Cristina Masters is senior lecturer in international politics at theUniversity of Manchester. shine choi is senior lecturer at the school of people, environment and planning at Massey University.Marysia Zalewski is professor of international relations atCardiff University. Her research has been supported by the British Academy, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and The British Council. Swati Parashar is professor in Peace and Development at the University of Gothenburg.

This is a rich and provocative account of the writing that underpins the work we put into the world. Visible here are the traces of the people we carry with us, the selves we hope we can be, the relationships for which we try to create and hold space in what are sometimes (often) deeply inhospitable environments. This collection chronicles what the authors have survived, and how, and what has been sacrificed along the way – and reckons with how writing can hold out a measure of joy and relief in the darkness. It deserves to be treasured.

• AcknowledgementsPrefacein loveless politics…Chapter 1.Warning Signs Your Colonizer is Gaslighting You, Meghana V. NayakChapter 2. On the (In)Ability to Converse, Claudia A. Fernández CallerosChapter 3.Complaint, shine choiChapter 4. It came to my attention…, Saara Särmäand entrapments of non- (or language entrapments)Chapter 5. I regrettably do not think I can contribute…, Katsuhiko SuganumaChapter 6. Babels Schuld, Catherine GoetzeChapter 7. Wandering and Wondering in Search of the Unimaginable, Daniel ZengotitaChapter 8. A (Voluntary) Prisoner of Research: Mystery, Destiny and Narrative, Sungju-Park-Kang...just write (, think later)Chapter 9. On the ugly intimacies of war, Cristina Maria Da Rosa Bagaço (Masters)Chapter 10. (Ho)Me, or the Unbearable: Mapping the Personal International, Maria-Adriana DeianaChapter 11. epiVOGUE: How Writing a Novel about Transnational Loneliness Made Me Rethink My Strategy of Survival, Sergei AkopovChapter 12. Questions, answers and non-answers: Reflections on writing in the red notebook, Itziar Mujika Chao… love, live!Chapter 13. Survivance and Mothers, Kumari AbeydeeraChapter 14. Mother-Scholar failures: ella habla por la entrepierna, Sara C. MottaChapter 15. The Morning After an Autistic Suicide Scare: On the Banality of Surviving (in/with/for) Writing, Julio César Diaz CalderónAfterwor(l)dsYakolev Rachel DesiréSungju Martha Julio Sungju Swati MarysiaSergei