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‘For every witness, history unfolded at some other time, and in some other place.’ Jianan Qian on the first sentence of her story, ‘To the Dogs’.

Issue 136

First Sentence: Mika Taylor

Mika Taylor

‘I didn’t want reality to overwrite the story that was forming in my head.’

Issue 128

Mona Simpson | First Sentence

Mona Simpson

‘A year later, still in third person, I’d taken five days off my character’s long wait. I’d moved to present tense, though, for more immediacy.’

Issue 124

David Searcy | First Sentence

David Searcy

‘When I was a kid, my family doctor, right through high school, was this wonderful, funny guy with a little Boston Blackie moustache who looked a lot like Burgess Meredith.’

Issue 124

Miroslav Penkov | First Sentence

Miroslav Penkov

‘It was an old woman’s racism that inspired the first line of ‘Blood Money’.’

Issue 47

Hero of Tiananmen Square

Orville Schell

‘The spring of 1989 was so apocalyptic that at the time it had seemed unthinkable that the year's events would fade or that China would ever be able to forget them.'

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Jianan Qian | First Sentence

Jianan Qian