Marina Benjamin

Marina Benjamin worked as a journalist before turning to non-fiction and, later, memoir. She  has served as arts editor of the New Statesman and deputy arts editor of the Evening Standard and has written features and book reviews for most of the broadsheet papers. Her first book Living at the End of the World (1998) looked at the mass psychology of millenarians. Rocket Dreams (2003), an offbeat elegy to the end of the space age, is at the same time a story about coming of age in the 1970s, while Last Days in Babylon (2007) blends memoir, political commentary and travelogue to explore the story of the Jews of Iraq.

These days, Marina works as senior editor at the digital magazine Aeon. She teaches regular life writing and creative non-fiction courses for Arvon, and runs workshops for graduate students and staff as an RLF Consultant Fellow. In recent years she has doubled down on her commitment to exploring what memoir can do, with a modern take on the essay form in The Middlepause (2016) – a personal interrogation of what it means to be middle aged. Her new memoir, Insomnia – part confession, part poetic exploration and part philosophical reflection – is published in 2018. She lives in London with her husband, teenager and dog.