My husband and I were in Tivoli, and we went to the gardens at Villa d’Este. He’d been to Italy before, but it was my first trip. There were rails in front of the fountains because the water was so polluted, they wanted to keep you from being splashed.
Anecdotes
Ann Beattie
Second Dispatches from Ambassador to Brazil, Earth 
genericlovestory
Pause
‘When I think of menopause I don’t think of hot flashes; I am not here to talk about hot flashes.’ Mary Ruefle on menopause.
Mona’s Story
Urvashi Butalia on the life of transgender Mona Ahmed and her search for a feminine identity.
The Weak Spot
‘Murder class was the new thing, but of course they didn’t call it that. They called it Specialised Life Skills for Girls.’ – Sophie Mackintosh
woman is a construct
‘woman is basically meant / to be a residential complex’ – A poem by Angélica Freitas, translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan.
Aftermath
Rachel Cusk on motherhood, marriage and separation.
