Jon McGregor on reworking his first published story from the female perspective, his enduring fascination with Lincolnshire and his new short story collection, This Isn’t The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.
Photograph © Dan Sinclair
Alison Smith on the week she spent with Ursula K. Le Guin.
This surreal tale from Haruki Murakami circles a Charlie Parker album that never existed. Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.
A monastic community persists after a ‘great chaos and collapse’ in this story by the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, Olga Tokarczuk. Translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft
Two poems from Rebecca Tamás’ collection WITCH.
Summer Brennan on high heels, foot-binding, and our ongoing performances of gender.
‘In winter there’s no danger of falling into the sky / Our bodies anchored to the ground by the weight of the light.’
‘He calls me a cunt, and he kicks me in the side, his boot fitting neatly between my hip bone and the base of my ribcage.’
‘He must have taken thousands of services in that time, but this still feels like the holiest thing he’s ever done.‘
‘Dennis with his bespectacled eyes on his phone, performing the act of emotional multitasking. While I’ve been psychotic, he’s been phone banking.’
