Explore Essays and memoir
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Reproducing Paul
Des Fitzgerald
‘Having a child, I came to see, was more a kind of haunting.’
An essay by Des Fitzgerald.
The Golden Record
Caspar Henderson
‘The two copies of the Golden Record were shot into space nearly fifty years ago.’
Caspar Henderson on music sent into space by NASA.
Plastic Mothers
Lauren John Joseph
‘In essence she acted as though I were the kid her mother had left her to raise.’
Lauren John Joseph on the blurred contours of motherhood.
Miniature Twins
Omer Friedlander
‘We were so small, palm-sized, that our parents went to a doll shop in Jerusalem to find clothes that would fit us.’
Omer Friedlander writes about his twin.
The Tiddler
Charlie Gilmour
‘It was a competition, though I hadn’t realised that yet.’
Charlie Gilmour on bullying.
The Pain Cave
Lauren Groff
‘I would rather have died of hypothermia than let my siblings win.’
Lauren Groff on competitiveness.
Speaking Brother
Will Harris
‘I don’t have a brother; I’m an only child. But a few years ago I started writing poems in which a brother appears.’
Will Harris on why he created a brother.
Living Rooms
Sam Johnson-Schlee
‘Before chintziness there was chintz, a fabric produced in India and imported to Europe by colonial traders.’
Sam Johnson-Schlee on what chintz means.
Letters from Ukraine
Lindsey Hilsum
‘As every soldier and every journalist who has ever covered a war knows – sleeping and eating are the most important things.’
Lindsey Hilsum writes home from Ukraine.
The Recipe
Rebecca May Johnson
‘The recipe is a text that can produce spattering because it was spattering before it was language.’
Rebecca May Johnson on recipes, repetition and intimacy.
Haunting Myself
Seán Hewitt
‘Lying is something I had become good at with practice.’
An excerpt from All Down Darkness Wide.
My Mother Photographs Me in a Bath of Dead Squid
Lars Horn
‘She is not a conventionally “good” mother. But then, put like that, it sounds like a slow death sentence anyhow.’
Lars Horn on modeling for their artist mother.