‘She wanted to enjoy herself, she wanted to try, but she didn't know where to begin.’
It was an April Sunday, and Los Angeles was trapped in a heatwave that had descended a fortnight previously and refused to lift, drying up lawns in the Valley and sending weekenders to the beaches south of town. Half reclining in the back seat of a hired car on her way in from the airport, Ruth had …
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘You can drink in a bar and sober up in the basement of a church, but everyone sleeps (or lies awake) in solitude.’
‘It was 1 a.m., and it was Los Angeles; they were used to indiscretion.’
A story by Rhian Sasseen.
‘The picture of a postcard is a geograft, a scion of a place thrust into the life of a resident of somewhere else.’
Jennifer Croft on graffiti and the history of the postcard.
‘I realized that neither revenge nor compulsive storytelling would release me from this pain.’
‘I prefer not to speculate about what might have happened if I had not taken the ECG.’
‘From the future, Cuenca narrates Rio’s collapse and the personal fall of the main character. He does it with the elegant distance of a data collector but also with the terrifying certainty of one who knows there’s no going back.’
