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Amber Husain

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall, Central Saint Martins. Her essays and criticism appear or are forthcoming in 3AM, The Believer, London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Radical Philosophy and elsewhere. She is the author of Replace Me, to be published by Peninsula Press in November 2021.



Articles Available Online


Slouching Towards Death

Book Review

July 2021

Amber Husain

Book Review

July 2021

In January, a preview excerpt in The New Yorker of Rachel Kushner’s essay collection The Hard Crowd (2021) warned us that this might turn...

Book Review

August 2020

Natasha Stagg’s ‘Sleeveless’

Amber Husain

Book Review

August 2020

‘The thong is centimetres closer to areas of arousal,’ writes Natasha Stagg in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York,...

When not listening to the phone messages of recently deceased children or smearing those killed in stadium disasters, journalists at Britain’s largest-selling newspaper, the Sun, may find time to pen light-hearted satires of modern life One such piece was published in January 2003, depicting a new cast of ‘Mr Men’ characters that best reflect twenty-first century Britain After a handful of readers went to the Press Complaints Commission, failing to see the funny side to ‘Mr Asylum Seeker’, ‘Mr Yardie’, and ‘Mr Albanian Gangster’, a new figure was created just for them, ‘Mr Guardianista’:   He suffers bouts of guilt about the poor and homeless but tries not to let it spoil his holiday at a gîte in Provence Dare support the toppling of Saddam Hussein and he’ll choke on his organic vegetarian lunch (washed down with a subtle Chilean chardonnay) Mr Guardianista is also likely to be a student well after an age when he should be working for a living and contributing to a society he thinks owes him one   Guardian readers like myself expect, and embrace, such attacks – we are amazed that our dwindling band of Guardianistas continues to occupy such a prominent place in the national mindset Only 200,000 of us are willing to pay £140 (£230 on Saturday) for the paper, a drop of 11 per cent from last year Guardiancouk may attract over four million unique hits a day (second only to Mail Online in the UK), but the Guardian’s print readership is just over a tenth of the Daily Mail’s and half that of The Times More Britons buy the Scottish Daily Record, yet (as far as I am aware) no pejorative term exists for its patrons   Guardian staff members have enough self-awareness to understand that their work is not to everyone’s taste Last year Michael White, the paper’s assistant editor, listed the charge sheet as follows: ‘Naive, subversive, priggish, lentil-eating, sandal- wearing, feminist, humourless’ Outside of the fold, cartoonish reactionaries tend to project their personal anxieties onto the

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain

Contributor

November 2018

Amber Husain is a writer, academic and publisher. She is currently a managing editor and research fellow at Afterall,...

On Having No Skin: Nan Goldin’s Sirens

Art Review

January 2020

Amber Husain

Art Review

January 2020

The feeling of drug-induced euphoria could be strips of gauze between beautiful fingers. Or a silver slinky sent down a torso by its own...
In Defence of Dead Women

Essay

November 2018

Amber Husain

Essay

November 2018

The memorial for the artist was as inconclusive as her work, or anybody’s life. Organised haphazardly on Facebook by one of her old friends,...

READ NEXT

poetry

July 2011

Comfort Station

Medbh McGuckian

poetry

July 2011

A witness has said that you raped women And brought them to the barracks to be used by the...

feature

July 2013

The New Writing

César Aira

TR. Rahul Bery

feature

July 2013

The way I see it, the avant-garde emerged at a point when the professionalisation of artists had consumed itself...

Prize Entry

April 2017

Hangnails, and Other Diseases

Giada Scodellaro

Prize Entry

April 2017

Benson’s Syndrome   Grapefruit. I have lost the word for it. Popillo? Popello? No, no. It escapes her, the...

 

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