Seven diverse short stories that plumb the depths of human experience. I love them all. ‘Why My Hair is Long’ ‘If my mother had called me and asked, “What have I done that you can’t forget?” I would have said, “I can forgive anything.” But she never called and that is what I can never forget.’
These poems offered warm lights and pools of delight in the second half of 2022. ‘At Springbrook’ by Sarah Holland-Batt I carry in heartwood for the stove. / When I swing open its glass door / a greying bee falls from the grate. / Tufted with ash, it moves ponderously / as though each of
Summer time is reading time! Stock up on these gems before Christmas and you’ll sail into Summer-reading bliss. Happening by Annie Ernaux – ‘I began writing in my diary every evening – the word NOTHING.’ In Happening the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature winner recounts how life-changing it was in 1963 to have an unwanted pregnancy. Superb. Small Things Like These by
‘Having a chronic condition is not akin to death,’ writes Heather Rose in her new memoir in essays Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. ‘It’s like living with a house guest who never leaves. Sometimes they mess the place up big time.’ Rose, the award-winning author of The Museum of Modern Love and Bruny, has ankylosing spondylitis, which
Drop everything and read! Start with one of these … Courage to act? Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is the shortest book recognised in the history of the Booker Prize. Longlisted in 2022, it probes the terrible truths that underscore our societies and systems and how easily we can get caught up in them.
Every Wednesday, when I was in First Class, I had to leave school early so my Dad could drive me to piano lessons. I remember carrying the hard little case that held my sheet music and theory book across the hot asphalt of the playground. It was a long, solitary walk (or so my memory
It’s icy outside. Find a sunny spot behind glass or a fire to warm you – and grab one of these fine books to keep you company. ‘Black and Blue’ A proud Gunai/Kurnai woman, Veronica (Ronnie) Gorrie was gutsy enough to think she could change Australia’s racist and sexist law enforcement system from within. One
Cold enough for you? Try these short stories to turn up the heat as winter draws in … ‘Butterflies of the Balkans’ Jo Lloyd, author of the collection The Earth Thy Great Exchequer Lies, thinks of the short story as a huge thing contained in a small space – like a poem or a TARDIS
It’s been a crazy six months for me – but poetry helped. The editors of the NOTHEME XI issue of the online poetry journal Cordite, Emily Stewart and Eloise Grills say it better. They write that, ‘in this post-not-really pandemic juncture’ they remembered, most of all, ‘How much we need the work of poetry and its sublime, strange
We can be thankful Lee Kofman suffered for four years from writer’s block because it ultimately led her to a deep examination of why she was stuck. Having clarified (the hard way) the dread that was holding her back, she developed strategies to get herself back on track. She poured these insights into her blog
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