Mailing List


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...

This anthology contains writing in translation from across the world, never published before in English Within its pages you will find the work of authors who are largely unknown among Anglophone audiences, alongside inter- nationally recognised authors and translators There are dark tales of murder, cannibalism and dog breeding, stories of surrealistic erotica and anthropological science-fiction, and accounts of protest and resistance Courtroom exhibits speak back, detectives piece together the final days of unhappy youths Nuns smoke cigarettes and share obscenities in darkened rooms Villagers go on secret nocturnal outings, jumping between the tops of mango trees   Since its inception, The White Review has been a home for inventive and experimental writing in translation With this anthology, we hope to pay tribute to the tireless work of translators, whose often invisible labour helps bring literature to new audiences, transporting writing across languages and borders In a world carved up by nationalisms, in which culture is too often produced in an echo chamber, or limited by insular attitudes and risk-averse commercial strategies, connecting with the voices of those outside of our immediate contexts is particularly vital As the writing in this anthology shows, it can also be wildly entertaining   To make this anthology we issued a global open call The quality of the submissions we received shows how many excellent works in translation are out there – and how much excellent writing is waiting to be translated This collection is a drop in the ocean We hope it encourages readers, and publishers, to dive in   Rosanna McLaughlin, Izabella Scott & Skye Arundhati Thomas

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

poetry

September 2016

Two Poems

Sun Yung Shin

poetry

September 2016

  Autoclonography   for performance   In 1998, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human...

poetry

September 2011

The Cinematographer, a 42-year-old man named Miyagawa, aimed his camera directly at the sun, which at first probably seemed like a bad idea

Michael Earl Craig

poetry

September 2011

Last night Kurosawa’s woodcutter strode through the forest, his axe on his shoulder. Intense sunlight stabbed and sparkled and...

Interview

Issue No. 5

Interview with Ivan Vladislavić

Jan Steyn

Interview

Issue No. 5

Ivan Vladislavić is one of a handful of writers working in South Africa after apartheid whose work will still...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required