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My Eye

Suzanne Brøgger

‘You were Father’s and I was Mother’s.’

Memoir by Suzanne Brøgger, translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight.

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.

The Erl-King

Emma Cline

‘He was our younger sister’s baby – her and her husband’s baby, I guess. They were young parents and excessively chill.’

Memoir by Emma Cline.

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.

Ian Jack, Remembered

Sigrid Rausing

‘We will miss him.’

Sigrid Rausing remembers Ian Jack.

Notes on Craft

K Patrick

‘I don’t know anything except my own body. When writing poetry, that’s the only place I can start from.’

K Patrick on writing the queer body.

Tuna

Katherine Rundell

‘“Dolphin safe” labels on our tins are reckoned among marine scientists to mean next to nothing.’

Katherine Rundell on tuna and extinction speculation.

Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution

Yasmin El-Rifae

‘The only thing that was clear was that the square would be full, and Opantish had to be ready.’

An excerpt from Yasmin El-Rifae’s account of the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath, Radius.

A Strange Kind of Western

Rebecca Rukeyser

On seasonal work in Alaska and Kelly Reichardt.

Boys, Barricades, Beaches

Jack Parlett

On the queer history of New York’s Fire Island.

Haunted Houses

Laura Maw

‘Ghost stories, then, are not always characterised by fear. Sometimes, they are stories of belief, comfort, faith.’

Laura Maw on the photography of Corinne May Botz.

How To Milk

Emily Ogden

‘The milking technology for cows is in many ways superior to the one for humans.’

An essay from Emily Ogden’s On Not Knowing.

Black and Female

Tsitsi Dangarembga

‘By the time I was in my teens, I had taken up an existence framed by a double negative: not male, not white.’

An excerpt from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s essay collection, Black and Female.

Words in the Head and Words in the Sentence

Herta Müller

‘During an interrogation speech glows hot in the mouth, and what is spoken freezes.’

Herta Müller on language. Translated from the German by Philip Boehm.