Jesse Ball and Josie Mitchell discuss the process of writing about different worlds, the fraudulence of speech, and why Jesse named his pet dog Goose.
‘Confusion is the only natural response to the world, the alternative would be to just fall in with everyone else’s plans.’
Jesse Ball and Josie Mitchell discuss the process of writing about different worlds, the fraudulence of speech, and why Jesse named his pet dog Goose.
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
‘She boils her sentences down to high-sucrose sweeties and calibrates her tone for maximum engagement.’
Fiction by Natasha Brown.
‘The monstrous years of my late teens lay lined up alongside the rest of my life like bullets in a gun.’
A story by Sophie Mackintosh.
‘Without waiting for me she removes her white shirt. Each button a piece of my own spine, undone.’
Fiction by K Patrick.
‘I followed him onto the dancefloor and he put his hands on my hips as if he’d known me for at least an hour.’
Fiction by Saba Sams.
Jesse Ball (b. 1978, New York) is known for absurd and philosophical works of social criticism, often in the form of novels. His prize-winning books have been published in many languages. Since 2007 he has been on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
More about the author →‘When I was 4 or 5 I sent the Queen of England drawings of monsters.’
‘People love to say it to you like it counts: Oh, Lucia, she will live on in your memory.’
‘The place was so squat and pitiless, so endless, repetitive, fluorescent.’
Fiction by Jesse Ball.
‘My friends, what I mean is, this life is shallow like a plate. It goes no further.’
‘You are learning – learning a great deal. It is too much for you, so your body bows out. Then you wake up and you can continue.’
‘I felt ruined by my time in Pocahontas County – no other place would ever be so good.’
An excerpt from Emma Copley Eisenberg’s The Third Rainbow Girl.
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