‘Perhaps she'll smile—a big, welcoming smile that invites him to tell her everything.’
Crystal slams the fryer on to the gas ring and lets out a joyless sigh. She must make Stan an egg. Stan’s world would fall apart if she weren’t around to make him a bloody egg. She takes out a wooden-handled spatula from a drawer and drops that on the benchtop as well, making as much of a racket…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
‘How little one knows, really, about one’s parents.’
Memoir by Didier Eribon translated by Michael Lucey.
‘One did not have high hopes for Gettysburg. Nor for Pennsylvania in general. Having grown up in Indiana, Diana felt she’d earned her condescension.’
Fiction by Jessi Jezewska Stevens.
‘It’s a paper bag filled with pastries. Chicken turnovers.’
An extract from Family Meal by Bryan Washington.
‘I see this everywhere. The creativity, resourcefulness and incredible talent for improvisation in Egypt.’
Wiam El-Tamami on returning to Cairo.
‘His fear was that we would die in front of him and so he thought of us all the time, which is not what he wanted.’
Fiction by Mazen Maarouf.
‘Wasn’t it possible the mental shit would leave the kid’s brain, cell by cell, just by doing normal stuff?’
