‘The effeteness of a small number of King's students was fascinating to me at first, then repellent, and before long completely uninteresting. They dressed in peculiar clothes, talked in silly voices and appeared to me to be living caricatures of the human race. At times I longed for some familiar ordinariness and found it with boys from other colleges who introduced me to football and pool and pubs.’
My relationship with the other three girls can best be defined in negative terms. From my point of view, it is only now that our lack of common interest can be partially explained and to some degree lamented. But surely it’s better to admit that than to beatify ourselves or glorify that time, as s…
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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.
‘The eye wants to see its fill, the I wants to see how it feels.’
Saskia Vogel on the foundational stories of pornography.
‘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.
‘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.
‘It is easy, when we are young, to have ideals and to live according to them.’
An excerpt from Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born.
‘Trouble was awake – we didn’t need anyone to tell us.’
New fiction by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘A thing of colour and elemental contest and of beauty.’
