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.

Naben Ruthnum

A young film composer turns to prostitution in a short story by Naben Ruthnum, set in a Rome of the early 1970s.

Hernán Díaz

‘Her mother was still sitting on the sofa, stroking the left armrest while she talked.’

Kiese Laymon

An excerpt from Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

Sophie Robinson

‘you can call my price by any name and she will come just the same’

Sarah Moss

An excerpt from Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall, published by Granta Books.

Rose George

‘My blood is on its way to becoming something that even when given for free can be brokered and sold like ingots or wheat.’

Sulaiman Addonia

Sulaiman Addonia on how Edgar Degas’s nude portraits inspired his latest novel, Silence Is My Mother Tongue.

Brian Booker

A coming-of-age story about an awkward roommate on Roosevelt Island, ordering bisexual porn tapes from catalogues and writing summaries of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet for a living.

Amy Arnold

‘Charlie’s swimming. Six strokes then she turns to breathe, six more and all the way to the end of the length. She’s a swimmer, Charlie. She’s a bit of a fish, a slip of a fish.’