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Explore Essays and memoir

A Mischief of Rats

Joanna Kavenna

‘They slept curled together in a hammock, little scraps of fur, hearts beating madly.’ Joanna Kavenna on her pet rats, Kat Bjelland and Courtney Love.

A Not-So-Pretty History of Pet Care

Daniel Magariel

‘One day after the next I would figure out what was needed, learn from my mistakes, pay attention to what worked.’

Abuse, Silence, and the Light That Virginia Woolf Switched On

April Ayers Lawson

When Virginia Woolf was thirteen, she was abused by her half-brother George Duckworth. No one believed her - not even her biographers. April Ayers Lawson on Woolf's abuse, and her own.

After

April Ayers Lawson

‘I again told him I wasn’t ready to have sex, and his only response was to lean in and kiss me. The hallway in which we walked seemed to be shrinking, closing in on us.’ – April Ayers Lawson on intimacy after sexual abuse.

All Hail the Holy Bone

Maggie O’Farrell

‘It is part angel, part lepidopteran, part Rorschach inkblot.’

Best Book of 2013: Tom Drury’s Pacific

John Patrick McHugh

‘There is a remarkable flow to the novel, like that aimless but essential drunken chatter after your third pint.’ John Patrick McHugh on why Tom Drury’s Pacific is the best book of 2013.

Bohemian Rhapsody in Five Acts

Tiffany Murray

Tiffany Murray on living with Freddie Mercury as a child.

Court

Blake Morrison

‘One by one they’re led into the box. They swear their oath. They confirm their name, their employment, why they were where they say they were, what it was they saw.’

Cows

Adam Nicolson

‘All in it together but not in it together at all.’

Dividing Lines

Jack Losh

Jack Losh reports from rebel-held Bria in the Central African Republic, where fighting has forced thousands into a displacement camp.

Heart Berries

Terese Marie Mailhot

‘We started the affair in a small booth at Village Inn. I didn’t sleep the night before. You were my teacher, and we discussed my fiction.’

Jailbait

Ottessa Moshfegh

‘Part of what made him interesting was that I felt he would dismiss me the moment I bored him.’

Large Black Rooster

Daniyal Mueenuddin

‘Early one morning in the month of June, someone ran over a huge black rooster on County Road W in Wisconsin hill country.’

Lisa Moore | Notes on Craft

Lisa Moore

‘I wanted to explore what a “likeness” is, and how the act of capturing a person through a portrait might compare to writing a character.’