Lorna Gibb

‘There were rules to the game. I could not lose my virginity and I had to be careful not to let a boy go further than I wanted to.’

Issue 132

Greg Jackson

‘Hara had stumbled on a kind of play, as if they were sisters left alone by their parents for the first time to explore the different ways a day could be deconstructed.‘

Issue 132

Daisy Jacobs

‘He’s not himself’, Mum says in the kitchen. Well, who is he then? Is he 40 per cent of his young self? Ten? Do I still have to love him as much as ever, this 90 per cent stranger?

Liliana Heker

‘It occurred to Ana that this was a woman who often left things hanging.’

Jon Fosse

‘You were a chasm that cracked and turned into stones, and then the stones lay there, beautifully laid, in a wall.’

Issue 131

Sebastià Jovani

‘The aim of this study is to visualise a means of understanding the essential aspects of a literary text.’

Anjum Hasan

Issue 130

Anjali Joseph

‘Like scraps of leather, oddly shaped, things from life, people and sayings and objects, found themselves spliced together.’

Issue 129

Miranda July

‘No one knows why ripping up a name makes a person call – science can’t explain it. Erasing the name also works.’

Brian Hart

‘The road pleasantly gained and lost elevation, flood gauges in dry washes and scraggy hilltops, corners that begged for two wheels not four.’

Eric Gamalinda

‘Unconfirmed stories that have been retold so often they acquire the polish of truth, like the rosary beads people here carry in their pockets and pull out whenever the need for reassurance arises.’

Julia Franck

‘We’ve got a lot of family friends but Thorsten has been coming round far too often recently and I wonder whether I shouldn’t tell her that sometime.’

Keiichiro Hirano

‘It was during this period that I got to know K, one of the local mailmen.’

Tomoyuki Hoshino

‘Spinning makes all that is illusory fall away.’ Translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom.