‘There were six NATO warships patrolling the Aegean last summer, bristling with missiles and hull-mounted sonar; this was one of them. It was looking for the same thing we were … Something not much larger than an old Plymouth convertible, loaded with from twenty to ninety human beings: the typical smuggler’s dinghy.’

In the summer issue of the Dublin Review, Ríona Judge McCormack writes about volunteering for an NGO that assists refugees crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesvos. The sea could overwhelm the smugglers’ tiny boats; the Greek authorities had arrested another NGO’s leaders and volunteers; and the island’s refugee processing centre was overcrowded and unsafe.  ‘Nightwatch on the Aegean’ is a vivid, provocative essay about a group of people operating under pressure from every direction.

Also in the summer Dublin Review, Aaron Gilbreath describes an encounter with a man who has been living homeless in the California interior for decades, and recounts the chaotic story of his life. Brian Dillon writes about the early photography of Diane Arbus and asks, of the subjects she called ‘freaks’, ‘Were we up to the task of returning their gaze and not judging them, or not judging Arbus?’ Also, short stories by Arnold Thomas Fanning, Tim MacGabhann, Deirdre Sullivan and Chloe Tomlinson.