‘The sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.’
From my upstairs windows in Llanystumdwy, near Cricieth in Gwynedd, I can look out on Cardigan Bay, and the sea runs through our house – not literally, of course, but metaphorically, or perhaps emotionally.
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‘It’s no good joining an existing cult, you have to start one yourself.’
A short story by Japanese author Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, who also brought us Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings.
‘The oysters were her idea, a way of catching me off guard. I accidentally said yes.’
A story by Amy Silverberg.
‘I often had head lice as a child.’
Memoir by A.K. Blakemore, author of The Manningtree Witches.
‘I was trying simultaneously to numb the grief I felt and to burrow into that grief, so I could stand in it.’
On love, its absence and Joni Mitchell’s Blue album.
‘I want the poem to destroy time. / What are the ceremonies of forgetting?’
Nick Laird’s elegy for his father, Alastair Laird, who died of Covid-19.
An essay on Welsh identity from Allegorizings, the final book from the late Jan Morris.
‘Shame and regret are certainly not the same things: je ne regrette rien, like charity, can cover a multitude of sins.’
‘The insularity of Texas has always entertained travellers, coupled as it is with extreme technical sophistication, and Texans of course love to make the most of it.’
‘If the following pieces can be said to have an overriding characteristic, it is that they take seriously the experience of being a stranger.’
Guest editor William Atkins introduces the issue.
‘Many of the people I was living with considered me a white vampire, who killed to extract human fat.’ Jeremy Narby on the Amazonian myth of the white vampire.
