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)
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
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 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 [...]
Posted by Professor Caroline Edwards on 2025-03-12
C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings is the 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. C21 Literature engages with, and makes a significant contribution to, the explosion of interest in 21st-century writings, seen in book groups, [...]
Posted by Professor Caroline Edwards on 2025-01-17
We're delighted to have published a special issue on the narraitve ethics of Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet, edited by Agnes Andeweg (Utrecht University) and Jesse van Amelsvoort (University of Amsterdam). The articles published in this special issue originated at the MLA International Symposium held in Glasgow in June 2022, which was themed "Being Hospitable: Languages and Cultures Across [...]