Sandra Newman is the author of the novels The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, Cake, The Country of Ice Cream Star and four non-fiction books including the memoir Changeling. Her most recent novel The Heavens is published by Granta Books. She spoke to Lucy Diver about friendship, love, hope and how to write like an Elizebethan.
Photograph © George Baier
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘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.
Sandra Newman on why Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard is the best book of 1952.
‘I tried to work out how many elements I would have plugged if I retired at sixty, and soon I was fatigued before a simple subtraction.’
Fiction by A. Jiang.
‘Trouble was awake – we didn’t need anyone to tell us.’
New fiction by Adachioma Ezeano.
