‘They treated their bodies like some exotic animal they’d found fast asleep, beings they needed to wake to truly know.’
I do not fear doctors, surgery, medicine or modernity, but in the spring of 2014, this I knew: If you let them, they’d slice you open on their own time. American medical professionals were wild for the surgical removal of term fetuses. Caesarean rates spiked at twelve and four, hours when doctors…
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‘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.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘How can I accept a trauma or a loss that I cannot define?’
Rebecca May Johnson on pregnancy and divining the future.
‘you notice / that some of these men / are full of passionate music / while others pain your ears’
Poetry by Elvis Bego.
‘The monstrous years of my late teens lay lined up alongside the rest of my life like bullets in a gun.’
A story by Sophie Mackintosh.
‘The first time I was painted by Hannah Meehan, she spent some time arranging me into a pose that would work for her.’
A short story by Ana Kinsella.
An excerpt from Mariana Leky’s What You Can See From Here.
‘And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of Lamb’s influence on contemporary writing, the nineteenth-century superstar has been largely ignored and mostly forgotten.’
