What if restrictions were placed on language? If certain letters of the alphabet were banned, and all written correspondence scanned for their forbidden use? These are the questions explored by Mark Dunn in his 2001 novel Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters.  

Dunn’s letters exist in both senses of the word; the novel is epistolary (written as a series of letters) and progressively lipogramatic, as Dunn drops ‘banned’ letters from his writing one by one

If you walk 90 miles west of Dunhuang, into the depths of the Gobi Desert, you will find a watchtower. A sand-scarred remnant of the great Jade Gate. A desolate place. The end of the Silk Road, if you will.  

In 1907, the intrepid explorer and cartographer Sir Aurel Stein came across this tower. Upon exploring the ruins, he discovered a cache of five letters in an unknown script

Ahead of the release of the next letter here at The Letters Page, I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing the author herself. Morgan Bielawski and I talked about grounding gardens, human nature and innate connections.

The Poetry of earth is never dead. Dear Caller’, our latest publication, came through the post around the time I had taken up reading the poet Keats. I had turned to the great Romantic for insight, to develop my sense of the poetic, and encourage my love of the natural world. After all, there must have been a reason why his poetic legacy has endured, right?   

By Will Dawson Edited by Jon McGregor and Kristin Schanke ‘There’s a kind of time…

Imagine you can conjure and print with any ink in any colour, including in neon and metallic. Sustainably. Imagine now the creative possibilities that this would give to you as a small publishing press.

I must admit, when Jon first said the word aerogramme in one of our meetings earlier this winter, I had no idea what he was referring to. Jon must have noticed confused looks on a few other faces as well. He asked if we knew what an aerogramme was, to which he received a handful of hesitant head shakes.  

Just in case you’re as confused as I was, let me explain what Jon was talking about.

When I sat down to interview Lisa McInerney of The Stinging Fly, from the bitter mid-December chill of my University bedroom, Lisa assured me it was just as cold where she was, a few hundred miles away in her native Ireland: ‘I went out for a run this morning and when I came back, I do not joke, I have photographic evidence, there was frost in my hair!’

Dear readers of The Letters Page,  

This is a letter of introduction, although I must confess I did not handwrite it first. My name is Annabel Wearring-Smith, and I am the new Guest Editor for The Letters Page. It’s a pleasure to be working for you.

‘There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there?’