A text about girls with guitars and also Ed Atkins' book Flowers. A little two-for-one : ) find the written version of this on our website, support us on Patreon here, and buy our book Poor Artists wherever you buy your books!!!!!

Before she became a well-known novelist, Margaret Atwood was an award-winning poet. She has been publishing poetry for more than 60 years, from the self-published, hand-set Double Persephone in 1961 to its follow up The Circle Game which won the Governor General’s Award, to her latest, critically-acclaimed collection Dearly in 2020. Paper Boat (Cha…

Fra Angelico, the art-priest on shift, hears the confession of a commercial gallerist read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/confessions support our writing: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thewhitepube.co.uk/support⁠⁠⁠ emoji: 🥂🍾

‘Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.’ Solvej Balle’s septology On the Calculation of Volume (Faber), thirty years in the making, was published in Danish by the author’s own press to huge and universal …

Gliff, the latest novel from Ali Smith, forms the first part of a duology; its title, the Scots word for a glimpse or shock, will be echoed but not replicated in next year’s Glyph. In a dystopian, Kafkaesque fictional lanscape, Smith explores how we make meaning and are made by it, and what it would actually mean for the next generation to sort out…

do you think it's possible to change the worst things about yourself? this week's text is about a mythological character from Chinese history and how we might be the same person. another big health update too! find the written version of the text here and get our book Poor Artists woooooo

Josh Cohen’s new book, All the Rage (Granta), explores anger, in all its permutations - social media arguments, political divides, road rage, passive aggression – in the words of Deborah Levy, ‘brilliantly investigating what it is when we are enraged’. What should we make of our anger; to what use can we put it? Cohen’s previous books include Not W…

a 2025 q&a about how the book is doing, the things that we secretly find annoying about each other, our rudest reader interactions, and what's happening with book two :p watch the VIDEO of this chat here; support the white pube here :)

In The Dead of Winter, Sarah Clegg – author of the HWA Crown Award-shortlisted Woman’s Lore - looks behind the tinsel and the turkey to explore the darker traditions of the Christmas season. At wassails, hoodenings and winter gatherings, attended by ghastly, grinning horses, snatching monsters and mysterious visitors, we discover how these customs …

Or, on why I want to be confused / why I love strangeness. Talking about On Ugliness: Medieval and Contemporary @ Skarstedt. Read the text version here: thewhitepube.co.uk/on-ugliness support our writing: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thewhitepube.co.uk/support⁠⁠⁠ emoji: 👹👺

Eileen Myles reads from their first collection of poetry since 2018’s Evolution. The poems in a “Working Life” evoke the joy and unease in the quotidian, moving ‘with call and response between perception and thought’, as Camille Roy writes in Brooklyn Rail magazine. Myles is in conversation with journalist and activist Amelia Abraham, whose Queer I…

I have good news!!!!!! this week's text is about midodrine, Chile and the artist Phoebe Kaniewska. listen to hear the good news woooo or read about it on our website here. Sign up to our Patreon to join the discord if you want also. I hate all other social media except the white pube discord. there, I said it.…

Isabelle Baafi, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award for her pamphlet Ripe, constructs her debut collection Chaotic Good (Faber) around the story of an escape from a toxic marriage. ‘Chaotic Good is a debut of amazing endurance,’ writes poet Will Harris. ‘Its formal pressures create a kind of kaleidoscopic intensity that – with each turn of the cha…

This week's text is about listening in on a crit :) read it here: thewhitepube.com/the-crit support our writing: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thewhitepube.co.uk/support⁠⁠ emoji: 👼

In Poor Artists (Particular Books) Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente (AKA The White Pube), explore the bizarre world of contemporary art through their protagonist Quest Talukdar. In surreal encounters with other artists, Quest learns profound truths about money and power, and must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true…

spoiler free text about Lapvona and a clinical trial I did this week and reading books all the way to the end even when you don't love them. Find the written version on our website here ; sign up to our Patreon here to join our discord; and please buy our book Poor Artists! it's out in hardback, audiobook and ebook!! paperback aint til October baby…

The Third Realm is the next instalment of the series Karl Ove Knausgaard began with The Morning Star and continued in The Wolves of Eternity; like its two precursors, it is a breathtaking exploration of ordinary lives on the cusp of irrevocable change, ‘re-enchanting the cosmos with those beguiling secrets science had stolen from it’ (in the words …

‘If ever a book of history was blessed with contemporary relevance, this one is’, writes Andrew O’Hagan of Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart (Allen Lane). ‘The dumbfounding, delusional, narcissistic King Richard; the white-knuckle ride of Henry IV, dogged all the way by notions of illegitimacy. I feel these men could have been ripped from today…

This week's text is a short story about roundabout art! About where art sits in the public sphere, where it is surprising or unexpected! Read the text: thewhitepube.co.uk/the-roundabout-artist support our writing: ⁠⁠⁠⁠thewhitepube.co.uk/support⁠ emoji: 🏝🏖

In Black Meme (Verso) Legacy Russell, award-winning author of the groundbreaking Glitch Feminism, explores the “meme” as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to the present, mining both archival and contemporary media. Through imagery, memory, and technology, Black Meme shows us how images of Blackness have always been central to our understand…

I write about the app called Visible that is supposed to help you with energy-limiting health conditions, and I write about Eliza Barry Callahan's 2024 book The Hearing Test. You can find the written version here, our Patreon here, and here's a referral code to the app. I have no idea if it's worth it yet. In the first few weeks yes? But ask me aga…

In his memoir Sonic Life (Faber), Thurston Moore recounts a life that has been defined by music. Following a childhood rock ’n’ roll epiphany in the early 1960s, his infatuation with the subversive world of 1970s punk and no wave led him to move to New York City, where he immersed himself in the underground music and art scenes. In 1981 he co-found…

Described by Mick Herron as ‘seductive, entrancing, and quite off the wall’, Rachel Kushner’s fourth novel Creation Lake (Cape) reaffirms her position as one of America’s most exciting and accomplished writers of fiction. In a reimagining of the spy novel for an age of ecological crisis, Kushner leads us to a remote Neanderthal cave in rural France…

Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban @ Indigo + Madder, a postcard in a courtyard, my aunt's fridge. read the text: thewhitepube.co.uk/athen-nina support our writing: ⁠⁠⁠thewhitepube.co.uk/support emoji: 💄💋

In ‘a wonderful book about looking and learning’ (Gavin Francis) retired GP Iona Heath relates the importance that John Berger’s work and friendship had on her working life as a doctor in a deprived London borough. Five decades of engagement with Berger’s work and twenty years of friendship with the man himself made her, she is convinced, a better …

did you know all the long covid clinics in the UK were closing down in March? in this episode, I write about money and my PIP disaster and my last long covid clinic appointment, but I also write about a woman who gives birth to rabbits. You can find the text version on our website & you can get a copy of Mary and the Rabbit Dream on Galley Beggar's…

Taking us from the awkwardness of middle school to the transcendence of a sex club, SLUTS: Anthology (Cipher Press) presents a diverse collection of writing – fiction and non-fiction, pro and con, philosophical and compulsive – exploring the eternally controversial word. Whether an insult or badge of honour, an identity or a state of mind, SLUTS en…

an essay about readymades, found objects in art and whether that's a good thing (and what it all **MEANS**!) read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/found-objects the emoji for this text is: 🔳◼️

If Only – first published in Norway in 2001, and now brought into English by Charlotte Barslund – is viewed in Norway as Vigdis Hjorth’s masterpiece, a story of the devastation wreaked on one woman’s life by an ill-advised affair. Hjorth (whose other novels in English include Is Mother Dead?, Will and Testament and Long Live the Post Horn!) is in c…

In Mother State (Allen Lane), Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. ‘Mot…

this week's text is a review of SPRAY, Ella Fleck @ Season 4 Episode 6 read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/spray here's a link to the gallery's website Support our writing: ⁠⁠thewhitepube.co.uk/support 💘💨💘💨💘💨💘💨💘💨💘💨💘💨💘💨

Best known for her novels – most recently, 2021’s The Fell – now Sarah Moss has turned her hand to life-writing. My Good Bright Wolf unflinchingly details her experience of girlhood and anorexia in prose described by Jan Carson as ‘part memoir, part confessional, part dark and feverish fairytale’. Moss was in conversation with Octavia Bright, autho…