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Hold Your Fire

Chloe Wilson

‘While waiting for his faecal transplant, my husband wasn’t as fun as he used to be.’

The Station

J. Robert Lennon

‘You’re gonna want to go down the other side of the mountain and check out the Facility. Don’t do it.’

Hair

Mahreen Sohail

‘The first person he tells is his girlfriend of one year. I’m going to donate my hair to my mother, he says, and is worried to see tears rise in her eyes.’

Learning to Sing

Lydia Davis

‘You discover during your very first lessons that the problem of singing better involves overcoming many other problems you had not ever imagined.’

Diminishing Returns

Fatin Abbas

‘Alex had been sent to this remote district between north and south Sudan to update maps. It was an information-gathering project run by an American NGO based in the capital, Khartoum, nine hundred kilometers to the north.’

As if in Prayer

Steven Heighton

‘Many of the life vests were useless fakes, nylon shells that the human traffickers had stuffed with bubble wrap, boxboard, sawdust or rags.’

Fable

Kathryn Scanlan

‘The girl’s curiosity often led her into troublesome situations, but she considered it part of the pact her soul had made in order to gain entrance to the world, and did not worry much over what befell her.’

New fiction from Kathryn Scanlan.

The Smart House of Mrs O

Lincoln Michel

‘I looked around at my apartment, wondering if there was anything gazing back.’

New fiction from Lincoln Michel.

Exciting Times

Naoise Dolan

‘There was something Shakespearean about imperious men going down on you: the mighty have fallen.’

Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.

Più Vivo

Diane Williams

‘You’ve seen I’m sure a performer on stage stock-still – during which time he waits for his ovation. This is how I am these days.’

New fiction from Diane Williams.

Farm Tennis

Rob Magnuson Smith

‘Nobody bothered him when he was playing tennis. No matter how long he stayed out there, the door never took breaks.’

Fiction by Rob Magnuson Smith.

This Time of Dying

Reina James

An extract from This Time of Dying by Reina James.

Some Rivers Meet

James Clarke

‘What a thing it must be to lose your marbles on your own, with not even enough milk in the fridge for a proper brew.’

Fiction by James Clarke.

The White Dress

Nathalie Léger

Nathalie Léger, translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer.