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Jonathan Gibbs

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or the Painted Grape (Galley Beggar Press).



Articles Available Online


Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Sight’

Book Review

February 2018

Jonathan Gibbs

Book Review

February 2018

Jessie Greengrass’s debut story collection caught my eye with its delightfully extravagant title, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to...

feature

May 2016

Cinema on the Page

Jonathan Gibbs

feature

May 2016

Film is a bully. It wants to make its viewers feel, and it has the tools to do so....

I was fourteen when I first transformed from Rosa into ~<*RoSaBubbLe*>~ Propelled by my adoration of Courtney Love – the lead singer of Hole, who I loved for many reasons but especially because she wrote on her stomach in eyeliner – I travelled down my first internet rabbit hole to the forums of the North American feminist magazine, Bust After school, in the living room I shared with my family, I would dwell in this private portal to a different world which could easily be shut on demand (just click the x)   Here, I found other young women, who were negotiating their similar-but-different lives Because of global capitalism we had a lot in common: they too went to Sizzler all-you-can-eat buffet for a treat with their grandparents, they too loved Courtney I didn’t speak (type) much because they all seemed more articulate than I was and because they were from North America and one was even from London, which seemed like centres of the world to me, back then in the suburbs of Sydney I learnt many things on these forums, but two have stuck with me most vividly The first thing I learnt about was zines, a decidedly low-tech cut-n-stick subculture which I readily embraced The second was something called ‘menstruation porn’, which is exactly what it sounds like I visited the slow-to-load webpage of very happy-looking bleeding people naked in the forest only once I think that, while intrigued, I was also repulsed (fully inhabiting the Freudian meaning of ambivalence), or maybe the dial-up cut out or my mum came home from the supermarket But knowing that it was there and being able to turn it over in my mind was enough Desire it seemed, was much more expansive than I had thought How curious In a world where I had already learnt to be frightened of men, the website taught me that they didn’t necessarily always get to determine how sex — and everything else — might go It was a small, quivering thought against the rest of

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or...

The Story I'm Thinking Of

fiction

April 2013

Jonathan Gibbs

fiction

April 2013

There were seven of us sat around the table. Seven grown adults, sat around the table. It was late. We had eaten, and we had...

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Interview

January 2016

Interview with Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Roland Glasser

Interview

January 2016

Roof terrace of the Shangri-La hotel, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, USA; late afternoon, 8 October 2015. We ensconce ourselves in...

Art

July 2013

Redressing the Balance: Women in the Art World

Louisa Elderton

Art

July 2013

London is among the capitals of the international art world. Every day and night is witness to innumerable new...

Art

Issue No. 10

Patterns

Christian Newby

Art

Issue No. 10

 

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