‘I began working at the Mead Paper Company in Chillicothe, Ohio, in the summer of 1973.’
I began working at the Mead Paper Company in Chillicothe, Ohio, in the summer of 1973. I was eighteen years old, constantly stoned and skinny as a weed. My hair hung down my back and there was a big, ugly bastard in the Shipping Department who whistled at me every time I walked through the warehouse…
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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.
‘I didn’t think she was happy; I thought she was in love, but I didn’t know what that told me, if it told me anything.’
Fiction by Jennifer Atkins.
‘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.
‘I went to Enid’s funeral and there was a mole on the coffin and it seemed / aware of us but unconcerned.’
Two poems by Fee Griffin.
Meet Gore Vidal in this excerpt from John Boyne’s novel A Ladder to the Sky.
