Leila Lois

while our daughter calls to remind us
to take pictures of things

she can draw—a sprig of rose hips, a clump of serviceberries.
A deer she nicknamed Chewy. Bellies full of chowder,
we almost forget one of us is dying.

~Martha Silano

www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Brave & visionary 🩵

Maggie Nelson, The Art of Nonfiction No. 13 “Any time someone has suggested that the kind of book I was describing couldn’t or shouldn’t be pulled off, it’s made me think, I’ll show you.”

www.theparisreview.org/interviews/8...

Forced to Flee Two Homes, a Painter Finds a Refuge on Canvas

The migrant’s experience permeates all aspects of these paintings. Kahraman fixates on her subjects’ eyes — they are often left blank or depicted in the figures’ palms, like the hand of Fatima… said to ward off bad fortune.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/a...

Words Are Like Birds... Why do we write?

open.substack.com/pub/elifshaf... 🕊️

A new essay/poem on nymphs & ballerinas

open.substack.com/pub/leilaloi...

Adoring this first person essay series… this one, Lisa Carver visits The Moulin Rouge in 1980s

open.spotify.com/episode/2AC8...

Jane Goodall on the Meaning of Wisdom and the Deepest Wellspring of Hope “A great deal of our onslaught on Mother Nature is not really lack of intelligence but a lack of compassion… True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our …

A great deal of our onslaught on Mother Nature is not really lack of intelligence but a lack of compassion
… True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our heart. 🤍

www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/26/j...

9 Life Lessons From Jane Goodall As She Turns 90 “Take advantage of every opportunity and if you don’t give up, hopefully you find a way,” Dr Goodall told Vogue. “That message I’ve taken around the world.”

When I got to Cambridge University, they told me you can’t be a good scientist and have empathy for your subjects. Fortunately, I had a wonderful teacher that taught me those scientists were absolutely wrong. ~ Jane Goodall 🦋🤍

www.vogue.co.uk/article/jane...

It’s lovely 🌊

‘Dominant on the river’: 32 Chunk crowned champion in ‘biggest Fat Bear Week yet’ Brown bear’s nearly 100,000 votes leads him to victory despite suffering for most of season with broken jaw

Big news 🐻🥰 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

But if you knew her, you came to recognize that sudden, rooted attention.

~ Ninette de Valois (on Margot Fonteyn)

Attention is the beginning of devotion

~ Mary Oliver 🤍

Half Naked and Sweating With Strangers, for Art

Quite the title but interesting— sauna/ cold plunge & performance

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/s...

She was wonderful

Welsh folklore tells us to take care tonight:
"Michaelmas Day was credited with uncanny power in Wales. There was an old superstition that on this night the Cistfaens (warriors' graves) were illuminated by spectral lights for the ghosts of ancient warmen were engaged in deadly fray."

In Hayv Kahraman’s New Show, the Artist Heals From Devastation “Ghost Fires” sees the painter processing the loss of her home in Altadena, L.A. earlier this year—and how it connects to her complicated upbringing.

Kahraman saw the flames... & felt instantly transported to the past. She suddenly found herself in her childhood bedroom in Baghdad, where she had watched air raids falling from the sky. “I was 10 years old,” Kahraman recalls, the same age that her daughter is now.

www.wmagazine.com/culture/hayv...

I was a photo innocent… until about twenty years ago. ~ Sally Mann

open.spotify.com/episode/4tH0...

Isabelle Huppert to headline 2026 Adelaide festival in ‘astounding’ role as Mary, Queen of Scots The French screen and stage legend will star in Mary Said What She Said, a one-woman show created by late theatre luminary Robert Wilson, in March

Mon dieu www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Chang Yuchen - The Here and There Collective Chang Yuchen is a New York City-based artist working in the intersection of writing, weaving, drawing, translating, teaching, and publishing.

Beautiful conversations with Asian/& artists 🤍 thehereandthere.co/artist/chang...

A fever dream of love A young ballerina and an older, married composer meet. Sparks fly, tragedy ensues

A new substack essay & poem

open.substack.com/pub/leilaloi...

The Waves That Healed Her: Zoë Bastin’s ‘The Break’ By Leila Lois—How a heartbreak led Zoë Bastin to create a powerful dance work on Williamstown Beach, where the rhythm of waves becomes the rhythm of healing.

A gorgeous interview with site-specific choreographer, Zoë Bastin, who shares my love for cold-water swimming 🌊

spotlight.adancemag.com/the-break-zo...

Epictetus’ Insight About Picking Things Up By The Right Handle a helpful analogy for handling relationships well

The two handles, one of which is going to lay us in for spilling the bucket, or straining our back, or not being able to handle the thing that we’re carrying around. The other, a handle by which we actually can bear it… even flourish and have a good life.

medium.com/practical-ra...

The Art of Exploration Melbourne-based dance artist Jo Lloyd uses choreography as a social encounter, revealing behaviour over various durations and contexts. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts who started danc...

It was wonderful to interview Jo Lloyd on the importance of explorative methods in choreography recently for Fjord Review 🤍

fjordreview.com/blogs/all/th...

EWF x Textile Message at No Vacancy gallery, Naarm. Thanks @emergingwriters.bsky.social for everything ✨

Love that place ❤️

Art!

For Schopenhauer, all moral actions can be expressed by the Latin phrase Neminem laede, imo omnes quantum potes, juva (“Injure no one; on the contrary, help everyone as much as you can”)

philosophynow.org/issues/52/Sc...

LISTEN WHEN YOUR BODY TALKS

New musings, & a poem, on my substack:
open.substack.com/pub/leilaloi...