“These are thoughts for us all, sooner or later—and this is a book I'll keep with me, as long as I live.”—David Sexton, The Scotsman In 2008, art critic Tom Lubbock was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor and told he had only two years to live. Physically fit and healthy, and suffering from few symptoms, he faced his death with the same directness and courage that had marked the rest of his life. Lubbock was renowned for the clarity and unconventionality of his writing, and his characteristic fierce intelligence permeates this extraordinary chronicle. With unflinching honesty and curiosity, he repeatedly turns over the fact of his mortality, as he wrestles with the paradoxical question of how to live, knowing we’re going to die. Defying the initial diagnosis, Tom survived for three years. He savored his remaining days; engaging with books, art, friends, his wife and their young son, while trying to stay focused on the fact of his impending death. There are medical details—he vividly describes the slow process of losing control over speech as the tumor gradually pressed down on the area of his brain responsible for language—but this is much more than a book about illness; rather, it's a book about a man who remains in thrall to life, as he inches closer to death. “I hope that if I am ever diagnosed with a terminal illness I will remember to reread Until Further Notice, I Am Alive. It is, in its tough-minded way, truly joyous.”—Lynn Barber, Sunday Times

I AM ALIVE is one of my beloved biographies. The content on each page is authentic. It covers much of my early life; the struggles that I encountered because of homelessness and the consequences I suffered from living on the streets of Jamaica. This book reveals the horrors of my past. From being raped multiple times, trafficked, threatened, ambushed by gunmen, and overcame by schizoaffective disorder, haunted by hallucinations, working on my personal design to defining my destiny in the moments of my decisions. This book has stories of how a black man overcame his challenges. A simple Jamaican becomes victorious over many tribulations. The Atlantic wasn’t crossed overnight, but it happened. I am Sheldon Artwell. I did not give in and I did not give up; I persevered. I faced my struggles and I am alive. Facing up to the numerous mountains in my life was not an easy task; from falling in love with multiple partners, getting engaged, walking away from several relationships to resigning from my job in early 2018 to keep my life. Travelling from city to city, sleeping on rocks, in bushes and abused by almost everyone I came in contact with was the norm. My daily reality was deeply painful. Hunger and thirst stretched my stomach to the point where I had to turn to the garbage bin for survival, tis the reason to say that I was challenged in every way, but I overcame my challenges. And I am alive.

“The work of an exceptional woman artist, writing from the inside about the things women have always done: nursing, nurturing, loving.” —The Guardian Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize, and finalist for every major nonfiction award in the UK, including the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Biography Award, The Iceberg is artist and writer Marion Coutts’ astonishing memoir; an “adventure of being and dying” and a compelling, poetic meditation on family, love, and language. In 2008, Tom Lubbock, the chief art critic for The Independent was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The Iceberg is his wife, Marion Coutts’, fierce, exquisite account of the two years leading up to his death. In spare, breathtaking prose, Coutts conveys the intolerable and, alongside their two-year-old son Ev—whose language is developing as Tom’s is disappearing—Marion and Tom lovingly weather the storm together. In short bursts of exquisitely textured prose, The Iceberg becomes a singular work of art and an uplifting and universal story of endurance in the face of loss. “Dazzling, devastating . . . In her plain-spoken retelling of the commonplace human experience of illness and loss, Coutts achieves something truly extraordinary—she’s created one of the most haunting and achingly honest explorations of grief in recent memory.” —Los Angeles Times

Rich with unpublished material and detailed insight, Rhythms of Feeling offers a new reading of three of the most celebrated poets: Edward Lear, T.S. Eliot, and Stevie Smith. Tracing exciting lines of interplay, affinity, and influence between these writers for the first time, the book shifts the terms of critical debate on Lear, Eliot, and Smith and subtly reorients the traditional account of the genealogies of Modernism. Going beyond a biographically-framed close reading or a more general analysis framed by affect theory, the volume traces these poets' 'affective rhythms' (fits, tears, nerves) to consider the way that poetics, the mental and physical process of writing and reading, and the ebbs and flows of their emotional weather might be in dialogue. Attentive, acute, and often forensic, the book broadens its reach to contemporary writers and medical accounts of creativity and cognition. Alongside deep critical study, this volume seeks to bring emotional intelligence to criticism, finding ways of speaking lucidly and humanely about emotional and physical states that defy lucidity and stretch our sense of the human.

In Until Further Notice, Amy Kaler records a personal account of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time. She documents a series of jolts to her thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and habits—an internal seismograph of living through a global emergency. Kaler’s introspection underlines the universal experience of dissonance brought on by COVID-19 and invites readers to ponder its ambiguities. At the same time, the pandemic lets Kaler put down roots, as she rediscovers her neighbourhood and her city’s natural spaces. Reflexive and relatable, Until Further Notice captures fine-grained, everyday experiences from an extraordinary year.

Over three decades, Gillian Howie wrote at the forefront of philosophy and critical theory, before her untimely death in 2013. This interdisciplinary collection uses her writings to explore the productive, yet often resistant, interrelationship between feminism and critical theory, examining the potential of Howie's particular form of materialism. The contributors also bring to this debate a serious engagement with Howie's late turn towards philosophies of mortality, therapy and 'living with dying'. The volume considers how differently embodied subjects are positioned within public institutions, discourses and spaces, and the role of philosophy, art, film, photography, and literature, in facing situations such as sexual oppression and life-limiting illness.

This timely collection of essays by leading international scholars across religious studies and the environmental humanities advances a lively discussion on materialism in its many forms. While there is little agreement on what ‘materialism’ means, it is evident that there is a resurgence in thinking about matter in more animated and active ways. The volume explores how debates concerning the new materialisms impinge on religious traditions and the extent to which religions, with their material culture and beliefs in the Divine within the material, can make a creative contribution to debates about ecological materialisms. Spanning a broad range of themes, including politics, architecture, hermeneutics, literature and religion, the book brings together a series of discussions on materialism in the context of diverse methodologies and approaches. The volume investigates a range of issues including space and place, hierarchy and relationality, the relationship between nature and society, human and other agencies, and worldviews and cultural values. Drawing on literary and critical theory, and queer, philosophical, theological and social theoretical approaches, this ground-breaking book will make an important contribution to the environmental humanities. It will be a key read for postgraduate students, researchers and scholars in religious studies, cultural anthropology, literary studies, philosophy and environmental studies.