Karen Woolf

The third collection from firebrand poet, essayist and editor Karen McCarthy Woolf whose volumes Bittersweet and Kin introduced a generation of readers to Black British Poets in the Nineties''A true writer. Vulnerable, hilarious and wise'' WARSAN SHIRE____________________________________________________A disenchanted walk through the afterlives of colonialism across London and LA, Unsafe illuminates the effects of capitalism on those who live at its sharp end. Situated in the midst of a reckoning with a politics of enclosure, Unsafe is an immersive meditation on place, the body, nature and the self. Whether it’s via tattoos, trees or the totemic quality of cats, McCarthy Woolf pulls us into the processes of gentrification and class division with an immediacy that makes them impossible to ignore.A moving, critical and fiercely intelligent epic weaving together poetry, documentary and lyric essay, Unsafe is an interrogation of what it means to be a citizen and testimony to the remaining spaces we can call free.

When reclusive billionaire Huguette Clark dies age 104, she leaves behind a suite of New York apartments, a meticulously upkept California mansion, at least one Monet and her vast collection of antique dolls. Having barely been outside for 50 years, the elusive Clark spoke to few—in this highly unreliable, semi-fictional miniature epic, the dolls tell all. Theirs is a tale that takes us from their lavish Park Avenue home back in time to the slave plantations of Virginia and the palaces of Imperial Japan via the addictive hedonism of 1930s queer LA. Joyfully irreverent, Top Doll is a story of love, betrayal, Barbies and ultimately, what it means to be human.