Maya Skidmore, Author at Astray

Bianca Censori, Kanye West and power dynamics

At the Grammys on the weekend, something happened that has happened thousands of times throughout human history. A woman’s body was used by a powerful man to sell himself, and nobody really cared. Bianca Censori and Kanye West have populated the pop-cultural annals for a few years now, and every time they arrive on…

ByMaya SkidmoreFebruary 4, 2025

Essay Iran

“We Could Make a Fkn Glass Crater Out of the Middle East for All I Care”

Written in 2017 and republished with minor edits in 2024. The charming sentence that titles this piece first came to my attention in the sunny year of ’06, when satirical comedy group The Chaser took to the streets of Texas and convinced far too many people that ABC comedian Julian Morrow was the Prime Minister…

ByMaya SkidmoreMarch 12, 2024

Editorial

Hi! Just A Friendly Reminder That If You’re Under The Age Of 75, Scotty And Barnaby Don’t Actually Give A Shit About You, Or Your Future.

This is why. When Barnaby Joyce got up on his pixellated pulpit last week and started preaching about how social media is about to get its long-overdue day of reckoning, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by a steely bolt of rage. “My daughter is but one victim of malicious online lies: it’s time the…

ByMaya SkidmoreOctober 18, 2021

Feature

Humanity’s Great Hope in Times of Pain and Pestilence

Where to look when things feel dire When my grandfather was a punky British 14-year-old in 1944, he would stand at his bedroom window watching the bombs fall on London from a (reasonable) distance while his mother and little sisters huddled beneath their kitchen table. When I talk to him on the rusty landline 70…

ByMaya SkidmoreJune 9, 2020

Cambodia Story UK

Peaches, (Potentially) Problematic Sex and a Murder Mystery in a London Airbnb

Jason*, our Hugh-Grant-lookalike Airbnb host, was prone to wild sporadic fits of weeping. It was the kind of animal uncontrollable wailing that you often hear in new wave Indie films or in a final year art student’s all-immersive video installation piece. Raw, carnal and generally pretty distressing. We would find out later why. And the…

ByMaya SkidmoreFebruary 29, 2020

Yarns

Travelling When Broken: A Memoir

I am sobbing as surreptitiously as I can in a scungy Indonesian bathroom, clutching two strawberry daiquiris bigger than my head. My cleavage is blistering beneath someone else’s Bintang and outside, Rihanna is shrieking at some fleshy Western youths to “WOOOOORK!” as they jump frantically under orange strobes. I want to stab myself in the…

ByMaya SkidmoreFebruary 25, 2018