New reviews

My debut in Literary Review and more

Dear readers,

Since my early days as an English literature graduate student, I’ve always wanted to write for Literary Review, one of the best literary review magazines of the English language. After years of contributions to The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books and other review magazines, I finally make my debut there this month with an essay on Suzy Hansen’s new book, From Life Itself (Profile Books).

You can read my article in the June 2026 issue of the magazine.

Also new this week, I wrote an essay for MUBI Notebook on İlker Çatak’s cinema. Long in the making, this essay allowed me to watch all of Çatak’s films. I hope my essay will inspire you to do the same.

Finally this week, I had the pleasure of writing about the practice of the inimitable Semiha Berksoy for the Summer 2026 issue of Artforum.

As I write in my review,

“The whole world is in my room,” Berksoy said once. Two years after Tracey Emin debuted My Bed in 1998, Berksoy exhibited her own bedroom at the show “Zeitwenden: Ausblick” (Turning Points in Time: Outlook) at the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Istanbul Modern re-creates that vivid representation of a liminal space between Berksoy’s private and public personae—filled with objects accumulated throughout her life, including her bed and piano, jewelry, clothes, paintings, her mother’s hundred-year-old sewing machine, gifts received over the years. Berksoy transformed personal spaces into artistic experiences. The show does justice to this project, her dreamlike imagination, and her lifelong exploration of loss and the passage of time.

I’ll be in touch with news about book events next week.

Until next time,

—Kaya