Miriam Bird Greenberg

‘Why wasn’t I better made / to refute assimilation’s maze’

John Boyne

Meet Gore Vidal in this excerpt from John Boyne’s novel A Ladder to the Sky.

Daša Drndić

‘A threatening soundlessness falls like a breeze onto our stone floor.’

Holly Pester

‘I went to Ilford alone / was handed a white laminated square’

Jack Losh

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

Mariana Enriquez

‘I found a way to speak: the women talked for me’ Translated by Josie Mitchell.

Tiffany Murray

Tiffany Murray on living with Freddie Mercury as a child.

Ali Fitzgerald

Notes on crafting a graphic memoir from Ali Fitzgerald.

Aoko Matsuda

‘The woman dies. She dies to provide a plot twist. She dies to develop the narrative. She dies for cathartic effect. She dies because no one could think of what else to do with her.’ Aoko Matsuda, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton.

Akwaeke Emezi & Halimat Shode

Alexia Arthurs

‘Rihanna had cut her hair short, and she was no longer being marketed as the Caribbean Beyoncé.’

Akwaeke Emezi

‘We came from somewhere – everything does.’

David Hayden

Horror from David Hayden. ‘A shuddering, wordless voice rose in the distance, and another, and another; a chorus, a lament, which ended in a low grunt. There was a coda of sobbing. There was silence.’

Colin Grant

'Can the black author really write out of her or his colour? In writing about black characters can they ever escape race?' Colin Grant looks at the evolution of racial politics.