Three Poems
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Tongues of Fire
Seán Hewitt
‘Waking, close to morning but still
a shuttered, metal dark in the room’
Two poems by Seán Hewitt from Tongues of Fire, shortlisted for the 2020 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.
The Bookmobile
Kotaro Isaka
‘He told me he had quit his job the day after the earthquake and came out here with nothing but a sleeping bag.’
Podcast | Caleb Klaces
Caleb Klaces
‘I think the infrastructure of community around fathering is very limited.’
We discuss Caleb Klaces’s debut novel, Fatherhood.
VIO
Kanako Nishi
‘I had an odd feeling as I regarded Yō, who knew things about me that I hadn’t known.’
Inferno
Catherine Cho
‘My son was eight days shy of his 100-day celebration when I started to see devils in his eyes.’
Catherine Cho’s Inferno is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.
Surge
Jay Bernard
‘The black is coming in from the cold,
rolling up the beach walls, looking for light.’
Two poems by Jay Bernard, from their debut collection Surge, shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.
The Death of Distance
Samrat Choudhury
‘It might take only one soldier being shot across the Chinese–Indian border for war to begin. The howitzers, tanks, missiles and fighter jets are lined up, ready and waiting for action.’
A Ghost in Brazil
Kikuko Tsumura
‘I was ever so keen to visit the Aran Islands, but unfortunately, I died before ever making it out of Japan.’
Podcast | Sophie Mackintosh
Sophie Mackintosh
‘Imagine if an alien came to earth and asked, so how to you reproduce?’
We discuss Blue Ticket and the body horror of motherhood.
The Only Way Out Is Through
Hana Pera Aoake
‘Hiding in kumara pits on the side of volcanoes, I was born with an egg inside me ready to be baked.’
Podcast | Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh
‘Unless you are completely shut down and in denial, there’s no way you’re getting out of this without having changed.’
Ottessa Moshfegh on 2020 and her new novel.
On Meeting Margaret Busby
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Margaret Busby was Britain’s first Black woman publisher. At the age of twenty, she was also one of its youngest.
Podcast | Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado
We discuss the dilemmas presented by her new memoir, In the Dream House.
‘What does it mean to present a face of one’s community that isn’t commonly seen, and that might be seen as bad PR?’
Girl Games
Makena Onjerika
‘There, behind glass panes separating you from the good children, from life itself, you are kept company by your dread.’
Nocturne
Yūshō Takiguchi
Jesse Kirkwood’s translation of ‘Nocturne’ by Yūshō Takiguchi is the winner of the 2020 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize.
Podcast | Momtaza Mehri
Momtaza Mehri
We discuss her collection, Doing the Most with the Least, on the Granta Podcast.
‘don’t be / shocked when I say I was in prison you’re still in prison that’s / what this land means prison.’
Selfish Little Thing
Olivia Rosenthall
‘I began to lie awake at night thinking about all the terrible things I’d ever done, listing them quietly in my head, each selfish little thing, my body numb with guilt.’
Podcast | Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
We discuss her new book, Weather, on the Granta Podcast.
‘Yes, it's dire. Yes, we're not sure what to do. Does that mean we have nothing to do?’
Sleeping Beauty
Laura Demers
‘It’s normal not to be offered anything to eat or drink when you are a princess.’
Slobber and Drool
Jess Arndt
‘My face, not the glass, was blurry. I had no idea what I really looked like besides lumpy, fuzzy, profuse.’
It Was a Dog
Amaryllis Gacioppo
‘She liked to eat until her thighs felt gelatinous and slick with sweat, and her stomach ballooned out, sore and firm as though she had drunk cement that had now set.’
Work, or the Swet Shop Boys
Hilary Plum
‘My work life – like, maybe, yours – is built around another, non-paying vocation.’
In Conversation
Katharina Volckmer & Eliza Clark
‘People are obsessed with authenticity – in a post-reality-TV, post-confessional-journalism world, fiction is simply not enough.’
Five Poems
Sawako Nakayasu
‘Although bara is homonymous with rose, this is not a rose-rose incident.’
Messrs. External & Bodily
Helen Marten
‘Space is marked and people do their best, but somewhere somebody made a false prophecy for the land.’
Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts
Bhanu Kapil
‘Every person who travelled here is unsteady, I can feel that.’
