‘The better they were at escaping, the quicker, more daring they were, the harder the cat chased them.’
Her mother would get off the phone soon. Mia sat down on the kitchen doorstep. She looked at her conquest with a smile. Her dandelion on fire. The long white seeds, each with its own flame, yellow and red and orange and grey and red and yellow. The smell of burned grass. The flame came together arou…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘It was 1 a.m., and it was Los Angeles; they were used to indiscretion.’
A story by Rhian Sasseen.
‘I want the reader to be conscious of reading and not being just drawn into the book and forgetting themselves and forgetting their life.’
Claire-Louise Bennett on her novel Checkout 19.
‘I didn’t think she was happy; I thought she was in love, but I didn’t know what that told me, if it told me anything.’
Fiction by Jennifer Atkins.
‘In every word I saw a true untrue Gogol, and I felt joy.’
