2020 / Tentacular / Issue 6
Words will only be words: The Death of a Clown
On clowns, visual identity, and the relationship between outward appearance and interior life.
Read the essaySelected writing
Thinking in public.
Essays, fiction, and conversations on art, literature, and the ways we see.
By Pappas-Kelley
Essays & excerpts.
2019 / Dennis Cooper
The Novels of Zak Ferguson Day
A commissioned showcase of Ferguson’s writing, considering transgressive fiction and neurodiversity.
Read the featureEssay / Broken Grey Wires
Art in Solvency and Exhaustion: Notes
An essay for the organisation’s archive, examining exhaustion, mental health, and contemporary art.
View the essay record2016–17 / Teesside University
Critical Perspectives
Conversations with Caroline Archaintre, Kevin Hunt, Graeme Durant, and Johannes Maier, published alongside the university’s programme of artist talks, workshops, and tutorials.
Read the conversations2018 / Manchester University Press
Into the bin, into the bin…
Banksy, the destruction of art, and the spectacle surrounding an artwork’s disappearance.
Read the essay2016 / OnCurating / Issue 31
Uta Barth’s Distrust of Narrative Cause/Effect and Agnes Martin’s Surrendered Perfection
On visual experience, narrative, and artists’ writing.
Read the essay2010 / Anthology contribution
Colour and Chromophobia
A contribution to The Minutiae of Visionaries: Experiments Toward Social Evolution, published by Evo Girls Press.
View the university record2009 / The Rumpus
Louise Bourgeois and Scheherazade
From Pappas-Kelley’s earlier visual-art criticism, alongside writing on Carey Young and Douglas A. Martin’s Branwell.
Explore the author archive2020 / The Rumpus
A conversation with Zak Ferguson
Pappas-Kelley interviews the writer for The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project.
Read the interviewFiction excerpt / 3:AM Magazine
Book essay
Scene End
Reflections on Stalking America, included as the epilogue to To Build a House that Never Ceased and as the novel’s afterword.
Read the essayFrom Toby Room
Conversations with artists.
Artist interview
Wynne Greenwood / Tracy + the Plastics
On performance, touring, and Maps to Radical Imagining, created for Tollbooth Gallery.
Read the interviewArtist interview
Vanessa Renwick / Rising Up
On filmmaking and the installation made with Donovan Skirvin and the Celebrate People’s History Project.
Read the interviewArtist interview
Rob Millis & Fionn Meade / Hello Central
A conversation about the sound-and-video collaboration presented alongside Mary Simpson’s etchings at Tollbooth Gallery.
Read the interviewConversations with Pappas-Kelley
On making the work.
2025 / Jonathan Mayhew
Soft Territories / New Haunts
A two-part conversation accompanying Soft Territories: Crossing One.
Read the conversation2023 / Daniel Davis Wood / 3:AM
2023 / Jonathan Mayhew / The Rumpus
2018 / Jonathan Mayhew / The Rumpus
Art, destruction, and independent spaces
On Solvent Form, art, destruction, and independent cultural spaces.
Read the conversationThe Artists Podcast
To Build a House that Never Ceased
A conversation with Tom Styan and Charlie Wood about the book and Pappas-Kelley’s practice.
Watch the conversation