‘I wasn’t going to abandon the dream of literature, I was going to keep dreaming.’
A few years ago, when I was young and hadn’t yet read Siegfried Lenz or Arno Schmidt – and neither, as it happens, Kurt Tucholsky, Karl Valentin or Georg C. Lichtenberg; moreover, I hadn’t read Jakob van Hoddis, Kurt Schwitters or Georg Heym, the sad, unfortunate Georg Heym – and when in spi…
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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.
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘It occurs to me then that he has not invited me for dinner, but my alter ego from the page.’
Tabitha Lasley on writing and dating.
‘When and where does the crisis of war begin and end?’
Y-Dang Troeung on the longevity of war.
‘Words only point to experience, they can’t replace it.’
Vanessa Onwuemezi and Colin Herd discuss UFOs, relation, and the search for an inner sense of home.
‘What strikes me most, though, is how writers and climbers share an appetite for failure.’
Natasha Calder on bouldering.
‘Literature isn’t alien to technology, literature is technological to begin with.’
