What happens when you’re caught between love and duty; time and place; a marriage that barely got to begin and two lives spent alone on either side of a wall? These are all questions that Roy – a black man sent to prison for falsely raping a white woman in a motel room in his hometown of Eloe, Louisiana – and his wife Celestial have to face not even a year into their marriage. Yet the crime is not where this novel lives. Tayari Jones doesn't constantly revisit the event which sets the narrative in motion, but instead highlights the unfortunate normality of stories like Roy's: a black man imprisoned for being "the wrong race [at] the wrong time". What Jones does so tenderly is examine significant, insoluble themes like America’s institutionalised racism and our weary acceptance of injustice, through the lens of a marriage simply dissolving over time.
 

 

Taken from an interview with Phoebe Waller-Bridge by various performers and writers for The Guardian.
 

From MSN Messenger to MySpace, Bebo to Facebook, Twitter to Instagram, our generation’s digital presence is wrapped in mixed feelings: shameless self-promotion and invaluable publicity; accessible shared spaces and censored communities; an exciting open forum to glimpse into the lives of others and the crippling fear of being caught out as imperfect. Model Naomi Shimada and writer Sarah Raphael unpack this dichotomous attitude towards social media in their book Mixed Feelings: Exploring The Emotional Impact Of Our Digital Habits, where they invited contributors like Tahmina Begum, Phoebe Lovatt and Mona Chalabi to share their own experiences about the digital world we live in. We sat down with Sarah – former Refinery 29 editor-at-large and co-author of the book – to talk about this new age of storytelling.
 

Something we always tell brands is that words matter at every single touchpoint, not just your social media, email marketing or advertising campaigns. People feel like they’re seeing the real you when they catch your tone of voice in your T&Cs, FAQs or in a sign-up confirmation. We call it microcopy and – though it might seem more mundane that your Instagram captions, website or packaging – it matters.

Last week, Apple rolled out their new Privacy Policy page, and it’s a great example of how they have injected their personality and brand into something that could be pretty boring. But knowing that data protection is a touchy subject, they’ve done a great job in animating this page and making it feel like you’re looking at a product, not just a description of their privacy terms. It's a lesson in how to make the fine print more interesting. 
 

Read
Nudibranch – Irenosen Okojie
Grand Union – Zadie Smith
On Writing – The WW Club Newsletter

Listen
Unpacking The Internet with Jia Tolentino – FT Culture Call
Conversations with Naomi Shimada – Intellectual Property
Winsome Pinnock Talks To Simon Stephens – The Royal Court Playwright's Podcast

Discuss
I Write In Pockets Of Stolen Time – Roxanne Gay for WePresent by WeTransfer
A Letter To My Mother That She Will Never Read – Ocean Vuong for The New Yorker
Ten Of My Recommendations For Good Writing Habits – Lydia Davis for Literary Hub