Buenos
Aires

The bookshop was open. It was always open. This was either the best thing about Buenos Aires or a symptom of something.

The furthest south · Midnight bookshops · Love at volume

Buenos Aires is the city that makes you believe writing matters in a way that Edinburgh or London quietly discourage. There are bookshops on every other block, open late, crowded with people who are actually reading. The culture of the café notable — the historically significant café — means that sitting alone with a notebook is not eccentric but expected, even honoured. Writers have died for their work here in ways that leave a specific gravity.

"On the plane leaving Buenos Aires I wrote the whole flight. Not because I had things to say. Because the city was still in me and the only way to get it out was through the fingers. By the time we landed it was still in me. It will always be in me. That is what Buenos Aires does."

Tumbleweed Words — Buenos Aires departure

The Buenos Aires pieces are the most overtly romantic work in Tumbleweed Words — not romantic in the sentimental sense but in the literary sense: concerned with the large emotions, conducted at full volume, without apology. The city earns that register. It does not permit restraint in the way that northern European cities do. The writing responds to this accordingly.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry written on trains, in hostels, and in city streets. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, and The Dundee Anthology. Pushcart-nominated. Five years on Substack.