Compass Plant
Sort by:
Nadine at Forty
Hilary Mantel
‘Each day we re-enact, on ourselves, what was done to us.’
A short story by Hilary Mantel.
Those Who Felt Differently
Ian Jack
‘Could grief for one woman have caused all this? We were told so.’
On the death of Diana.
Self-Consciousness
Edward W. Said
‘It was through my mother that I grew more aware of my body as incredibly fraught and problematic.’
Editing Vidia
Diana Athill
‘I thought so highly of Vidia’s writing and felt his presence on our list to be so important that I simply could not allow myself not to like him.’
Kiltykins
Ved Mehta
‘When I was seeing Kilty (how, even today, the word 'seeing' mesmerizes me), the fact of my blindness was never mentioned, referred to, or alluded to’.
The View from this End
Alexandra Fuller
‘It lay like a sodden comma, curled up against its mother, and no one realised it was dead.’
How to Write About Africa
Binyavanga Wainaina
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
Lost Cat
Mary Gaitskill
‘Which deaths are tragic and which are not? Who decides what is big and what is little?’
Always the Same Snow and Always the Same Uncle
Herta Müller
‘Who knows: what I write I must eat, what I don’t write – eats me.’
A Man’s Life
Pajtim Statovci
‘I wished my family would die, my friends too, everybody I knew, because only that way could they never follow me wherever I went.’
Two Poems
Jennifer L. Knox
‘The Tanners are like mushrooms: born with every molecule / they’ll ever need.’
My Enemy’s Cherry Tree
Wang Ting-Kuo
‘And the truth is, my heart was tied in knots, and pain bored into the marrow of my bones when I heard about his illness.’
In Search of Beauty: Blackness as a Poem in Saudi Arabia
Sulaiman Addonia
Sulaiman Addonia on the slow process of rediscovering the beauty of black skin after moving to Saudi Arabia as a child.
Two Poems
Jenny George
‘This had happened once before, / when my life first split / into comfort and pain.’
Exhale
Beth Gardiner
‘After all my travels, I can see now what I couldn’t when I started. In the suffering pollution brings, there is also the glimmer of a different future, its outlines visible through the haze.’
Oval
Elvia Wilk
‘We’re trying to prove that it’s possible to live sustainably and not be such a freak about it.’
How Do You Write a Memoir When You Can’t Remember?
Wendy Mitchell & Anna Wharton
Wendy Mitchell, who has been living with dementia since 2014, discusses the process of writing her memoir with her ghostwriter, Anna Wharton.
The Power of a Name
Rebecca Tamás
‘When English is the dominant everything, you can’t help wanting to fight for the little speck of the rest of your self.’
Maid Marian
Lisa Taddeo
‘It had taken Noni many years to stop wishing she’d been a woman like that.’
A Mother’s Dilemma
Victor Lodato
‘I can hear the girl scratching a pencil inside a notebook. I don’t like it. I’ve asked her not to write about me.’
The Governesses
Anne Serre
‘For the governesses, moving in with Monsieur and Madame Austeur was like a homecoming.’
On Meeting Mrs Obama
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
‘Michelle’s story, while deeply rooted in the American story, speaks to experiences that are universal.’
The Pine Islands
Marion Poschmann
‘Gilbert Silvester woke up distraught. Mathilda’s black hair lay spread out on the pillow next to him, tentacles of a malevolent pitch-black jellyfish.’
