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Writer and activist Rebecca Walker visited Bush House to discuss memoir-writing and expressions of identity and belonging with KCL students.

A few months ago, I was up late, doom scrolling in bed only to be hit with this sudden sense of panic. Sarah J. Maas had just announced that the next book in the ACOTAR series would be released in October 2026. This was not ideal. I had seven other books from her Throne of Glass series to read before I could even tackle the Crescent City series, which was apparently essential to my understanding of the next ACOTAR book. So, I sat there glumly and calculated how many pages I w

Photo by Shanai Tanwar Yesterday I found the soul of Delhi in London. As I gathered alongside hundreds of Indian students and allies in Aldwych to protest the recent hunger strikes asking for education reform and government accountability in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, the energy was palpable. Under the greenery, surrounded by Urdu poetry and chanting “Inquilab Zindabad,” I could have sworn the homeland had manifested itself in this colonial capital this evening. Which is funny

Photo by Daniela Denyer Malo The Wedding People by Alison Espach, a fiction novel published in 2024, has become increasingly popular in reader circles this year and with good reason too. Marketed as a chick-lit romance, readers expect a funny, light-hearted, whirlwind romance type of book, yet what awaits within the pages is so much more. Beginning with an unexpected premise, our main character’s first proper interaction reveals the most unexpected backstory and motivations –

"Three teenage girls" by justmakeit is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. Jennette McCurdy’s Half His Age has received mixed reviews since its release at the end of January, but, for me, that ambivalence is part of what makes it so compelling. Her unsettling sensibility creates a rich character study, drawing the reader into the narrative. At the centre of the novel is Waldo, whose rebellious inner dialogue cuts through every relationship she navigates: her boy-crazy mother, tra

Isabel Waidner, photographed by Suzie Howell I have often wondered what I would do if I met my clone. How different would our lives be, when we would essentially be the same person? Would we be interchangeable, or are there things about myself and my life that are so unique that they couldn’t be replicated? What makes a person’s life theirs ?Isabel Waidner tackles these questions with their distinctive brilliance in their newest novel ‘As If’. Two men (Korine and Lewis) meet

Image courtesy of British Library Images Swayed by the motion of the Circle Line, I grip the overhead rail with one hand, an Oxford Classics paperback in the other. The modernist fragmentations of Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf become increasingly oblique as I read (without a hint of performativity), making me wish I had a hand free to scratch my head. My attention starts to wane. Opposite, a fellow commuter smiles warmly into a screen. A message from someone close, perhaps;

Image courtesy of Iñaki del Olmo for Unsplash I know I’m a little late to the game for 2026 reading suggestions, but I hope I’m not alone in feeling a post-Goodreads challenge burnout in February, especially amidst the assessment period cram. Anyhow, I was inspired by this burnout to help curate Goodreads to-be-read-piles this year to fight the post-challenge blues. The ‘new literary canon’ would seem like contradictory wording when the modern literary world has been so inte

Photo from Wikimedia Commons The Emperor of Gladness , an Ocean Vuong novel published in May 2025, is a work of American fiction. But is it any more fiction than whatever promises America makes to its inhabitants, if not to the world? A severe shift from the epistolary, poetic form of On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous (an inescapable title in an English Lit classroom) and the experimental poetry collections published in previous, Vuong attempts to write the quintessential A

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons The first night of the London Literature Festival is opened by Sayaka Murata, interviewed by Octavia Bright. Sayaka Murata is a new-generation Japanese writer, celebrating the translation of her speculative fiction novel ‘Vanishing World’ into English. She has sold over two million copies of her books in over forty countries; famous for challenging family, romance and societal conventions in her blunt, defiant writing. Her book ‘Vanishing