Brian Evenson

‘It wasn’t that he didn’t have a name, only that he was having difficulty locating it.’

Rachel Cusk

‘War is a narrative: it might almost be said to embody the narrative principle itself.’

Kevin Breathnach

‘It has been several weeks since I slept for more than an hour, and lately I’ve been feeling on the verge of cracking up.’

Tim Beckett

‘This was the collective trauma of a community discovering, very abruptly, they’d have to uproot their lives.’ Tim Beckett on the ruins of Uranium City.

Issue 136

Suzanne Brøgger

‘My habit of being a dreamer is filled with the joy of melancholy.’

Issue 137

Ivan Chistyakov

‘Freedom, even with hunger and cold, is still precious and irreplaceable.’

Issue 135

Tara Bergin

‘So the young girls, / cast as naughty young girls from the Acropolis, / left – / just with some things missing.’

Issue 137

Will Alexander

‘how can all the pressures of surveillance / fail to describe me?’

Lance Dowrich

‘It was against the understood traditions of society to prepare Sunday lunch without macaroni pie.’ 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize – regional winner for the Caribbean.

Ann Beattie

Ann Beattie shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.

Diane Cook

Diane Cook shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.

Lucy Caldwell

Issue 137

Feng Sun Chen

‘Every day, I see a monstrosity in the kissing hole.’

Julian Baggini

‘Whether or not you think 23 June was a great day for Britain and Europe, it was a very bad one for freedom.’