‘Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them’ (Thom Jones) I live with a dog-mad woman. She absolutely adores them, having surrounded herself with the beasts from an early age. First up were Brownie and Tiger, both sadly dispatched to the great canine beyond via the neighbour’s shotgun one evening, her father
When we were younger, my best friend, Dan, and I went snowboarding in the North Carolina mountains. It was so bright everywhere—the sky was this electric, herniating blue, and the sun was blinding off the snow. While we were riding up the Sugar Mountain lift, Dan became concerned that his face was getting sunburned, and
In some cases it seemed to me that feeling literally in pieces could be traced back to that sort of original fragmentation that is bringing into the world-coming into the world. I mean feeling oneself mother at the price of getting rid of a living fragment of one’s own body; I mean feeling oneself a
I live my life surrounded by books. My bookshelves are filled with literature written in different times and in different languages. Far less visible are the papers that I have written. Hidden in drawers and secret boxes lie piles of diaries, poems, reflections and fiction stories no one has ever read but me. Georg Orwell
Another evening, another livid sky. I’m gazing out my home-office window at the horizon again. Cornwall’s towering clouds dwarf the shiny cotton balls that scud across the sky in my native eastern North Carolina. Backlit with electric danger, these massive clouds — slate blue grey and limned around the edges by the setting sun —
It appears that President Donald Trump wants white suburbia to vote for him, and he’s pushing out low-income housing in order to get that vote. “I am happy to inform all of the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built
Officially, when we went on a road trip, I got out of the car and walked twenty feet from California to Nevada so he couldn’t be charged with transporting a minor across state lines. We thought this was hilarious. *** The one good grade I ever got in gym class was for modern dance. My
The role of the middle-aged white man? The role of the middle-aged white man is to shut his mouth and step aside. The role of the middle-aged white man is to not practice his saxophone in a studio flat. The role of the middle-aged white man is clear the lane and make space for the
After reading the first few paragraphs of Call me By Your Name, I was like a starved woman shoving food into my mouth as fast I could. André Aciman is the writer of love that I have been waiting for all my life, since I was a girl who read Marguerite Duras and felt the
The axiom ‘write what you know’ is a limiting one and fiction, I feel, should be about stepping beyond your own experience. A few years ago, I began writing a novel about social housing, industry and popular culture from the 1950s onwards, and as I was born in 1982 serious research was required. But how
