Writing Archives - Page 2 of 8

Image is a black and white photograph showing the writer Agatha Christie, an older white woman with white hair. She is wearing a double string of pearls and a dark suit jacket with a darker collar. She is seated behind a typewriter, holding a sheaf of pages, and looking upwards. To either side of her there are stacks of books that fill the frame. There are two shelves of large reference volumes behind her.

Culture Club: Reading Neglected British Women Crime Writers of the ‘Golden Age,’ and Just Beyond…

Selina Robertson March 24, 2021 Writing

By Sara Chambers. Moving deeper into the margins of neglected female writers of this era I discovered I was hooked and actively sought out new names. I’d like to share a selection of titles by those either languishing in obscurity or neglected because they’re seen as old fashioned.

The image shows the back cover of the book Paradise Rot. There is a pink filter over the image. The back cover features a white moth and pink print that looks like lichen. It has a blurb text that reads: "Jenny Hval creates a parallel world that's familiar but subtly skewed. As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder." The blurb is by Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick. There is a second copy of the book face-upwards beneath the main copy, and some drooping pink tulips in the top left hand corner of the image.

Culture Club: Reading PARADISE ROT by Jenny Hval

Selina Robertson March 18, 2021 Writing

By Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou. During the second lockdown, I started to reread Jenny Hval’s Paradise Rot. Looking to Hval’s novel, I wanted to see the beauty in it all, the thread of life holding it all together, the brownish stain of the rotting apple leading us outdoors, into light, into spring, into a reinvigorated and reconstituted sense of self.

The image is from A Month of Single Frames by Lynne Sachs, and shows a view from an interior to an exterior. In the foreground is a round table with packets, tins and bags of food, and with several open notebooks, one with a pencil lying in its gutter. Behind it there is a desk with a chair pulled in, and a shirt draped over the back of the chair. Behind the desk is a window, whose lower louvre is made up of twelve panes. All the panes are scattered with small rectangles of brightly-coloured plastic that scatter patches of coloured light on the desk. A fragment of blue sky is visible through the upper louvre.

Culture Club: Watching A MONTH OF SINGLE FRAMES by Lynne Sachs and VEVER by Deborah Stratman

Selina Robertson March 3, 2021 Writing

By Giulia Rho
Watching these films on the occasion of International Women’s Day I am left hopeful of the connections we are able to draw. We need to cultivate our genealogy, reworking the old in order to create something new, much like Sachs and Stratman do in their collaboration with Hammer.

Culture Club: Watching IT’S A SIN by Russell T. Davies

Selina Robertson February 22, 2021 Writing

By Annie Ring. Davies’ show robs Jill of ambivalence in a way that made me wonder how we can avoid our queer kinship relationships being complicit with neoliberal reductions of the state. Thinking through ambivalence, as I do below with reference to Roszika Parker’s feminist psychoanalysis, can help us by contrast to build more critical kinship for viral times.

Culture Club: Reading THE EIGHTH LIFE (FOR BRILKA) by Nino Haratischvili, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin

Selina Robertson February 18, 2021 Writing

By Elhum Shakerifar
Haratischvili’s abiity to draw connection and perspective is part of the joy of her writing… The question of hot chocolate is a thread that runs throughout the novel, and so I recommend you invest in something truly special to accompany your reading.

Culture Club: Reading MISHANDLED ARCHIVE by Tara Fatehi Irani

Selina Robertson February 3, 2021 Writing

By Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou. One of my favourite images from Tara Fatehi Irani’s book, Mishandled Archive, is of a bride seated on the floor. She is very still, very quiet, but her eyes speak… She is gazing at her past; she is gazing at her future, at a future waiting, watching, approaching, soon to replace this moment.

Culture Club: Reading IT TAKES BLOOD AND GUTS by Skin & Watching THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION by Radha Blank

Selina Robertson January 28, 2021 Writing

By Jenny Chamarette I don’t think it’s a coincidence that It Takes Blood And Guts and The Forty-Year-Old Version have stuck with me while I experience my own mid-life inertia, as I reflect on the unseen power of my adolescent voice and look to rebuild my own creativity. And it makes sense to me to seek out the wisdom of Black women musicians and artists to do that.

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