Issue 118

David Long

Alice Munro

‘She liked how the latticework would provide a touch of fantasy.’

Fiction by Alice Munro.

Jessica Thummel

‘John Wayne Durler had always needed something to run from.’

Jon McGregor

‘In winter there’s no danger of falling into the sky / Our bodies anchored to the ground by the weight of the light.’

Krys Lee

‘Houses loomed like ghosts. The government’s face was everywhere: on the sides of a beached cart, above the lintel of the post office.’

Hiromi Kawakami

‘His full name was Mr Harutsuna Matsumoto, but I called him ‘Sensei’. Not ‘Mr’ or ‘Sir’, just ‘Sensei’.’

Apricot Irving

‘His heart is a tired engine with too many loose screws and faulty wires, not weightless like the tissue-thin kites he used to fly with his grandfather as the string danced between his fingers.’

Lucy Wood

‘He was stamped darkly onto the wide stretch of sea like a single footprint.’

Issue 118

Santiago Roncagliolo

‘I soon understood that if I wanted to get my father back I was going to have to help him get rid of the competition.’

Nick Dybek

‘We searched the horizon for returning fishermen, who arrived shaggy and greasy, telling their stories but not their secrets.’

Angela Pelster

‘When the fish in Karachay Lake, south of the Ural Mountains, Russia, went blind, not everyone stopped eating them.’

Sharona Muir

‘A baked mermaid, prepared, a la Julia Child, with her tail obtruding from her open mouth, and her little fried fingers presented on a mother-of-pearl comb. How would that strike you?’

Carol Anshaw

‘Nick didn’t kid himself that what he and Olivia had was love. It was more serious than that.’

Bonnie Nadzam

‘A rustling, then a voice, came from behind the door – the voice of a man who couldn’t be much older than I. A cousin? A secret half-brother? ‘Bloodgood.’’