The Golden Pie of Literature

There is a separateness when you are working in a job that is not writing. That special part of you that likes to create doesn’t leak out, doesn’t have to expend any of its energy: it’s a golden pie floating within you. The pie gets cracked open in teaching and publishing and literary-related things, which can be bad, and sometimes good.

Essay 25th June 2025

The Swan Lake Guesthouse

‘When I developed my illness and could no longer work, he took pity on me and gave me a room and an allowance.’ 

Fiction 9th August 2023

A Boat To Bilbao

An essay about Ludwig the cat, and the writer who lives with him.

Essay Issue 42, Volume 2: Summer 2020

Camilla Grudova

Camilla Grudova is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Doll’s Alphabet, Children of Paradise, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Coiled Serpent, longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She won the Shirley Jackson Prize for her short story ‘Waxy’ and was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2023 and a Frank O’Connor Fellow in 2024. Her fiction has appeared in The White Review, Granta and The Stinging Fly and her criticism in the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The TLS.