‘It felt surprisingly good to be part of that rough tribe of the mortal.’
A few hours before my mother died, eventually of pneumonia, the disease they call ‘the old man’s friend’, in a small side room with muted lighting in our local hospital, there was a deluge of rain. I can’t recall whether curtains or a blind screened the window, but I remember being puzzled b…
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‘She must have loved gold seeing that everything in the penthouse was gold. We didn’t sit. Fear didn’t let us see where to sit.’ A story by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘I had also, a week earlier, been fired for trying to sleep with my boss’s husband. I got the idea from a book, or maybe every book.’ A story by Emily Adrian.
‘The Mitsubishi conglomerate controls a forty per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna; they are freezing and hoarding huge stocks of the fish every year.’ Katherine Rundell on extinction speculation.
‘Two roof tiles are missing to the rear: the kiss of death. Without repair, ruination is now inevitable. Until then, this is my best hope of shelter.’ Cal Flyn visits the island of Swona in northern Scotland.
‘I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures. / For as long as I can remember my body was a small town nightmare.’ A poem by Ocean Vuong.
‘I liked the way she travelled: with her iPod in one pocket, her traditional Yup’ik woman’s knife, or ulu, in the other.’
‘It could almost have been Neolithic, an ancient and mysterious earthworks.’
‘Fiction, even if it’s completely made up, does say something about how you experience reality.’
Mary Gaitskill talks about her book The Devil’s Treasure.
‘People may not want realism but it’s still our job to try and supply it in compelling and truthful ways.’
Tom Bullough and Ben Rawlence on writing into the climate crisis.
‘In the year leading up to this I started collecting objects that, in some way, evoked a sense of Canadianness in me.’
