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Helen Charman
Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history of motherhood — is forthcoming from Allen Lane in 2024. She teaches in the English Studies department at Durham University.

Articles Available Online


Attachment Barbies: On Watching Grey’s Anatomy

Essay

March 2023

Helen Charman

Essay

March 2023

In August 2022, ABC announced that Ellen Pompeo, currently the highest-paid actress on American network television, was leaving Grey’s Anatomy, the show on which...

Book Review

May 2021

HOLDING THE ROOM: ON HOLLY PESTER’S ‘COMIC TIMING’

Helen Charman

Book Review

May 2021

The last poem in Holly Pester’s first collection COMIC TIMING (Granta, 2021) is called ‘Villette’; it shares its title...

THE WHITE REVIEW is an arts and literature magazine, published three times a year, with monthly online editions It publishes fiction, essays, interviews with writers and artists, poetry, and series of artworks   ‘THE WHITE REVIEW is a gift for writers, and for literature’ — Claire-Louise Bennett ‘An insider’s manual for aspiring writers’ — Nicole Flattery ‘THE WHITE REVIEW has boldly carved out a space for itself in the contemporary literary landscape, such that the landscape has begun to shape itself around it’ — Vanessa Onwuemezi ‘What it brings to the table is the political authenticity and fervour of a little magazine – intense long-form pieces, voices from the margins, critical conversations’ — Meena Kandasamy ‘THE WHITE REVIEW has long been one of my favourite publications, encouraging work which, pushes boundaries and pulses with life’ — Caleb Azumah Nelson ‘Nothing less than a cultural revolution’ — Deborah Levy ‘The White Review gives a platform to emerging artists alongside established ones, publishing work that isn’t afraid to take risks or challenge’ — Sophie Mackintosh ‘Packed with varied, unexpected material in all kinds of forms, The White Review  brings a message from the future: it rises to meet readers’ and writers’ continuing needs to experience art and literature in a sensuous, delectable form; and it gives me the feeling that I have my finger on the pulse’ — Marina Warner ‘One of the best magazines in Europe’ — Hans Ulrich Obrist   THE WHITE REVIEW was launched by Ben Eastham and Jacques Testard in February 2011, to provide ‘a space for a new generation to express itself unconstrained by form, subject or genre’ It takes its name from LA REVUE BLANCHE, a Parisian magazine which ran from 1889 to 1903    The White

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history...

Essay

May 2020

Where do I put myself, if public life’s destroyed? On reading Denise Riley

Helen Charman

Essay

May 2020

How do you read someone who doesn’t always want to be read? This is a question I used to...

Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

Book Review

October 2018

Helen Charman

Book Review

October 2018

Reading Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People is a compulsive experience. After the navy blue Faber & Faber proofs were sent out in early...
Rendering intimacy impossible, deploy lifeboats (mark yourself safe) Not listening as such, more waiting to speak, above all mark yourself, it’s so important to be safe Carry on, they demand, we’re not reeling / we are reeling Is this the place for a fountain reference? Probably ‘What first attracted you to your wife, sir?’ ‘Her delicacy / her ankles / her hatred of the Tories’                  Alive twice over but that’s a whole life gone too                you know I’m sorry, he holds his hands up, I’m                sorry, he backs away: my conscience couldn’t                keep company with your body I say, your body?                it just made me think: it’s only a nine month stay   The next time you lay a hand on me, I’ll make a perfect gleaming dive into the Thames Aren’t you glad / to be here? I am
Electioneering

Prize Entry

November 2017

Helen Charman


READ NEXT

Interview

September 2014

Interview with Laure Prouvost

Alice Hattrick

Interview

September 2014

Laure Prouvost begins to tell us about something that happened this morning. She woke up with four vegetables on...

feature

March 2015

Plastic Words

Tom Overton

feature

March 2015

Plastic Words was a six-week series of thirteen events which described itself as ‘mining the contested space between contemporary...

fiction

Issue No. 8

Estate

China Miéville

fiction

Issue No. 8

Two nights running I woke up with my heart going crazy. The first time, as I lay there in...

 

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