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Of Donuts I Have Loved

Miranda Dennis

‘Krispy Kremes melt at the touch, are tender and loving, are used by my family to perform a wholeness we do not always feel’

Notes on Craft

Paul Dalla Rosa

‘I feel like I’m haunting an empty building, inert, waiting for each room to burst into flames.’

The Restaurant of Many Orders

Kenji Miyazawa

‘Two young gentlemen dressed just like British military men, with gleaming guns on their shoulders and two dogs like great white bears at their heels, were walking in the mountains where the leaves rustled dry underfoot.’

Slum Wolf

Tadao Tsuge

‘It was a red-light district and a plywood market and a town of hoodlums in one. I’ll add one more thing: The whole place stunk of sewage.’

After

April Ayers Lawson

‘I again told him I wasn’t ready to have sex, and his only response was to lean in and kiss me. The hallway in which we walked seemed to be shrinking, closing in on us.’ – April Ayers Lawson on intimacy after sexual abuse.

Every Day Was Ordinary

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

‘A life is an open thing / leaking out into / the air around it.’

Hot Rain

Terese Svoboda

A new story from Terese Svoboda about love, money and power in the hands of an aging parent.

Five Poems

Irene Solà

‘I wore off my tongue / like candy’ Translated from the Catalan by Oscar Holloway.

A Few Words about Fake Breasts

Nell Boeschenstein

‘You repeat this over and over. You pinch your nipples harder. Then harder and harder still. You twist them. You dare them to say Mercy. You stare into your own eyes that are watching you from the mirror.’

A Summer of Japanese Literature

Dan Bradley

From manga to crime fiction, contemporary literature to Nobel-Prize-winning classics, here are ten works of Japanese literature worth spending your summer on

How Much Heart

Mieko Kawakami

A triptych of flash fiction by Mieko Kawakami, translated from the Japanese by David Boyd.

Murasaki’s Paper Trail

Martin Puchner

Martin Puchner on how Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese court, manage to write the first great novel of world literature.

Fred Pearce | Notes on Craft

Fred Pearce

‘For a hack like me, book-length meta-journalism is both a luxury and a challenge. I cannot hide my own views over 100,000 words, even if I want to.’

Introduction

Sigrid Rausing

Editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing introduces Granta 144: genericlovestory.