Serpentine Reader, Issue 02

Serpentine Reader, Issue 02: I Hope This Finds You Well brings together essays, fiction, poetry and experimental writing that rethinks self-help for an era of systemic instability. 

Following  Issue 01: Circulation, which explored the movement of water, bodies, images and power, this new edition turns to a phrase so familiar it often goes unnoticed:  I hope this finds you well. What does ‘wellness’ mean in a world that increasingly is not? 

As contemporary self-optimisation culture promises resilience, productivity and personal transformation, the texts in Issue 02 probe its contradictions. In a landscape where care is automated, commodified and reduced to email sign-offs, corporate mindfulness and chatbot companions, is self-help a path to liberation, or another marketable illusion? 

Across the issue, contributors explore how wellness is performed, managed and sold, even as collective conditions deteriorate. Here, self-help becomes something more unstable and more collective: a set of stories we tell ourselves, and each other, about survival, value and possibility.  

Contributors: Stephanie Wambugu, Eliot Haworth, Alex Quicho, Asa Seresin, Anahid Nersessian, Joycelyn Longdon, David Lisbon, and Ebun Sodipo. 

Each copy includes one unique sticker from a limited set of five designs by Alake Shilling, featuring her iconic characters with original words of affirmation. 

ISBN: 978-1-908617-96-5