‘The place we come from, the place we call home, is the home of our suffering.’
Jamaica Kincaid talks about finding her way to writing.
In 2022 Jamaica Kincaid spoke to editor Josie Mitchell about childhood, the concept of memory and her early love of Paradise Lost.
Jamaica Kincaid grew up on the island of Antigua. She began writing for the New Yorker and went on to publish many books, including the novel Annie John and the collection of stories At the Bottom of the River. A number of her books have recently been reissued, or are forthcoming, from Picador in the UK.
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Every time I tried to write more, it turned out to be a fruitless endeavor – I felt like I was trapped in a sealed room with no windows.’
Fiction by Yu Hua, translated by Michael Berry.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘She is thorough in a way that is off putting to people. It makes for a good secretary, not a good conversationalist.’
Fiction by Madeline Cash.
‘I think the stories that cannot yet be told must be told, can only be told, by un-telling.’
Momtaza Mehri in conversation with m nourbeSe philip.
‘Many people in the country seem happy to accept mercenaries in exchange for stability.’
James Pogue on the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic.
‘Mr President, we can get you into a bunker with full communication equipment and you can give your address there, you just can’t do it in a goddamn plastic blimp at the start of World War III.’
