C21: Journal of 21st-century Writings is a diamond Open Access journal, and the official affiliated journal of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS). The journal is dedicated to examining the genres, forms of publication, and circulation of 21st-century writings. Originally launched in 2012, and open access since 2016, C21 aims to create a critical, discursive space for the promotion and exploration of 21st-century writings in English.
Volume 12 • Issue 3 • 2026 • The Century at 25
Editors: Alice Bennett (Guest Editor), Arin Keeble (Guest Editor), Melissa Schuh (Guest Editor), Denise Wong (Guest Editor)
Editorial
Introduction to the special issue: The Century at 25
Alice Bennett, Arin Keeble, Melissa Schuh and Denise Wong
Article
"Unstable, in Chaos": Reading Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and Percival Everett’s Telephone in the Age of Cruel Optimism
Gerald David Naughton and Yulia Pushkarevskaya Naughton
Stuck on Stuckness: On the Intractability of the Present
Alice Bennett, Arin Keeble, Dr Melissa Schuh and Denise Wong
Roundtable
C21’s Roundtable Review of Timothy Bewes’s Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age (2022)
Timothy Bewes, Leonid Bilmes, Oliver Haslam, Alex Houen, Adam Kelly, Denise Wong and Laura A. Zander
Posted by Katie da Cunha Lewin on 2026-02-09
C21 is inviting scholars and researchers to contribute book review essays for upcoming issues. We currently have a selection of titles published in 2025 available for review, spanning film and media studies, cultural studies, and gender and sexuality studies. We invite prospective authors to submit ideas for review essays that discuss 2–3 recently published scholarly texts, published within the [...]
Posted by Katie da Cunha Lewin on 2026-01-23
From October until December 2025 C21 Literature hosted an Open Access Academic Publishing and Academic Communication intern through the StARIS programme at St Andrews University. Our intern, Ines Tramarin, worked on various aspects of our social media strategy. As she's concluded her time with us now, we asked her to reflect on her experience. Tell us a little about yourself, and what [...]
Posted by Katie da Cunha Lewin on 2025-11-26
During their shared time as doctoral candidates at the University of St Andrews, Dr Dong Xia and Dr Sandro Eich came up with the idea of a collection of essays on the relationship between digital media and contemporary fiction, and proposed a special issue of C21 Literature in 2023. Two years and two doctorates later, ‘Novel Media / Media Novel’ was published in November 2025. Dong is currently [...]
Posted by Katie da Cunha Lewin on 2025-11-07
BACLS members are warmly invited to submit proposals for panels for the upcoming British Association for American Studies (BAAS) and British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS) conferences in collaboration with the Modernist Studies Association. The proposed panels would sit under the combined banner of BACLS/C21 and would act to bring together research on contemporary literary studies [...]
Posted by Katie da Cunha Lewin on 2025-07-18
We are delighted to announce that Dr Katie da Cunha Lewin and Dr Kiron Ward have been appointed to the Editorship of C21 Literature and that Sunayani Bhattacharya has been appointed to the Deputy Editor Team. Thanks to Dr Caroline Edwards and Professor Sîan Adiseshiah for their stalwart steering of C21 these last three years, and to the many deputy editors past and present. Katie Da Cunha Lewin [...]