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Explore Essays and memoir

Teaching After Trump

Melissa Febos

‘In a country whose government we do not trust, who do we need more than writers and teachers? And what is more powerful than an inspired youth?’

Kettle Holes

Melissa Febos

‘They knelt at my feet. They crawled naked across gleaming wooden floors.’

Best Book of 1993: Written on the Body

Melissa Febos

‘Influences imprint themselves on our consciousness as light does a photograph, or trauma the psyche’

To Thine Own Self Be True

David Flusfeder

‘If Shakespeare’s characters stand for anything, it’s for a slipperiness of identity.’ David Flusfeder on a dog named Shakespeare.

The Tree Farm

Cal Flyn

‘I was going north to find a tree farm, in a land where there are no trees.’

Bad Faith

Ken Follett

‘Every sect needs jargon. We did not have churches, we had halls; services were called meetings; the congregation was the assembly; elders were overseers’

Words and the Word

Miranda France

Miranda France on how C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot redrafted the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Crocodiles and Fairy Dust

Janice Galloway

‘I admit the sneaking feeling, just now and then, that those who govern us think we’re the problem.’

Going Diamond

Sarah Gerard

‘In Amway, there’s no such thing as contentment.’

The Mask of Night

Lorna Gibb

‘I puzzled over the language but disentangled its meaning slowly, carefully, eager to connect’ Lorna Gibb on Shakespeare’s Juliet.

Blue Hills and Chalk Bones

Sinéad Gleeson

‘One day, something changes; a corporeal blip. For me, it happened in the months after turning thirteen: the synovial fluid in my left hip began to evaporate like rain.’

Fugee

Hawa Jande Golakai

‘Now we’ve fizzled into a ridiculous unsaid, a flaccid tale of love, or lack thereof, in the time of Ebola.’

Best Book of 1967: Ice by Anna Kavan

Eli Goldstone

‘What a writer, and what a vision. What a perfect book to read in preparation for the end of the world.’

Bad Dreams

Eli Goldstone

‘I could do nothing but lie there, locked inside my body.’