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Leon Craig
Leon Craig is a writer and editor based in Berlin. She has written for the TLS, the Literary ReviewAnother Gaze and the London Magazine among others. Her queer gothic short story collection Parallel Hells is published by Sceptre Books and she is currently working on her first novel The Decadence.

Articles Available Online


Cosy Violence

Book Review

June 2023

Leon Craig

Book Review

June 2023

The 22 year old Australian narrator of K Patrick’s sensuous, subversive debut novel is a long way from home. A matron at an unnamed...

Fiction

September 2021

Lick the Dust

Leon Craig

Fiction

September 2021

When you misplace something in the library here, it stays lost for a very long time. The eighteenth-century catalogue...

The President of a small European country was dozing on a wave bed when his platinum smartphone, resting upon his ebony nightstand, began to vibrate ever so slightly The bed rocked his sixty-eight-year-old body so softly and delicately that he didn’t want to raise his eyelids He just didn’t want to at all But the smartphone kept gurgling and vibrating, which meant it had a serious reason to do so Reaching out his swarthy hand with its short fingers, he picked up the smartphone and pressed his finger to its screen    ‘She’s been delivered, Mr President’   ‘Ah…’ he remembered ‘Good’   Putting the cold device back into its place, he rubbed his face, soft from a recently taken Turkish bath, exhaled, then, with a single movement of his muscular body, got up easily from the foam-rubber wave The President was short, squat, broad-shouldered, bald, thick-necked and big-headed; the features of his bronzed, black-browed, strong-willed face were very proper except for his small fleshy ears that looked as if they’d been haphazardly stuck onto his head The President was garbed in nothing but a terry towel that matched the colour of his body   Shrugging his damp towel off onto the floor, he walked into a dark-green shower room of sinewy marble Three wide showerheads loomed up on the left, but the President didn’t move toward them, instead going over to three copper buckets hanging from chains on the right Standing under a bucket, he pulled at a lever The bucket began to tilt, pouring icy water over the President Letting it wash over him, he hooted dully, shook his head, then slapped into the changing room on his strong feet A servant was already waiting for him there Having wiped over the President’s body, he delicately anointed it with Eau de Cologne and helped him to get dressed Dressed in loose beige pants, a sleeveless shirt and light boots, the President left the changing room, exited the bathing and sporting complex, got behind the wheel of a one-seater electric car, and headed for the palace A wide electric security vehicle equipped with assault rifles

Contributor

April 2016

Leon Craig

Contributor

April 2016

Leon Craig is a writer and editor based in Berlin. She has written for the TLS, the Literary Review, Another Gaze and the London Magazine among...

Art Review

April 2019

Oscar Wilde Temple, Studio Voltaire

Leon Craig

Art Review

April 2019

The light is dim, the air richly scented. Little purple tea lights flicker in the votive candle rack and...

[Getting] Down with Gal Pals

Feature

November 2018

Leon Craig

Feature

November 2018

There’s a moment in Laura Kaye’s underrated novel English Animals when the protagonist Mirka, sitting in the village bar with her married lover, notices...
Mute Canticle

Prize Entry

April 2016

Leon Craig

Prize Entry

April 2016

Giulio the singing fascist came to pick me up from the little airport in his Jeep. He made sure to come round and hold...

READ NEXT

feature

Issue No. 1

(Un)timely considerations on old and current issues

Donatien Grau

feature

Issue No. 1

Criticism has not been doing well lately. The London Review of Books, Europe’s biggest-selling literary publication, would no longer...

feature

Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

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...

 

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