Hi folks!

My first essay in Foreign Policy is just out! If you don’t have a(n institutional) subscription, here’s a gift link (you’ll need to provide an email address), a gift link to a PDF without the images, and a link to a home-made PDF of the article with images.

The essay is a review of poet Eoghan Walls’s wonderful Field Notes from an Extinction (Seven Stories, 2025; US and UK editions). It’s a work of historical fiction that will also appeal to folks interested in the history of science and the cultural history of monsters.

I’m thrilled to have a byline in Foreign Policy, but I’ll save that story for another time. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the piece! (Comments button at the bottom of this email.)

Coming up: if you subscribe for free to Drafting the Past, you’ll know straightaway when my next monster essay is out! That way I can hold off entering your inbox again before next weekend.

The internet is broken, but you can still register for my Amsterdam event

An hour after I announced my book event at the American Book Center in Amsterdam (Friday 13 Nov, 17:00), there was a global internet hacking event. The ABC took their website offline for safety. The site is still offline, but you can register for the event on this other site.

I’ll be chatting with biographer and book critic Julie Phillips (who is currently writing the authorized biography of Ursula K. Le Guin!). There will be audience q&a, time for book-buying and, of course, signing!

Do come along if you’d like to chat, or to do some gift shopping - or perhaps send this email to a friend with an interest in how science, history, maps, and monsters fit together and explain the modern world?

That’s all for now, so that you have time to read my new essay. November/December will be quieter from me - hard work on other writing lies ahead.

Warmly,

Surekha