Anna Leszkiewicz

London

Culture Editor and Writer at The New Statesman

editing (and sometimes writing) at @newstatesman. also published in @nytimes @nybooks @guardian etc find my work at https://t.co/PnWs1KeTaD

Articles

Good Hang review: Amy Poehler is breezy, funny and light

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

Amy Poehler may be another celebrity-turned-podcaster who enjoys submerging herself in cold water in the mornings, but that doesn’t mean she’s interested in that great obsession of modern culture, self-improvement. Her new show, Good Hang, was conceived in opposition to the wellness and therapy-adjacent shows out there that promise to make us “better” people. Instead, she promises us a low-stakes, high-comedy hour with other comedians and friends, with absolutely nothing instructive smuggled in.
London’s season of sexed-up Shakespeare

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

Two contemporary stagings of Shakespeare opened in London this week. Though both attempt to locate the playwright in the present moment through knowing production design, modern soundtracks and a handsome Hollywood actor, they couldn’t be further apart in aesthetics. Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Jamie Lloyd with Marvel’s Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell as Benedick and Beatrice, is a riot of magenta confetti, air horns and pop music.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s ordinary lives

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

Show Don’t Tell is a slyly ironic title for the latest story collection by Curtis Sittenfeld, a writer who luxuriates in the telling. We speak of a writer’s “voice” – Sittenfeld’s is the kind you could pick out from the opposite end of a noisy, overcrowded room.
Rewriting the story of Gisèle Pelicot

Jan 14, 2025 | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

Gisèle Pelicot was in her sixties when her children started to suspect she was exhibiting early signs of Alzheimer’s. At times, she seemed distracted, unable to remember details from the night before. She developed trouble sleeping and lost weight. One night, eating dinner with her husband, son and grandchildren, she slumped over in her chair. It was, her son said, “like her strings had been cut… She just sagged where she sat. Her eyes were empty.” Her husband carried her to bed.
Joan Didion vs Eve Babitz

Dec 4, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but there are worse places to start with Lili Anolik’s Didion & Babitz than the photos on its jacket. Two young women hold the gaze of the camera in unnervingly similar poses: facing ahead, right hand raised towards her face. The longer you look, the more these mirror images seem in opposition.
From Andrew Michael Hurley to Johanna Ekström: new books reviewed in short

Nov 27, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Michael Prodger |Megan Kenyon |Anna Leszkiewicz |Zuzanna Lachendro

The Swedish poet and artist Johanna Ekström died of cancer in 2022 at 51. She left behind 13 grey notebooks detailing the last years of her life: from October 2019 to X, the date on which she would die, even though she didn’t know exactly when that would be. It turned out to be 13 April and a week before she asked her oldest friend, the publisher and author Sigrid Rausing, to edit and finish the text.
Rachel Cusk: “Women are writing more boldly about female experience”

Nov 4, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

Rachel Cusk is the author of 12 novels and six works of non-fiction. Born in 1967 in the Canadian city of Saskatoon to British parents, she spent her early years in Los Angeles and from the age of seven was raised in Bury St Edmunds. Her first novel, Saving Agnes, was published in 1993.
Laura Marling’s songs of experience

Nov 4, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

When Laura Marling gave birth to her first child – a daughter – in February 2023, she felt “psychedelically high”. Everything around her took on greater intensity; even the small daily chores of life imbued with new cosmic import. Walking to the supermarket to buy sanitary pads on a glowing red winter’s evening, Marling marvelled at the world: “this amazing place full of people who were born”.
Liam Payne was a victim of the pop pin-up machine

Oct 17, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

How to sum up the unknowable life of another person, only glimpsed in on-camera interviews, music videos, and tabloid photographs? One way might be through the barest biographical facts: to say that Liam Payne was born in 1993 in Wolverhampton, had bunny rabbit curtains in his bedroom until he was in his late teens, and used to sit on the windowsill dreaming of winning the lottery or becoming a singer.
Florence + the Machine at the Proms: a thrilling two hours of pure emotion

Sep 12, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anna Leszkiewicz

Florence Welch was in her late teens and early twenties when she wrote Lungs. The gloriously theatrical debut by her musical act Florence + the Machine, first released 15 years ago, is the subject of Prom 69, “Symphony of Lungs”, a joint effort from Welch and Jules Buckley and his Orchestra.