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Amber Husain

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, The Believer, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. She is the author of Replace Me, to be published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.



Articles Available Online


Slouching Towards Death

Book Review

July 2021

Amber Husain

Book Review

July 2021

In January, a preview excerpt in The New Yorker of Rachel Kushner’s essay collection The Hard Crowd (2021) warned us that this might turn...

Book Review

August 2020

Natasha Stagg’s ‘Sleeveless’

Amber Husain

Book Review

August 2020

‘The thong is centimetres closer to areas of arousal,’ writes Natasha Stagg in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York,...

We all have tombs from which we travel To reach mine I have to get a lift with some strangers to a place in the Catalan Coastal Range I’ll be spending the weekend taking part in a workshop called ‘Live your Death’ The main challenge of this adventure will be to relate my death in the first person, without really dying, I hope In the brochure they talk about us facing things very similar to NDEs (near death experiences), watching the film of our lives, glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel, having out-of-body experiences and seeing languid and distant little men calling us affectionately from the threshold where it all ends It’s also possible, I think, that I’ll be put on a plane and taken to an island where weird things happen In the meantime I’m getting to know some of my fellow passengers   ‘Did we meet at “Recycling Ourselves”?’ asks the man   No, it was at “My Place in the Universe”,’ she replies   ‘Oh yeah and have you found it?’   ‘Not yet’   ‘After all these workshops you still haven’t found it?’   ‘I’m working on it’   ‘What you need is a clear objective,’ says the man, who despite all the money he’s spent on self-help workshops seems not to have grasped certain basic principles For example, that you don’t greet a woman by asking her if she’s figured out what to do with her shitty life yet I can think of various things to say to them both to solve their problems and earn myself some cash: that he try closing his mouth every now and again and that she tell guys who reckon they know more about her than she does where to go   ‘Well, girls, are you ready?’ This is the man’s second time at the death workshop and he claims to know what he’s talking about   ‘You have to take your clothes off, yeah? Get naked, yes siree’   The woman and I look at each other The man turns around and just speaks to me this time:   ‘You must have good lungs because you’re from over there, down south, people have good lungs there

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall,...

On Having No Skin: Nan Goldin’s Sirens

Art Review

January 2020

Amber Husain

Art Review

January 2020

The feeling of drug-induced euphoria could be strips of gauze between beautiful fingers. Or a silver slinky sent down a torso by its own...
In Defence of Dead Women

Essay

November 2018

Amber Husain

Essay

November 2018

The memorial for the artist was as inconclusive as her work, or anybody’s life. Organised haphazardly on Facebook by one of her old friends,...

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Art

March 2015

Tropenkoller

Lothar Hempel

Art

March 2015

Taking the title Tropenkoller (Tropical Madness), German artist Lothar Hempel’s latest exhibition at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London (Feb 27-Mar...

feature

Issue No. 1

In Somaliland

feature

Issue No. 1

On a traffic island in the middle of Somaliland’s capital city, Hargeisa, is the rusting shell of fighter jet...

poetry

April 2017

The Village

Mona Arshi

poetry

April 2017

                                 When I pronounce...

 

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