Freedom Papers: Commissioned Writing

In 2018, we invited 51 authors to contribute to The Freedom Papers - a series of essays exploring ideas about freedom. First published in a 160-page supplement to Gutter Magazine, which became the highest selling title across the Book Festival's bookshops in August 2018, the essays can be read below.

Visit guttermag.co.uk to purchase a copy of The Freedom Papers.

Supported by the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund through Creative Scotland.

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Freedom is a Word
Freedom is a Word by Aminatta Forna

There was a time I thought I knew what words meant, I am a writer, after all. Before I became a writer I worked a while as a journalist, and before that I trained as a lawyer, all professions in which the meaning of words matters deeply…

Freedom
Freedom by Ehsan Abdollahi

Gift your love to my hands From your love, I spread my wings In the blue sky…

Freedom is a Collective Conscience Project
Freedom is a Collective Conscience Project by Djamila Ribeiro

As I studied Philosophy, I understand that freedom is a different concept depending on your perspective. When they ask me: ‘What is freedom?’ I always answer: it depends on who you ask…

Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequence
Freedom of Speech is not Freedom from Consequence by Juno Dawson

‘It’s not transphobic to have concerns about transgender people,’ say various users of Mumsnet, outwardly liberal columnists, some politicians, and certain bigots who attempt to slide a wedge between trans women and feminism…

At Sea
At Sea by Karen Lord

I was born in an independent nation. I have always been a Barbadian, expecting no more nor less than these four hundred and thirty square kilometres of land. I did not experience the moment when our borders shrank from outpost of empire to microstate…

Compassion for Strangers Will Save Us All
Compassion for Strangers Will Save Us All by David Leddy

They say when trouble comes close ranks and so the white people did…

Fukkit: A Mama’s Freedom Refrain
Fukkit: A Mama’s Freedom Refrain by H J Golakai

Imagine you inhabit a world of horror unforetold…

Homo Inconstans
Homo Inconstans by Olga Tokarczuk

Nowe ludzkie „ja” wydaje się dziś dużo mniej jednolite. Nie tylko pochodzenie etniczne jest coraz bardziej płynne i różnorodne. To samo dotyczy miejsca zamieszkania, pracy, wyglądu. / Today’s ‘self’ seems far less homogeneous than in the past. Not just…

A Few Notes on Freedom
A Few Notes on Freedom by Alberto Manguel

As any reader knows, what happens to the characters we follow on the page depends both on the characters themselves and on the circumstances that surround them…

El Toldo / The Awning
El Toldo / The Awning by Gabriela Ybarra

Durante muchos años hubo una librería en la calle Bailén de Madrid, justo enfrente de la catedral de la Almudena, que tenía un toldo que decía: ‘Ser cultos para ser libres’. / For years there was a bookstore on Calle Bailén in Madrid, across from the…

Strap
Strap by Peter Mackay

Tha saorsa agam an cànan seo a chleachdadh. / I’m free to speak this language…

Freedom in four flavours
Freedom in four flavours by James Thornton

We live both free and bound. There are many ways to map the contours of how we are free and where we are bound…

The Freedom: Thumbnails
The Freedom: Thumbnails by Yvonne Owuor

One evening in 2004, as part of a small rock art hunting crew, I trudged through an ancient landscape in Northern Kenya, trudging past petroglyphs and pictographs, those undeciphered messages from inhabitants past, intimidated by the land’s vast, feral…

中国笼鸟 / China's Caged Birds
中国笼鸟 / China's Caged Birds by Yan Lianke

When talking of freedom, for me it is a kind of luxury. It is like gazing every day, from deep within a dark wilderness of thorns, at a ray of light and warmth as it passes silently by, without ever gaining any real warmth or illumination from the light…

As Vital To Our Soul
As Vital To Our Soul by Kapka Kassabova

Tyranny begins in childhood. It may be that the task of growing up is to recognise and break away from that which tyrannises us, so we can thrive in the freedom that is ‘as vital to our soul as breathing to our body’ in Stefan Zweig’s words…

State of Truth
State of Truth by Rory MacLean

At dawn the curtain rises on an empty stage. Actors stand poised in the dark. Dancers and singers wait in the wings for their cue. Musicians hold their instruments to their lips and bodies, at the ready, ever ready for the nod of the director, waiting…

The Novelist and the Tyrants
The Novelist and the Tyrants by S J Naudé

In the South Africa of the 1970s and 80s, political writing was practically the only mode that was available to writers who wanted to be taken seriously. And coupled with the need to integrate a critique of the inhumane system of apartheid into one’s…

The Freedom to Configure
The Freedom to Configure by Cory Doctorow

Today we are in the midst of a great techlash in which the giants of Big Tech are being threatened with regulation that will constrain how they relate to us…

The Freedom I Sought
The Freedom I Sought by Hasani Hasani

I stand at the back of the queue, thinking, ‘When will this ever end?’ The more I think about it, the more hopeless I feel. And, as hope fades fear creeps in. The fear of being deported to my tormentors…

Thistle Street 1995
Thistle Street 1995 by Paul Magrs

This was where I was more free than I’ve ever been…