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Dan’s essays, memoir, and book and live music reviews have appeared in GRANTA, THE GUARDIAN, NEW WELSH REVIEW, REVIEW 31 and the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.
A View From The Back Of The Room: Roadburn Festival
MUSIPEDIA OF METAL, Festival Review
Before I’d even got off the train at Tilburg, I was greeted by friendly metalheads who asked if I was also going to Roadburn. […] The guys confidently assured me that Roadburn was “the best festival in the world”.
Yes, this Royal Mail strike means fewer Christmas cards – but posties are fighting for their survival
THE GUARDIAN, Opinion
Since 2020, posties feel that profit-seeking has continued to erode the pay, conditions and morale of workers who helped support the UK through a pandemic, and they’ve had enough.
What i learned in 2020
THE GUARDIAN, Opinion
‘My overreliance on big solitary goals and external motivation, rather than on play, exploration and community, has made me vulnerable to the tyranny of metrics.’
Being a postal worker during lockdown has shown me who really values our work
THE GUARDIAN, Opinion
‘The pandemic has exposed how essential the services carried out by key workers are, and how callously the government has treated the working class at every stage of the crisis.’
a summer of japanese literature
GRANTA, Essays & Memoir
‘When I lived in Japan in my mid-twenties, I made it through the heatwaves by reading manga. High-school samurai, emo-driven battle-robots, Neo-Tokyo biker gangs. A deeper interest in Japanese literature followed, and as a translator and reader I’ve since immersed myself in a literary scene that is incredibly diverse and creative. Here are ten works of Japanese literature worth spending your summer on.’
me and the bclt
BRITISH CENTRE FOR LITERARY TRANSLATION, UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
Essay on the challenges for emerging translators and the experience of Japanese workshops at UEA.
the uncanny reader
[PANK]
‘The hardest readers to shock and surprise are, perversely, voracious consumers and lovers of horror; we’ve read it all before. So with this new collection of 31 uncanny tales, refreshingly attentive to international and contemporary voices, can editor Marjorie Sandor revamp the strangeness and power of the uncanny for a new generation of readers?’
three japanese novellas
NEW WELSH REVIEW
Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (trans. Polly Barton), Slow Boat by Hideo Furukawa (trans. David Boyd) and Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami (trans. Lucy North)
steel skeletons
REVIEW 31
Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure by Hideo Furukawa (trans. Doug Slaymaker & Akiko Takenaka)
‘As one of the first literary responses to the Great East Japan earthquake of March 2011, Hideo Furukawa’s new novel is characterised by a visceral emotive power, laying bare the frustrations, despair and hope of one author’s attempt to make sense of unimaginable loss and devastation. It also bears the shortcomings that might be expected from a work produced in only four months.’