On 30 October 2025, we welcomed The White Pube, Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, for UNITOM TALKS, where they shared the journey behind the newly released paperback edition of Poor Artists.
The conversation moved between criticism, creativity and care, touching on what it’s like to be a critic (“like taking the bins out every week”) and how the book began after a chance meeting with an agent on a train to Germany just before lockdown.
They spoke about choosing fiction to explore real experiences. Poor Artists follows Quest Talukdar, an aspiring artist navigating a surreal version of the creative industry while weighing success against integrity. Mixing storytelling with dialogue from anonymised interviews, the book captures what it feels like to make art in a world that isn’t built for it. As Zarina said, “this book could only have been fiction.”
Gabrielle described the book as a gift to their younger selves, “written for a young person going to art school, to heal our inner children for the shitshow that is art school.” Other themes included performing femininity, the luxury of time, and whether art should ever be taken too seriously. Gabrielle reflected on “the most real art” being the kind found in a stranger’s house after they’ve gone, made out of need, not for show.
Both spoke about wanting to respect the raw and non-performative, embracing “disrespect as an important critical feature” and calling for “more people to misbehave.” The evening ended with a glimpse of what’s next: an anthology marking ten years of The White Pube’s writing.
You can now listen to the full talk on our Spotify and hear the discussion in their own words. A big thanks to Gabrielle and Zarina for sharing their insights and to everyone who came along and made the evening so special.
A few signed copies are still available!