Issue 103

Carol Ann Duffy

‘Darlings, I write to you from the moon’

Issue 121

Carol Bensimon

‘Your anywhere is a river you watch as you smoke.’

Issue 73

Decca Aitkenhead

‘A bar girl in Ko Samui is employed to attract customers. Almost every bar has at least one girl, and some of the larger bars have up to twenty’.

Kevin Brockmeier

‘The birds studied the mute as though he were a puzzle.’

Issue 110

Dave Eggers

Chloe Aridjis

‘Yet the little white disks with a dent down the middle are no panacea; whenever I take one of these thought guillotines I feel trapped in a grey zone’.

Issue 108

Peter Carey

‘You might think, who is this, and I might say, this is God, and what are you to do?’

Meaghan Delahunt

‘The only thing between Greece and total collapse is the Greek family.’

Issue 23

Bill Bryson

‘When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a Mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.’

Issue 57

Amit Chaudhuri

‘Her eyes, in a face puffed with sleep, opened, red and unfocused.’

Mikail Eldin

‘This winter and this forest will leave you with a shiver in your heart, which will appear whenever you see a winter forest, even in pictures.’

Issue 50

Paul Eggers

'Mr Thanh, originally of Saigon, conducted his camp-wide rat pogrom so thoroughly that the kids were reduced to throwing rocks at each other.'

Issue 92

Segun Afolabi

‘The boys' eyes grazed the carpet and then each other guiltily. The youngest tried not to smile with shame.’

George Butler

George Butler’s sketches from a journey across west Africa.