The clue is in the subtitle – "A Fiction" –  but, as with all of Deborah Levy's lucid, elegant, wise, and often slyly, dryly humorous work, this book is not not about the writer Gertrude Stein, whose life and art riddles its pages as a theme, a counterpoint, a tendency, a historical strand, a puzzle, a subconscious, and more. Levy's book is written in her hallmark prose, which always seems plainer that it is: her use of language is precise, honed, entirely her own, delivering quick truths and observations that catch you off the cuff and dazzle. It contains narrative details that might seem familiar from her "living autobiography” trilogy – certain terrains of Paris, friends and family, writerly preoccupations – but in My Year, Stein hovers as an eternal question (a guide, a muse, an antagonist) about politics, estrangement, expatriatism, linguistic experiment, friendship, being a woman, a writer, a Jew at a moment in which the world rears its violent head and living is difficult to grapple with. That Levy offers no answers, only more life – more writing, more living, more thinking, more humanity – is a consolation when we need it most. 

Emily LaBarge, Nerve art critic

In 2023, director Charlotte Regan made a splash with her funny, tender and stylistically bold debut film, Scrapper, about 12-year-old Georgie (Lola Campbell) who had been living alone until her dad, played by the always-excellent Harris Dickinson, turned up on her doorstep. In a great year for film, it was one of my favourites, so I was excited to hear that Regan was directing an eight-part series for BBC One: the lively and mischievous Glasgow-set romantic crime drama Mint, which has just landed on BBC One and iPlayer. 

With more than a nod to Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann-style), it centres upon the chance meeting between star-crossed lovers Shannon, daughter of the local crime boss, and Arran from the rival Denson gang, before unravelling into a wider tale of power, loyalty and desire. The cast is top-notch – including rapper Loyle Carner (aka Ben Coyle-Larner) making his very impressive acting debut as Arran, and Lindsay Duncan as the main crime family’s fierce, sex-obsessed grandma. But it’s Regan’s daring direction – everything from dreamy sequences and glitchy footage to close-ups of actual sparks in the lovers’ pupils and slow-motion fights with swords – that makes Mint a breath of fresh air. While some moments don’t quite land, you’ve got to salute Regan’s ambition. 

Imogen Carter, Nerve co-founder

Spring has finally sprung in Scotland, and it is a wonderful time of year to wander around the sculpture garden of Jupiter Artland, a few miles west of Edinburgh. Red campion, forget-me-nots and wild garlic bloom across the 50-hectare site with its array of eerie, enchanting, and amusing monumental works by Andy Goldsworthy, Antony Gormley, Tracey Emin and more. There are two new additions to enjoy, including an enormous glass tomb from Turner prize-winner Tai Shani, plus a temporary indoor exhibition, Extraction, which features several provocative pieces that reconceptualise the relationship between the energy industry and the natural world. A large simulation from john gerrard that depicts a gas flare in the form of a flagpole is particularly striking.

Fergus Morgan, writer

A poet and an anthropologist walk into a club in New York City as the Delfonics are playing over the speakers. So starts the new album by Trinidadian wordsmith and musician Anthony Joseph, which imagines an alternative Black history amid the sprawling free-jazz sound of downtown Manhattan in the 70s, where Afrofuturist pioneers such as Sun Ra, Basquiat and Gil Scott-Heron mingled. Joseph’s hallucinatory, moonlit poetry flows like smoke in a backstreet club; it is sublimely psychedelic, with a fantastic band of guest players including in-demand drummer Tom Skinner (the Smile), secret-weapon singer Eska and elite trumpeter Byron Wallen. 

The Ark is the second of a pair of Anthony Joseph’s albums recorded with Dave Okumu, a London-based producer with the Midas touch, starting with last year’s Rowing Up River to Get Our Names Back. It’s a rich and varied listen and perhaps the only one this year where you’ll find Martinican theory, a song where Octavia Butler sets sail with Pharoah Sanders, and Afro-house beats. 

Kate Hutchinson, Nerve music critic

A newly remastered version of what has been called the “definitive anime masterpiece” has just opened in the UK. Based on a classic manga book and first released in 1988, Akira is set in a post-World War Three Tokyo in 2019. The story follows a high-school dropout Kaneda, who tries to stop his friend Tetsuo – with his new psychic powers – from destroying the city. It is a white-knuckle ride of a watch. I left the cinema thinking of the artists who had worked painstakingly by hand over three years to produce their fantastic hand-painted apocalyptic vision. A creation from a pre-CGI/pre-AI age with the visual impact of an exploding bomb. Very influential on successive generations of animators. 

Jane Ferguson, co-founder

What is it about watching a performance as part of a group that makes it richer than seeing it alone? This is one of the questions asked in Lowry’s group show Curtain Up, which explores how visual artists have sought to capture the heightened emotions and communal energy of being part of an audience. Exhibitions about live performance that don’t actually feature any can often fall flat, but here the energy is ignited by three new commissions, including Ulla von Brandenburg’s Spirits Are Matter – enormous, harlequin-bright curtains framing painted works of performers by artists including Joy Labinjo, Ryan Mosley and Denzil Forrester so that they appear to be on stage. (I loved Labinjo’s Enjoyment, painted from a compilation of family footage and found images.)

Chris Paul Daniels’s Give Yourself a Round of Applause is a visual treat of archive film clips of awkward school plays, leaping dance troupes and overblown amateur dramatics. Meanwhile, Rowland Hill transports us to Loughborough Fair via a gallery-sized zoetrope-style work of whirling footage that you view by poking your head into a hole, becoming part of the piece as you watch it.

Curtain Up doesn't fully answer the question of why shared experiences are uniquely powerful, but it certainly evokes their mystery.

Laura Davis, writer

COMEDY
Roundhouse Comedy Festival
(Roundhouse, London NW1, 1-18 August)

This August, the Camden venue hosts a festival of standup shows, live podcasts and theatrical comedy from major names including Joe Lycett, Katherine Ryan, Sam Campbell, Ed Gamble, Sara Pascoe, Rosie Jones, Vittorio Angelone and Jack Rooke. Members’ presale opens Thursday 23 April, followed by general sale on Friday 24 April.

THEATRE
45 Years
(Minerva Theatre, Chichester, 12 June-11 July)

Gabriel Byrne and Geraldine James star in the world stage premiere of Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed 2015 film, which has been adapted for the stage by Hannah Patterson and will be directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, who won the best director award at the 2025 UK Theatre Awards for his production of Twelfth Night starring Samuel West for the RSC.

MUSIC
The Strokes on tour
(Venues in North America, Europe and UK, June-October)

The US band, who concluded their recent Coachella set with a politically charged video montage condemning US and Israeli bombings in Iran and Gaza, will tour North America, Europe and the UK from June onwards in support of their new, seventh, studio album, Reality Awaits (out on 26 June). UK dates in October.

THEATRE
John Proctor Is the Villain
(Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2, 2 February-24 April 2027)

The sold-out Royal Court production (raved about by Nerve theatre critic Dorian in our 31 March hotlist) gets a transfer. Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible is re-examined by a class of 21st-century American teenage girls. Tickets go on sale today for this limited run.