everything we wrote in 2024

This website can be sprawling at times so here is a list of everything we each wrote this year. The big one is obviously Poor Artists, our bright pink and yellow book that has just been shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.

but the truth is we mostly wrote that last year, so actually, we didn’t write many reviews here on TWP in 2023. 2024, whether others noticed or not, was a big comeback for us because we absolutely hammered out Sunday texts. Below are two lists that show what we each wrote about. Sometimes they were just Normal Reviews. Other times we went off on one. it meant a lot for us to get back into that routine of posting on Sundays. i KNOW that and I feel it and i SEE it here in putting together these lists because there is always improvement between what we wrote at the top of the year versus the end of it. these sunday texts are our exercise. discipline, structure, forced development. getting a text together in time for our self-inforced sunday schedule is, more than anything else, this long creative hunt not for art we want to write about but for how exactly we want to write about it.

please enjoy THE WHITE PUBE 2024 WRAPPED because THIS IS WHAT PATREON PAYS FOR

Gabrielle

JAN: I started the year off writing a short story about Liverpool City Centre after a bird shat on my head for the millionth time in a row

FEB: everyone was kicking off about the Poor Things film, so I did a little kick off too, and the Alasdair Grey archive said it was their favourite text about it!

Ever since I got sick, people have told me to watch the Unrest documentary but I think I hated it

MAR: I had a panic attack about my future, read a lot of JG Ballard, and reviewed a floatation tank in 3rd person

the only game I wrote about this year: it is as if you were doing work. i think about this all the time!

APR: in a move no one expected, i left the country and wrote about a residency in the south of france

MAY: and then instead of coming back to england, I ran away to Spain hahaha

I wrote about The Hologram, a book about how we could reorganise society to better care for one another

JUN: something wonderful happened when i went to the liverpool john moores university degree show

JUL: I wrote about Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and then it turned out all of you had read it this year too

AUG: I wrote about Ling Ma’s Severance, a book about how everyone carried on working during a global pandemic, published a year before covid-19

SEP: deep in my summer sickness months, barely working, barely moving, I write about the idea of Slow Art

i just literally reviewed my dentist

OCT: i went to see the substance and, like the Poor Things review before it, it was a Conversation Starter

then I went to the Crab Museum in Margate during our book tour and i had to write about it!!

NOV: I got a National Theatre at Home subscription and wrote about the Grenfell play

and then, idk, I decided to end the year by telling everyone how much money I made, because i deeply cannot afford to this anymore hahaha

Zarina

JAN: Zarina reviewed Saltburn. Remember Saltburn! that was all anyone was talking about when the year began

FEB: The Philip Guston exhibition at Tate Modern! I loved this text. a lot of people did

Zarina wrote about wanting to punch her dad in the context of Sheena Patel’s book I’m a Fan

MAR: Covering squatting histories of London, Zarina imagined the city in the year 2039

in Diversity Policy 101, zm traces the history of institutionalised racism and the fake attempts to undo it

and then she wrote a little story about sleeping over in a museum and falling into a painting

APR: the people LOVED this one – a piece about a fictional art corporation

and then a classic exhibition review on Kelly Wu’s Show Pony

zarina then went back to storytelling, this time imagining a paint and prosecco class

MAY: zm visited the Goldsmiths for Palestine occupation <3

JUN: a text about housing, art and lying to estate agents against Deborah Levy’s living autobiography series

another exhibition review, writing about Tai Shani’s show at the Comic House

JUL: an exhibition in an offy??

zm goes to the venice biennale

AUG: on Laisul Hoque’s film The Purpose was to Document the Other Side

‘a text about painting and imagining and feeling like things are over there but also within you’; on the work of Noorain Inam

SEP: zarina rides a swan-shaped pedalo to watch Rebecca Moss’s Dream Machine performance

OCT: zarina is the only one of us who goes to exhibitions lol; Ellie Cotton’s show at General Assembly

i told you: Imran Peretta’s exhibition at Somerset House Studios

NOV: I TOLD YOU: the turner prize

now onto the royal opera house, zarina wrote about 3 performances about voice loss

DEC: in an unusually busy december, ZM reviewed more Laisul Hoque work!

then recorded a pretty amazing convo with Dan Hicks and Sumaya Kassim in a podcast ep called ‘should museums give back stolen objects?'

and then ended the year writing about Mati Diop’s new film Dahomey

STATS

we don’t pay for hosting on Cloudflare for this website so it will only show me data for the past 72 hours so: there have been 1.33K visits to the website in the past three days. idk! just multiply that for the rest of the year. it’s probably big. most people just type the website in or come from bookmarks. most of you use chrome. most of you visit on desktop. thats all i’m giving you.

we’re on 96.7K followers on instagram, 800~ patreon supporters, and we have 2 thriving discord servers. we are on course to earn just under minimum wage each.

the white pube podcast data is more forthcoming than cloudflare: most of our listeners are 25-29 year olds (loool), streaming from 68 countries, most people who listen to us have Blindboy as their number 1 podcast, we had 26.4K streams this year, and we are a top 10 show for 1.69K people. most people just read our texts rather than listen but we’ll always have the audio for those who want it!

IN CONCLUSION from GDLP

Zarina is the winner of publishing the most texts on the website. POTS means I get so sick from about June-September, I always look back and think it’s a wonder I published fucking anything. This is the most I’ve ever written about books, ever-ever. I enjoyed that. My personal favourite was probably the poor things review, but the people’s favourite was the substance, and then the text I saw most /talked about/ on twitter was the piece about running away to spain. But I deleted twitter this year so who knows what people say anymore! Next year, I would like to figure out how to write about more working class output. I don’t know how to go about that. I’m going to log-off for 2 weeks now and knit and ah, i’m applying for so many jobs at the moment. I actually have a phd interview in january soooo wish me luck. i wanna carry on being a critic as i have done since 2015 but man, idk how to afford it anymore. i love our patreon family but we need more people to join it so that we can carry on indulging this fantasyYyyyy; I need more people to join it so that I can afford to be sick, and I can afford to be a writer, and I can afford to be a sick writer. how boring!

IN SECOND CONCLUSION from ZM

Not to be very Kendall and Kylie Jenner dicuss their year in front of an enormous fireplace about it all, but I like to think about each year gone past and what our writing/my writing did over that span of time — because we publish once a week, because we write every fortnight, it can feel like such a rapid pace that I don’t actually have much time to think about what I’m doing. The writing takes place like instinct, like intuitive practice. But I go through phases like the moon! I feel my centre ofgravity shift according to my circumstances. I am so glad to have this public diary, this notebook u can flip through and read my brain waves — it opens space for criticism to be at the whims of some psychic urge, interpretive, you get to know me or a side of me that I only really feel through once a year at the very end. maybe you know me better than I know myself!

I was more interested in writing about strange or small things happening in London, recording them for posterity, experiencing them so I could act as a witness. I was less interested in determining whether something was good or bad, I just cut straight to writing about stuff I was obviously enthusiastic about and interested in, that I thought had critical contextual value I wanted to work through. It’s funny because there’s obviously something to exercise in writing about stuff you didn’t like, but I just wasn’t that up to taking the bait! I love art, I want to write through that love, I want to hold onto that love! Writing Poor Artists left me with a real sense that the love was the most important thing, so I gravitated to writing about things I enjoyed — writing through why I loved it all, and what that love meant in relation to the work. Since writing poor artists, I feel this real drive/desire for fiction! For using criticism as a space for stories, or stories as a vehicle for criticism. I don’t really know where it’s going, but I am enjoying the ride. These things come and go, I have a hard time predicting them. I hope there are more in the pipeline, I can feel one coming in January, so I am hoping to head into 2025 with a fucking CLATTER.

[RE: the review of Sheena Patel’s book I’m A Fan] – It was the only time this year when I wrote about something I didn’t like. But it was also the one text where I worked out a new form, back and forth between story and review. I guess I kinda did that with guston, but this text has a more dramatic split screen flip. I also really still believe what I wrote! I want things to be less limited! I want to read about terrible people doing gross bizarre loopy things that could never happen in real life. I don’t want realism!!! I don’t want to believe it! I don’t want things to be realistic!!! Life is too short, the world is too bleak, writers should make shit up and be entertaining. That is the energy I want to carry with me into 2025. I want to be good fucking company, the hostess with the mostess. I want you to enjoy the time you spend with my voice/words on a sunday! It is such a privilege, such an honour. Thank you for reading some or all of what I’ve written this year. I do not take your good will for granted, writing these texts have been the most important thing I could do with my time

ggs my pals see u next year