It’s close to midnight when I cross the Mississippi River at Saint Louis. The soaring stainless-steel Gateway Arch gleams in the skyline light.
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‘If they’re willing to do this for their country then I should be willing to make the same sacrifices.’
It’s close to midnight when I cross the Mississippi River at Saint Louis. The soaring stainless-steel Gateway Arch gleams in the skyline light.
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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.
Elliott Woods is the writer and photographer behind Assignment Afghanistan, an award-winning project in collaboration with the Virginia Quarterly Review. He served six years in the Army National Guard, including a one-year tour in Iraq.
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‘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.
‘I’m simply trying to do good, Sharon, in the way that I can.’
Fiction by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump.
‘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.
‘His imagination lingers in the woods and fields like a slowly drifting plant community and then dissolves into ditches lined with black waterlogged leaves – a residue of previous summers – and the ghosts of dead insects.’
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