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Black Rot and Mildew

Leontia Flynn

‘a look I’d managed to accessorize / with raw dermatological distress.’

Bastard Alias the Romantic

Yuri Herrera

‘Can you imagine what it would be like if instead of killing we cuddled?’

Blue Hills and Chalk Bones

Sinéad Gleeson

‘One day, something changes; a corporeal blip. For me, it happened in the months after turning thirteen: the synovial fluid in my left hip began to evaporate like rain.’

On Shakespeare and the Quest for Belonging

Minal Hajratwala

‘We may not belong to Shakespeare, nor he to us, ever.’

Out

Leontia Flynn

‘The opposite of simply sitting about / in your head, like an egg in eggshell.’

The Mask of Night

Lorna Gibb

‘I puzzled over the language but disentangled its meaning slowly, carefully, eager to connect’ Lorna Gibb on Shakespeare’s Juliet.

To Thine Own Self Be True

David Flusfeder

‘If Shakespeare’s characters stand for anything, it’s for a slipperiness of identity.’ David Flusfeder on a dog named Shakespeare.

Ariel’s Song

Romesh Gunesekera

‘It is to Shakespeare’s pages I return whenever I feel I am sinking. There I can be sure to find a lifeline.’

Fugee

Hawa Jande Golakai

‘Now we’ve fizzled into a ridiculous unsaid, a flaccid tale of love, or lack thereof, in the time of Ebola.’

Two Poems

Tyehimba Jess

‘Let me tell you how / white hands kilned me / in the moonless middle / of night.’

First Sentence: Eliza Griswold

Eliza Griswold

‘This, of course, was years before anyone knew or cared who Boko Haram was.’

Aftermath

Peregrine Hodson

‘We have to find a way to balance life with memory.’

A Play on David Rakoff

A.M. Homes

‘He was rare and singular.’