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Nahum in the snow in Hakuba: taken on a weekend trip during an Astray writing workshop in Japan.
Japan Story
Failure to Launch
The legacy of one William Shakespeare specifically outlined the various separate qualities of a tragedy and a comedy: two stories destined never to interlink, telling tales of diverse passions, whether joyful or dour. On the other hand, the legacy of me, you ask? Well, I managed to break down any visible barrier between the two-story…
May 19, 2020
Story
An Orwellian Bus Tour from Shanghai to Beijing
The savannah has been drained of life. Its blooming grasslands have shrivelled and are bleached. The great beast pants, searching for the blanketing comforts of an acacia tree, but is rewarded only with the monolithic ceiling looming above. Where once beams of light would filter through emerald shrubbery, now three singular strands wiggle their way…
May 7, 2020
Japan Story
The Real Tokyo Blues
The black coffee reflects the vague shape of a little boy who thinks he's a man. It's rather off-putting, to be honest. Like the transition stage between looking too young to be considered old, but looking too old to be considered young. He scrutinises this a bit more; his nose is swollen and kinda twisted.…
May 4, 2020
Story
Travel: On Separation and Connection
A river mirrors the sky and a strip of life sits in between the middle of the blues I was reminded that my internal world was never really private because my external life has always reflected it back to me and I’ve been in the middle the whole time. Before I step out of the plane, mimicking its mechanics, and kick into my own auto-pilot function.…
May 1, 2020
Story
I Lost My Passport and Gained Perspective in Malta
The policeman sitting behind the desk in the St Julien police station looks too young to have graduated high school. His senior co-workers, clustered in a semi-circle behind him to oversee his report-writing, seem to think the same: good-humouredly teasing him about his pretty eyes and winking to me as they explain that he’s single.…
April 27, 2020
Japan Story
What The Mountains Shouted Back
“You are not drunk!” It’s two in the morning and I’m shouting at a mountain – I’m definitely drunk. A weekend trip that replaced Tokyo’s highrise buildings with grand mountains was a much-needed breath of fresh air. I was in Japan to encourage my identity as a writer and add some fresh work to my…
April 20, 2020
Story
An Encounter With a Cult in Tokyo
My housemates buy overpriced drinks and sit down at the window seats inside the Starbucks across from us, camera phones at the ready. I nervously wait with two Swedish guys I met last week outside the west gate of Ikebukuro station. It’s already dark and the humidity is off the charts. Japan is sweltering in…
April 17, 2020

Astray is a storytelling project centred on travel, community, identity and liberation.

We’re based out of Lenapehoking / New York City: the homeland of the Lenape. Specifically, we’re in Manhattan: a name that comes from Mannahatta, meaning “island of many hills”. As grateful guests in this city, we recognize the strength and resilience of the Lenape, and extend our reverence to all Indigenous peoples everywhere. This acknowledgement comes from our commitment to working against the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.