I went to Beirut in June of 2010 because my father was dying.
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I went to Beirut in June of 2010 because my father was dying.
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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.
Claire Messud is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Author of six works of fiction including her most recent novel, The Burning Girl, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.
More about the author →‘If black is the colour of the Islamic State, then grey is the colour of destruction.’
‘The call of the muezzin reached his ears only as a muffled wail, the keeper of ritual and the passage of time.’
‘One did not have high hopes for Gettysburg. Nor for Pennsylvania in general. Having grown up in Indiana, Diana felt she’d earned her condescension.’
Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
‘How can I accept a trauma or a loss that I cannot define?’
Rebecca May Johnson on pregnancy and divining the future.
‘Once you knew what God wanted from your life, you would have to be ten different kinds of fool to look the other way.’
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