The White Pube

We are excited to begin 2022 by announcing the 17th recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant... 🥁... Rasha Baraka. In this episode, we introduce Rasha's work and she reads out two short pieces of her writing; Letter to my Coloniser & Jealousy.

Bio: Rasha Baraka is a freelance journalist and writer currently studying an MA in Culture Industry. She promotes, shares, and writes about a shape-shifting culture while striving to platform a plethora of voices and stories that are often underrepresented or marginalised in the media. She is currently working on a digital exhibition with a group of multidisciplinary artists to explore the metaphor of the margins in relation to space and identity.

If you want the text versions, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :) 

It's my (ZM) first text of the year! kicking off 2022 with a review of Lubaina Himid's show at Tate Modern. It's also a text about good art, magic, dreams & stories - a love letter for some paintings that transported me. 

You can find the written version of this text here. 

Thank you to our Patreon supporters and thank you to all our listeners here - catch u next time xoxoxox

Happy new year! For our first episode back for 2022, I've written about the games I've been addicted to over the years, whilst wondering carefully if addiction is ever okay - ever helpful. Have you ever been addicted to a game? What did it mean to you at the time? You can find the written version of this text here. 

Thank you to our Patreon supporters and thank you to all our listeners here. It's gonna be a good year, I am determined. 

We're ending the year by announcing the 16th recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant... 🥁... Molly Gough. In this episode, we introduce Molly's work and she reads out two short pieces of her writing.

If you want the text versions, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :) See you in 2022 :)

This week's text is a reflection on becoming disabled and how that has affected my writing. It's not what I want but maybe it's not all bad? And maybe thinking about good change instead of bad change all the time might help reframe what it means to be disabled (sometimes, for some people, like me). 

This is the final text on The White Pube for 2021 as we are about to go on our December break. We're still working behind the scenes on things like launching our new website, but we'll be quieter as we see out the year. Thank you everyone for your ongoing support, especially to our Patreon gang. I can't say thank you enough.

You can find the written version here and our Patreon is here. Have a nice Christmas everyone :)

This text is an art thought essay about the museum as part of the Neoliberal political project, a re-write of our 2018 text 'the Problem with Representation'. 

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/institutions-identity

Thank you to our Patreon family for your support, and thanks to you for listening :) 

Gabrielle writing about art again? Oh my god, the world must truly be ending. This week's text is a Love Letter to the Art World. It is a love letter but I'm pissed; a letter full of heartbreak about art and disability and the lack of imagination by mega funded art institutions. You can find the written version on thewhitepube.com where there is also a handwritten version too! Cute. I wasn't originally going to share this text tbh. It was commissioned by the young artists society in Oslo, Norway, who asked me what I would like to say to a room full of art people. These words fell out of me quickly in the middle of the night. I didn't even edit it, just wanted to let it be raw and fast. But it felt like white pube 1.0 and for that reason, I'm sharing it here too. It's my second to last main text of the year before the annual December break so I hope you enjoy it (I can also tell you a secret here if you're still reading: I'm not going on my December break this year because doing work on the white pube is truly keeping me sane so I'll see you here anyway!!)

Thank you to our Patreon family for ongoing love and encouragement, and thanks to you for listening :) 

We’re well into the second year of The Working Class Writers Grant now and we are thrilled to announce Recipient #015 is Polly Manning. Polly sent us two texts that both got me right in the gut in different painful ways. One was a quick, sharp stab and a gasp; the other was an uncomfortable hug from the behind that got tighter and tighter until I felt sad and sick. Acute, emotional, affecting and bleak. I read both texts back to back and I immediately wanted to read more -  and that’s how I knew we’d found our next recipient.

Bio:

Polly Manning is a Welsh writer, and currently lives in the upper Swansea Valley in south Wales. Whilst she has worked in screenwriting and film direction, her main interest is in prose fiction - in particular, the short story. Her stories focus on life in rural and de-industrialised parts of Wales, with a particular interest in the ways in which young people find subversive meaning within these often 'bleak' realities. She is disinterested in the sentimental depiction of Wales as a mystical, Celtic wilderness detached from the miseries of capitalist neoliberalism, preferring to write stories about the people that actually live there. She is a Welsh-speaker, and currently working on a collection of short stories.

Links below if you want to read her work:

Read: Spider

You can find Polly on Instagram and Twitter

If you’re a working class writer, and would like to find out more info about our Writers Grant, pls visit the Writers Grant page on our webby for the FAQs and submission info! Thank you to Creative Debuts for funding the grant and allowing us to support working class writers in this way :)

This week's text is a review of Sutapa Biswas's show: Lumen at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge. 

It's also a lil bit different to my normal texts, bc it's written as an audio tour. So you can listen to me guide you round in person, or listen on an imagined art date, IRL or art guided meditation. 

read the text here: thewhitepube.com/sutapabiswas

This week’s review is The Forgotten City, a game about a place where nobody is allowed to sin or everybody will turn into gold statues - or so they say. It is a game I didn’t know was a horror game until I felt my body tremble. And that’s a good thing. I have really come to love this genre so much. So I’m sharing this review today in honour of Halloween. Maybe you’re looking for something to play or maybe you just want to hear its spooky tale, either way I hope you enjoy the review.

The written version is available on https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/the-forgotten-city

And thank you to our Patreon fam for supporting!!!!