rooney is a contributing editor, and on these pages there’s an echo of her attention to the minute detail of how we see ourselves and are seen by others. The current issue is fronted by a brilliantly fleshy artwork by Irish Japanese painter Shane Berkery, which sets the tone for the intimate and personal reflections that run through the fiction and poetry inside.

Founded by Francis Ford Coppola in 1997, Zoetrope was originally conceived as a way to inspire independent movie-making, by providing a space for writers to publish their short fiction and plays. The magazine’s role-call of contributors is ludicrously star-spangled—the rotating guest-designer spot has been filled by Bowie and Lynch, to name only Davids. But what makes this magazine remarkable is how lightly it wears its famous names. Virtually unknown here in the U.K., and boasting just a thousand or so Instagram followers, you get the feeling the only thing its editors really care about is the quality of the fiction.

This London-based journal of sexuality and erotics was started in 2018 by the Feeld dating app, and it’s run today by editor Maria Dimitrova, who works with editorial independence to assemble an inventive series of poems and short stories that explore the frontiers of sexual life. Of course any literary magazine stands or falls on the strength of its writing, and Mal brings together some exceptional talent: the latest issue includes an original piece by cult author Chris Kraus and a short story by Luke Brown that was commended in the Best Original Fiction category at this year’s Stack Awards.

Worms is a literary magazine about style: writing style, but also sartorial. We are all worms, Clem Macleod explains in her editor’s letter, and “in the end, we’re going to be eaten by them. As a Worm, you will fertilise your mind with glorious words.” Using clothes as a way of worming your way into a writer’s work is a contentious business. Traditionally understood to be something frivolous women like, clothes are depicted here to be so much more interesting. Author Natasha Stagg is interviewed, and the first question she is asked is whether everyday dressing is a sort of curation of self. This idea—that dressing up can be a way of slipping out of your identity and trying on another—is most fully realized in a feature towards the middle, where Clem goes to visit a box of the late punk writer Kathy Acker’s clothes, and tries some on. Acker is the cover star, and the whole issue is a homage to her. The clothes are “unwashed, crumpled” and “musky”; a mass of Vivienne Westwood, Commes Des Garcons and Betsey Johnson. Trying on your dead hero’s outfits is thrillingly intimate. As readers, we feel that we should like to do this intimate thing, too.

The Lifted Brow

“A quarterly attack journal from Australia and the world,” The Lifted Brow is based in Melbourne and sets out to showcase the most inventive and accomplished experimental storytelling. The result includes fiction and non-fiction, poetry and comics, and frequently gives a voice to groups that aren’t commonly heard. Last year’s 40th edition, for example, was re-branded Blak Brow , and was created entirely by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, born out of the conviction that “blak” women’s writing can “transcend off the pages and topple the patriarchy.”

Somesuch Stories

The fourth issue of this U.K. literary journal is themed “redemption,” a word editor Suze Olbrich defines as borderline archaic. But the idea of absolution still sticks its pins into us. In a largely secular world, we share what Olbrich calls a “gnarly yearning for liberation from guilt; for forgiveness—for salvation.” It’s a great theme, and while the stories on these pages are uneven, when they’re good, they’re very very good. Like Luke Turner’s beautiful, ambivalent essay on cruising, looking back on encounters he is now old enough to recognize as abusive. And Kieran Yates’ fan fiction about women of color in popular culture; from Padma Patil, to Ursula from The Little Mermaid .

Mekong Review

Launched in 2015 at the Kampot Writers and Readers Festival in Cambodia, the Mekong Review was created as a platform for the literary scene in Southeast Asia. Over the years its influence has spread, and today it publishes essays, interviews, poetry and fiction drawn from across Asia and Australasia. It’s proud to claim no political allegiance, and the current issue includes thoughtful and critical reviews and essays inspired by the protests in Hong Kong, as well as politically-inflected commentary from Thailand, Malaysia, China, Myanmar and beyond.

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THE POMEGRANATE LONDON

Stories, essays & poems on artists, about the pomegranate magazine.

ZERLINA MASTIN (founder)

Zerlina designs and edits The Pomegranate London . With a BA from the Royal Academy of Dance, her non-fiction work has been published by Dance Books Ltd. She now writes short stories and is completing a novel.

Adam won the TLC Pen Factor Writing Competition in 2018 with his story Play. His work was chosen for Kit de Waal's anthology Common People . Adam is currently writing a novel and is represented by Jo Unwin Literary Agency. His non-fiction book The Correct Order of Biscuits was published in 2020 by Trapeze.

SUZIE SAMANT

Suzie is a Creative Consultant in the TV industry, and an award-nominated Voice Actor. After many years writing factual scripts for primetime shows, she began writing fiction and was recently shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. She is currently working on her first short story collection.

The Pomegranate London is listed on The Writer , Christopher Fieldon and Neon Books

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If there is one we’ve missed, let us know here .

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Reviews

Format: Online

About: Publishing flash fiction, poetry, interviews, and criticism online.

Submission Window(s): 1st of February and 1st of September

Format: Print

About: 404 Ink founded in 2016 with the view that publishing could be a little louder. Their goal is to support new and emerging writers’ careers and publish work that personally excites us. They believe in publishing fewer titles – books and literary magazines – and making as much noise as possible about each.

Submission Window(s): Submissions are currently closed

The A3 Review & Press

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Art

About: The A3 Press publishes chapbooks and The A3Review, an international literary and art magazine.

Submission Window(s): Submissions open May 1st, 2020

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Artwork

About: Ambit is a 96-page quarterly literary and art magazine. It is created in London, published in the UK, and read internationally. It’s available through subscription, in selected bookshops, and in libraries worldwide.

Allegro Poetry

Genres: Poetry

Format: Online

About: Allegro Poetry Magazine aims to publish the best contemporary poetry. March and September issues are for general poems and June and December for poems on a set theme.

Submission Window(s): 1 March – 30 April, 1 June – 31 July, 1 September – 31 October, 1 December – 31 January.

Bare Fiction

Genres: Fiction, Poetry

Format: Print, Online

About: Publishing new writing in an A4 magazine 3 times a year.

Belle Ombre

Genres: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry

Format: Online, Print annually

About: Belle Ombre was founded in 2017. They are committed to publishing work by emerging writers in fiction and non-fiction, poetry and the arts, alongside well-known and experienced names.

Submission Window(s): Anytime

Genres: Non-fiction

Format: Print

About: Brick is an international literary journal published twice a year out of Toronto. With a focus on literary non-fiction—and a willingness to stray when their hearts are taken—the magazine prizes the personal voice and celebrates life, art, and the written word with the most invigorating and challenging essays, interviews, translations, memoirs, belles lettres, and unusual musings they can get their hands-on.

Submission Window(s): September 1 – October 31, March 1 – April 30

Carve Magazine

Genres: Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry

Format: Online, Print

About: Carve was founded in 2000 to publish short stories online and has hosted the annual Raymond Carver Short Story Contest since 2001. Print and digital quarterly issues began in 2012 and feature their signature HONEST FICTION, poetry, nonfiction, interviews, illustrations, and more. The editors, staff, and volunteers who help the magazine thrive are based all over the world.

The Cabinet of Heed

About: The Cabinet of Heed is a multi-drawered piece of furniture that grows hungry at various times of the year. The only way to sate The Cabinet’s hunger is to feed it great writing.

Submission Window(s): Various times during the year

The Compass

Genres: Poetry

About: The Compass is an issue-based online poetry magazine, edited by Lindsey Holland. It is published twice a year and the content for each issue is slow-released over a ten to fourteen-day period, allowing time and space for each poem, review, and feature.

Submission Window(s): Anytime

Ellipsis Zine

Genres: Fiction, Creative Non-fiction

About: Ellipsis Zine is an online literary magazine for beautifully written fiction & creative nonfiction. 1,000 words or fewer, any genre.

About: Their mission in two parts: 1. To curate and simplify access to powerful content for the viewing pleasure of their audience. 2. Give exposure to budding artists.

The Fiction Desk

Genres: Short fiction

About: The Fiction Desk is an independent publishing house based in the UK. They exist to encourage and promote new short stories, primarily through our series of new writing anthologies. They feature work from across the English-speaking world, as well as the occasional translated story.

Submission Window(s): Anytime.

The Forge Literary Magazine

About: The Forge Literary Magazine was founded by volunteers from the Fiction Forge, an international online writers’ forum. They publish one short prose piece every Monday.

About: Foxglove Journal is a new and exciting haven for poetry and short fiction. They showcase work that thrills, comforts and stimulates.

Submissions Window(s): Submissions are currently closed.

Frogmore Papers

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Artwork

About: The Frogmore Press was founded by André Evans and Jeremy Page at the Frogmore Tea Rooms in Folkestone in 1983. The Press has published hundreds of writers in its now bi-annual magazine The Frogmore Papers, and also in individual collections and anthologies. Early work by numerous writers who have gone on to consolidate their reputations elsewhere appeared in the magazine.

Submission Window(s): October 1-31 to 1-31 April

Genres: Poetry, Short Fiction, Non-fiction

Format: Print, Online

About: From Nobel laureates to debut novelists, international translations to investigative journalism, each themed issue of Granta turns the attention of the world’s best writers on to one aspect of the way we live now.

Submission Window(s): 19 January until 19 February 2020

About: Hobart was founded in 2001 by Aaron Burch. Initially, Hobart was a web journal, co-edited by Mike McGowan. In 2002, Aaron expanded Hobart to include an annual print issue in addition to the website.

Submission Window(s): Quarterly

Genres: Poetry, Short fiction

About: Lighthouse is a journal published quarterly to give space and support to new talent. They look to publish the best short fiction and poetry emerging from the UK writing scene.

Submission Window(s): Various times during the year.

Genres: Short Fiction

About: The online platform accompanies the monthly print edition and is now a fully-fledged literary and creative arts platform a place for readers, writers, and the broader creative community to discuss various aspects of literature, fiction, arts and culture through features, reviews, non-themed fiction, interviews, columns and more.

The London Magazine

About: The London Magazine is England’s oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today – reinvigorated for a new century – the Magazine’s essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape.

The Moth Magazine

About: Founded in June 2010, The Moth is a quarterly printed arts & literature magazine featuring poetry, short fiction, and art by established and up-and-coming writers and artists.

About: Mslexia are committed to helping women writers progress and succeed, through our quarterly magazine, women’s writing weekend and annual writing competitions.

The Nottingham Review

Genres: Short Fiction, Flash Fiction

About: The Nottingham Review is an international short story and flash fiction journal, published online.

Genres: Fiction

About: Their aim is to create a print publication that is both interesting and relevant, and encourages growth within their talented, fertile, literary underbelly. They are a platform for up-and-coming writers from all backgrounds, with a particular interest in working-class writers.

Submission Window(s): Three times a year

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Flash

About: Popshot is an illustrated literary magazine that publishes short stories, flash fiction, and poetry from the literary new blood.

Submission Window(s): Four times a year

The Puritan

Genres: Short Fiction, Poetry

About: The Puritan is one of Canada’s premier online literary magazines. Based in Toronto, and founded in late 2006.

Genres: Short Fiction, Poetry, Scripts, Visual Art, Experimental, Essays, Reviews

Format: Online, Print

About: Riggwelter is a journal of creative arts founded by Amy Kinsman in 2017. It releases an issue once a month, containing poetry, short fiction, visual art, and experimental media. Riggwelter also releases reviews and essays on an as and when basis. In 2018, Riggwelter was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award for Best Magazine.

Submission Window(s): Currently closed for submissions

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Comics

Format: Print , Online

About: STORGY seeks to publish and promote exceptional literary fiction whilst providing authors with the opportunity to reach a wider literary audience.

About: Twice a year they produce a print issue containing remarkable new short stories and poetry from all around the world, alongside essays and interviews with authors and others.

Genres: Short Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Artwork, Flash

About: Spry is a literary journal that features undiscovered and established writers’ concise, experimental, hybrid, modern, vintage or just plain vulnerable writing.

The Stinging Fly

Genres: Short Fiction, Poetry

About: The Stinging Fly magazine was established in 1997 to seek out, publish and promote the very best new Irish and international writing.

Submission Window(s): December 2nd 2019 until midnight on January 16th 2020.

Token Magazine

About: TOKEN Magazine is a bi-annual literature and arts print magazine which launched in May 2017. The name comes from the experience of tokenism that underrepresented groups often face. This includes people of colour, LGBT+, those with disabilities, and other minority groups.

Submission Window(s): Submissions are currently closed

Untitled: Voices

Genres : Fiction, Poetry, Articles, Essays, Experimental Writing

Format : Online

About : Untitled: Voices is an online journal working to amplify the work done by underrepresented writers around the world.

Submission Window(s) : Submissions are open until March 19.

Wasafiri Magazine

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Academic Articles, Essays, Interviews, Book Reviews

About: Wasafirihas become the UK’s leading magazine for international contemporary writing. Launched in 1984, it is now renowned for publishing some of the world’s most distinguished writers including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Anita and Kiran Desai, Sam Selvon, Nadine Gordimer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Michael Ondaatje, Vikram Seth, Nayantara Sahgal, Gillian Slovo and Ben Okri amongst many others.

Submission Window(s): 6 January 2020 to 8 May 2020.

The White Review

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Essays

About: The White Review is an arts and literature quarterly magazine, with triannual print and monthly online editions. The magazine launched in February 2011 to provide ‘a space for a new generation to express itself unconstrained by form, subject or genre’, and publishes fiction, essays, interviews with writers and artists, poetry, and series of artworks.

Submission Window(s): 1 March 2020, and close on 1 June 2020.

Genres: Short Fiction

About: Publishes very short fiction of under 1000 words.

Visual Verse

Genres: Short fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry, Artwork

About: Each month they supply a compelling image and invite writers – published or unpublished – to submit a piece in response.

Submission Window(s): Monthly

About: Wildness was founded by Michelle Tudor and Peter Barnfather in 2015, and operates as an imprint of Platypus Press.

Privacy Overview

We publish literary writing of the highest quality. We look for poetry and short fiction that startles and entertains us. Reviews, essays, memoir pieces and features should be erudite, lucid and incisive. We are obviously interested in writing that has a London focus, but not exclusively so, since London is a world city with international concerns.

Please refer to The London Magazine before you submit work, so that you can see the type of material we publish.

Submissions will not be read if they stray over the word limits, or if they are not presented according to our submission guidelines.

All submissions sent to The London Magazine must never have been published, self-published, published on any website, blog or online forum, broadcast nor winning or placed (as in 2nd, 3rd, runner up etc) in any competition.

When Submitting Your Entry

Due to the volume of submissions, it may take some time before you receive a response. We do read and reply to every submission.

Postal submissions are accepted but please note that submissions via this portal are preferred.

Postal Address:

The London Magazine 11 Queen’s Gate London SW7 5EL

Please note that we can no longer return manuscripts to the sender.

Publication in The London Magazine will include all, if not some of the following formats: print version in the relevant issue of The London Magazine , eBook Edition (Kindle) and on our The London Magazine App as well as on thelondonmagazine.org . Please note that your work may be selected for online publication only.

Non-fiction pieces should be between 800 and 2,000 words. Single inverted commas should be used for all quotes/speech. Titles of works including books, plays, film and paintings should be in italics.

Poetry should display a commitment to the ultra specificities of language, and show a refined sense of simile and metaphor. The structure should be tight and exact. Poems should be no longer than 40 lines and no more than 6 poems should be submitted at once.

N.B. If Submitting multiple poems, these should be collated into one document. Multiple document submissions will not be read.

The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of 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, the award provides an opportunity for publication and recognition, as well as rewarding imagination, originality and creativity. The London Magazine is taking submissions for previously unpublished short stories that do not exceed the maximum of 2,500 words , from writers across the world.

We are delighted to announce that the stories will be judged by: Tom Conaghan, Eley Williams, R.Z Baschir and Andrew Holgate.

The story that wins first place will be published in a future print edition of The London Magazine . The second and third place stories will be published on our website. Prize winners will also receive cash prizes (see below), and will be celebrated at a prize-giving event in late summer.

Information:

Entry fee: £10 per short story | Subsequent entries: £5 per story

Student/Low Income entry: £5 per story (entrants must submit their stories with a valid university email address / proof of receipt of benefits.)

Note: There is no limit to the number of entries you can submit.

Opening date: 5th May 2023 DEADLINE: 5th July 2023 First Prize: £500 Second Prize: £300 Third Prize: £200

The London Magazine will have the unrestricted right to publish winning submissions (including runners up) in the magazine and online.
Subsequent entries should be submitted separately in individual entry forms through Submittable and not in the same document.
Make sure to include your completed entry form with your submission if submitting by any means other than Submittable. This can be downloaded from our website and sent to us by email or post.
Please read our competition rules carefully before entering. If you have any questions, please contact Jamie at [email protected]

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Writers' London: A Guide to Literary People and Places
London Review Of Books Magazine Subscription
The London Magazine (UK) Subscription
Where London Magazine April 2014 issue

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COMMENTS

Granta
Granta is a literary magazine founded in 1889. Read the best new fiction, poetry, photography, and essays by famous authors, Nobel winners and new voices. ... Since its inception as a literary quarterly in 1979, Granta has been committed to championing the best in new writing. ... London W11 4QR;
The London Magazine
The London Magazine is England's oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Read contemporary fiction, poetry, essays and reviews. Product has been added to your basket. ... The London Magazine has a publication history spanning almost two hundred years, and has featured work by some of the most prominent names in ...
Literary Review
Literary Review covers the most important and interesting books published each month, from history and biography to fiction and travel. The magazine was founded in 1979 and is based in London. May 2023, Issue 518 Donald Rayfield on Osip Mandelstam * R W Johnson on Winnie and Nelson Mandela * Patricia Fara on women in science * Michael Prodger ...
The Big List of UK Literary Magazines
The Pomegranate London is a biannual printed art and literary magazine featuring short stories, poems and essays on artists. Founded in July 2020, The Pomegranate London seeks to publish and promote innovative, fresh and experimental new work from established and emerging writers and artists from the UK and internationally.
The Pomegranate London
The Pomegranate London is a biannual printed art and literary magazine featuring short stories, poems and essays on artists.
The London Reader
This volume of the London Reader digs deep into the roots that bind us to house plants, leafy neighbours, distant forests, and indeed the wider world. Our close relationship with plants opens up in this volume thanks to short stories, first-hand accounts, art, and poetry by Liz Ziemska, Leon Coleman, smintz, Steve Zisson, Rebecca Burton, Ulrike ...
Is the LRB the best magazine in the world?
The London Review of Books has become the most successful - and controversial - literary publication in Europe. Just what is Mary-Kay Wilmers, its 75-year-old editor, getting so right? Sat 8 ...
Homepage
The edition pays homage to the various ways exemplary creatives with children live, and to the extraordinary breadth of voices represented by working moms, dads, and babas of the USA. It includes a mix of famous names and emerging writers from Brooklyn to the hinterlands. £16.00. Buy Now Subscribe.
The Literary London Journal
The Literary London Journal. Founded in 2003 by Lawrence Phillips, The Literary London Journal has provided a leading forum for scholars engaged in the study of London and its literature. The Literary London Society is not currently seeking article submissions to the Journal. We are, however, still publishing reviews of relevant publications ...
The London Magazine
The London Magazine is England?s oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today ? reinvigorated for a new century the Magazine's essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing, and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape.
About
Most gift boxes also come with a year's subscription to the magazine. Visit the bookshop online here or in person at 10 Curzon Street, London W1J 5HH. Reach the bookshop by phone on +44 (0)20 7629 0647 or by email at [email protected]. Jobs. Work experience at Literary Review. We are now back to offering part-time unpaid work experience ...
London Magazine
The London Magazine is England's oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today-reinvigorated for a new century-the Magazine's essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape.
Submission Guidelines
Postal Submissions. Whilst postal submissions will be considered, submission via Submittable or email is strongly preferred. If you do send your submission via post, please make sure to include your contact details. Our postal address is: The London Magazine. Flat 5, 11 Queen's Gate. London SW7 5EL.
Pomegranate London
The Pomegranate London is a biannual printed art and literary magazine featuring short stories, poems and essays on artists. Founded in July 2020, The Pomegranate London seeks to publish and promote innovative, fresh and experimental new work from established and emerging writers and artists from the UK and internationally. The magazine may also
Martin Amis: An Appreciation
Our critic assesses the achievement of Martin Amis, Britain's most famous literary son. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read ...
The London Magazine on Twitter: "In our most recent issue
In our most recent issue, @NinoStrachey recounts the dazzling parties of the Bloomsbury group, whose members included Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. Have you been to Bloomsbury yet? Take a look at our literary London walking tour here ️ https://bit.ly/3MRADix . 25 May 2023 10:58:41
Top 25 London Magazines & Publications To Follow in 2023
2. Absolutely London Magazine. London, England, UK. Absolutely London is your ultimate guide to luxury living in the capital. From the best food & drink, fashion and beauty to exclusive events. Also in London Lifestyle Blogs. absolutely.london. 5K 9.3K 38.8K 10 posts / month Get Email Contact. 3.
11 Indie Literary Magazines You Should Be Reading
The White Review. One of London's most revered independent literary magazines, The White Review mixes outstanding fiction, essays and poetry with beautiful art and photography all wrapped up in a lovely, thick print edition. Launched in 2011, its founding aim was to provide "a space for a new generation to express itself unconstrained by form, subject or genre", and today it publishes in ...
Zerlina Mastin
The Pomegranate London is a biannual printed art and literary magazine featuring short stories, poems and essays on artists. Founded in July 2020, The Pomegranate London seeks to publish and promote innovative, fresh and experimental new work from established and emerging writers and artists from the UK and internationally.The magazine may also occasionally republish thought-provoking stories ...
Literary Magazines
The London Magazine. Genres: Poetry, Short fiction. Format: Print, Online. About: The London Magazine is England's oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today - reinvigorated for a new century - the Magazine's essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the ...
The London Magazine
The UK's oldest cultural journal featuring the best original poetry, short fiction, cultural reviews and literary essays since 1732. The London Magazine has been responsible for publishing some of the most significant literature in British history. Recent contributors include Christopher Reid, Helen Dunmore, John Sutherland, Michael Holroyd and Beryl Bainbridge, Michael Blackburn, Roddy ...
The London Magazine Submission Manager
The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of 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, the award provides an opportunity for publication and recognition, as well as rewarding ...