Explore Essays and memoir
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Climb the Mountains
Apricot Irving
'Harm that comes through the hands of those we love must be wrestled with; it does not simply disappear.'
Cormac James | Notes on Craft
Cormac James
‘My most recent writing lesson came from Elizabeth Strout, a few months ago. Pay attention, is all she taught me, and it was plenty.’
Broken Animals
Britta Jaschinski
‘These bored, frustrated and hungry animals appear as reluctant figures in some unsolvable puzzle, or as victims of a grand experiment whose original purpose is lost in time.’
Kestrel
Cynan Jones
‘A kestrel is not domestic. The one time I tried affection the bird put his beak through my lip.’
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.
The Bible As Literature, Literature As Scripture
Stuart Kelly
'Literature and literary criticism took me away from the Church as a teenager, and literature and literary criticism brought me back to it later.'
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.
The Trouble With Rape
April Ayers Lawson
April Ayers Lawson on rape, trauma, and the difficulty of speaking out about sexual abuse.
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.
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.
