‘It was two years since I'd been in Zambia and I was looking forward to seeing Ronnie and his cousin, Pinkie’.
It was two years since I’d been in Zambia and I was looking forward to seeing Ronnie and his cousin, Pinkie. I arrived in Lusaka early in the morning and checked into the hotel before heading to their place to let them know I was around. On my way out of the hotel I ran into Leonard. He was one of…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘When I was ten years old, my father hit my mother so hard that she suffered permanent damage to her right ear.’
‘Naturally, no partnership is perfect. Certain pieces will be at odds – you’ll have that.’
Fiction by Nico Walker.
‘Is there in fact a jostling for dominance between the art forms, some barely suppressed competitiveness?’
Adam Mars-Jones on music and ceremony.
‘Into the carrot-coloured bag, alongside my clothes, I put the box with Mama’s urn.’
An excerpt from Oksana Vasyakina’s Wound, translated from the Russian by Elina Alter.
‘People in the West are aware of the hardship and bewilderment that accompanied the political and economic transformation of central and eastern Europe after 1989.'
