Photos from a past trip to Cairo – mostly downtown Cairo. 1/2

Just sharing a short, lucidly-written piece on “Don DeLillo’s Film Texts” by the fiction writer and artist Imogen Reid which came out a couple of years ago in @sublunary.bsky.social . I remember reading and liking this last year, but forgetting to share it. sublunaryeditions.com/magazine/don...

I have no comment to make on Nolan’s Odyssey, or the translator’s response to it, or Joyce Carol Oates’ response to that response. The only certain thing I can say is: somebody out there is making an awful lot of money.

Finally got my hands on the paper copy of this. I’ll share the full story once the next issue of WITNESS comes out. One of two or three stories I wrote inspired by a trip to India.

Recently I walked through Morecambe, a northern seaside town with a melancholy, faded air: shuttered shops, empty retail spaces, bored kids. My father remembered cafés, Hart’s, the Winter Gardens, a pier. The bay is beautiful; the disinvestment is criminal. Brighton feels like another country.

The ending of one of my favorite Tagore stories, “The Postmaster”: a university-educated postmaster befriends a village girl, then leaves for Calcutta. Its final epiphany mixes Western and Hindu nihilisms without quite belonging to either. William Radice’s translation is superb.

I got into London a couple of days ago and visited Tate Britain. Saw a wonderful Whistler exhibition there and decided to share some of the best pictures.

Wonderful piece this week by Mikki Aronoff. Love the figure of the grandfather never met in this.

Congrats to everyone who made this year’s Wigleaf Top 50 and longlist—looking forward to reading them. Out of bored curiosity I went online yesterday, and found a piece I had written in The Phare longlisted for Wigleaf’s 2024 Top 50 Very Short Fictions. No one tells you anything in this business...

A short story of mine, “The Enormous Man”, came out with Quarter(ly) Journal last year. Now that their new issue is out, I feel it’s okay to share it (link to pdf in first comment).

Is anybody else watching Widow’s Bay? Am on episode 4. Smooth script, decent acting, some creepy moments for a horror comedy. The political subtexts are as they should always be in horror – never intruding, just palimpsestically hovering beneath the surface.

Pictures from Chile. 1/2

RIP David Hockney. Bradford lad. Your pools and highways and canyons have always stayed with me.

Reading this at the moment. Really enjoying it, exquisitely written. Almost a third of the way through.

I read old LRB/NYRB issues a year or two late. This 2023 Jerome Groopman piece is grim: cancer treatment as lucrative market, with investors drawn to drugs that “don’t work too well” or cure too quickly—so the patient/customer keeps paying. Photos attached; paywalled link in comments.

About 6 months ago I submitted a story to The Masters Review Winter Story Award (a journal I’d never had much luck with), and yesterday I got an email saying it had made it onto the longlist. Not exactly a win, but nice that it got into the last 2 percent of about 2,000 entries.

Another beautiful piece by Natalie Marino.

Photos from last week’s visit to Eh-Dan-Brah (I hope I got that phonetically correct). 2/2

I bought the FT’s weekend supplement for the first time today. Glossy pages of watches, luxury pens, designer pullovers and boutique-hotel décor laments. It seems written by people who do not occupy our reality. It’s called HTSI — How To Spend It. I wish I was making all of this up.

Sharing today some poems by Arun Kolatkar, who died over 20 years ago in Maharashtra. A wonderful poet: dry, sceptical, funny, yet oddly accepting about Hindu faith. Famously reclusive too — no lecture circuits or workshops. *Jejuri* is the classic, but there’s much more.

I'm going to be in Edinburgh, Scotland tomorrow for a few days – if anyone has any tips for a) bookshops b) restaurants would love to hear them (I almost always prefer human tips over digitally generated ones).

My story “Hour Glass” has just come out in the latest issue of Witness, which foregrounds the theme of double/mirror/twin. Many thanks to the editors for accepting the piece. witness.blackmountaininstitute.org/issues/sprin...

The first few episodes of BEEF season 2 are very impressive. Great scriptwriting and casting, but also a nice comment on how the exploited class (which is now practically most people) misrecognize in one another the ‘cause’ of their pain, whilst the elites just carry on with their wellness therapy.

Some contrasts from Massachusetts, summer/winter. 1/2

Some amazing work on show at the Green Door Gallery (in Brussels) by my friend Imogen Reid. @imogenreid.bsky.social

A few months ago, my India-set story “Hymn to Sri Devi” appeared in Catamaran. When I first shared it, I hadn’t realized they’d made the full text available as well. Now they have — so here are the pages (link to pdf in first comment). 1/2

Huge congratulations to William Pei Shih @williampeishih.bsky.social (and also the Los Angeles Review) for winning an O. Henry Prize this year. Can’t wait to read the story.

I promised Riham Adly I would share her new substack profile on my vast social media empire. Riham is a prize-winning writer based in Egypt; she’s written over 60 stories in journals such as @litromagazine.bsky.social , the Citron Review, Lost Balloon and Bending Genres. rihamadly.substack.com

Riham’s Substack | Substack

My personal Substack. Click to read Riham’s Substack, a Substack publication. Launched 2 days ago.

rihamadly.substack.com

Three years ago I visited Nepal and, with perfect timing, arrived in the middle of a general strike. Kathmandu felt like a quieter India: street-corner temples, peaceful shrine-filled squares, silent rooftop cafés. I spent a week wandering, taking photos, here are some of them. 1/2

It feels weird at the moment, sharing things you’ve written in times of war. But anyway, for whatever it’s worth, here is something of mine that’s just come out in the journal Pictura @pictura.bsky.social - it's called "Simulation". picturajournal.com/issue-six/ar...