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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...

I cough while the technician tinkers with the projector, although the two are not related, and I wonder why my throat is sore but I quickly decide that it was the airplane, those things are a wonderland for bacteria, and at least the snafu with the projector gives me time to take a sip from the glass of water in front of me, a glass that I’ve already topped up with a little whisky, which is a crime against single malt, I know, believe me I know, but it’s become a ritual now, every time I give one of these keynotes I find myself reaching for the hip flask, and it doesn’t hurt anybody in the end, and I don’t think anybody would blame me for needing to steady my nerves (even though my nerves never need steadying, I’ve often felt that they’re not so much made of organic material as they are built from some sort of steel or copper, pinging under my skin like telephone cable) given the size of the audience and the importance of this speech, which is not to say that I’m bragging about it, because somebody has to be on the podium and it might as well be me, and the years I put in at the coal face mean that I have a certain amount of experience to share, and my natural gravitas (again, I’m really not bragging, this is just a statement of fact based on my appearance – a full head of silver hair, a certain sharpness around the eyes – and voice – which isn’t as deep as you might expect, but there’s gravel on the riverbed) means that people tend to listen to that experience; you can see them now if you look around the hall, backs still straight in their seats and eyes still clear from coffee, hungry for somebody to explain to them why they bothered to register for this conference, hungry for somebody to bring some life to what would otherwise be a dry and dirty topic (I won’t bore you with the details,

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

Interview

November 2011

Interview with Margaret Jull Costa

Sam Gordon

Interview

November 2011

On first impressions, this interview with Margaret Jull Costa, happening as it did – for the most part –...

poetry

September 2011

The Moon over Timna

Rikudah Potash

TR. Michael Casper

poetry

September 2011

In a copper house Lived the new moon, The new moon Of Timna. In a copper coat With a...

fiction

January 2014

Textile

Orly Castel-Bloom

TR. Dalya Bilu

fiction

January 2014

It was not only avoiding thoughts of home that helped the good sniper to carry out his mission as...

 

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