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Down in Front

Colson Whitehead

‘This is the part where we find our seats. Step on toes, suck in gut, make yourself flat as a movie screen.’

Enzo Ponza

Joanna Walsh

‘I was still quite a small girl when I decided to kidnap Enzo Ponza.’

Epistle to the New Age

Gore Vidal

‘I’m Bishop of Macedonia, as you will know in time if you are not lucky enough to be in time already.’

Escapes

Joy Williams

‘We went directly out of the theatre and into the streets, my mother weeping on the little usher's arm.’

Exit Strategy

Ivan Vladislavić

‘The corporate storyteller is having a bad day.’

Exotics

Callan Wink

‘He’d come to tell her that he was leaving. It seemed rather impossible now – the telling, not the leaving.’

Final Dispatch: End in Pizza

Juan Pablo Villalobos

‘Those are not prisons, they are condominiums for rich people. Or at least that is what rich people think.’

Frogs

Mo Yan

‘Once the preposterous reality set in, we were overcome by sadness.’

Future Shock

Kate Wheeler

‘Althea's neck strained. Her black, small eyes shifted swiftly, blinked, then fixed evilly on Ingrid.’

Gifted

Richard Williams

‘The interim report filed by the investigator from the coroner's bureau listed him as a black male, 5ft 7in tall, weighing 1351b‘.

Give it up for Billy

Edmund White

‘Were there moral cataracts that one could remove?’

Given

Jesmyn Ward

‘Given played football with single-minded purpose his senior year, the fall before he died.’

Grief in Moderation

Diane Williams

‘The tiny daisies were scored by the shadows of the slats of the venetian blinds and the stripes were shivering.’ Diane Williams.

Hammer

Adrian Van Young

‘I shift my weight right, where the hammer hangs down. Then left, then right, then left again.’