Literary readings have become one of London’s most unexpected forms of nightlife. But why would anyone spend a Friday night in a packed nightclub listening to strangers read from their novels? Starting from this question, Will Kaye offers a witty portrait of London’s literary scene, where aspiring writers, artists and creative hopefuls gather in clubs, bars and churches to listen to strangers read aloud. Beneath the absurdity of drunken audiences, endless networking and the occasional terrible performance by cultural micro-celebrities, the story examines an unlikely phenomenon in which literature becomes a vehicle for gathering, self-fashioning and participation in a city increasingly hungry for offline forms of cultural life.

One of the most acclaimed voices in contemporary Thai literature, Duanwad Pimwana tells the story of Manop, an ageing man haunted by a love he never confessed. When a vivid dream brings back memories of Chaiyapon, the childhood friend he secretly loved, decades of silence begin to resurface. Moving between adolescence and old age, the story follows a life shaped by desire and compromise, tracing the quiet negotiations through which a kathoey identity was concealed and ultimately reclaimed. At the centre of this journey is the “chong kraben”, a genderless garment that becomes both a memory of first love and a late gesture of self-recognition.

Vinyl records are often understood as containers of sound. Fabio Acca proposes the opposite: they are performative devices that produce experiences. Positioning the record within the field of Live Arts, the text explores listening as an embodied practice through which bodies, desires and identities take shape. Drawing on personal memories, performance theory and the history of artist records in Itlay, Acca argues that a record does not merely document an event, but reactivates it. From domestic turntables to experimental sound art, listening emerges as a live act where sound, imagination and presence continuously unfold.