The opening to Buku Sarkar’s novel Not Quite A Disaster After All, published by HarperCollins India in January 2023 Of all the compartments of day that passed through that house, the hours I remember most vividly were of the afternoon. When time moved slowest of all, dragging away with it the hysteria from the […]
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Two poems
Two poems from Andrea Holland’s forthcoming collection, High Wire Macho (Silence = Death) You don’t ask if the boy playing bongos on the corner of 10th street is still there now, in a green bead rosary, a styrofoam cup of coins and elaboration on a riff, drumming …………1, 2, and 3, 4, and Irreplaceable boy, […]
Needless Alley
An extract from Natalie Marlow’s debut novel, Needless Alley, published by Baskerville, John Murray Press on 19th January 2023. Chapter One Birmingham. Sunday 4th June 1933 William’s footsteps sounded heavy on the bare linoleum. The lighting in the corridor was poor; a single bulb, covered by a pink glass shade, dangled unlit from the […]
The Things That We Lost
An extract from The Things That We Lost, the debut novel by Jyoti Patel, published by Merky Books / Penguin Random House in January 2023 Chapter 3 July 2017 Avani stares across the River Ganga, trying her best to put what she’s seeing into words. Water. Sky. Trees. Locals. Tourists. Bells. Orange. Green. Blue. This […]
Nine Things We Learned from Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Laureate and Booker-winning author of The Remains of the Day, graduated from UEA’s Creative Writing MA in 1980. In 2013 he returned to UEA to deliver a public lecture and the following morning gave a masterclass to current MA students on the technicalities of writing. Here, in a feature taken from the […]
A Writer’s Diary #7
An entry from A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt, published by Galley Beggar Press on 1 January 2023 4 January Mittwoch Other things are happening or being done which I’m not always mentioning. I travel around the city in which I live on public transport, usually the top deck of a bus or the […]
A Writer’s Diary #6
An entry from A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt, published by Galley Beggar Press on 1 January 2023 3 January Dienstag Behind me I’m starting to wonder whether art – music especially – isn’t divided up, completely down the middle, into stuff for the well and stuff for the ill. What I mean is, […]
A Writer’s Diary #5
An entry from A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt, published by Galley Beggar Press on 1 January 2023 2 January Montag Except when I’m doing zazen, I most note my breathing when I’m yawning. Why did I think of Howard Hodgkin just then? I don’t consciously control my in-breaths and out-breaths when I’m at […]
A Writer’s Diary #4
An entry from A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt, published by Galley Beggar Press on 1 January 2023 1 January Sontag Cocooning. Marbled endpapers enclose me – I am intended to be read on a table of oak, by sunlight falling through ash trees. From a room two rooms away, someone I love plays […]
A Writer’s Diary #3
An entry from A Writer’s Diary by Toby Litt, published by Galley Beggar Press on 1 January 2023 31 December Samstag Black fluff wft. Where does it come from? Those small smudges of darkness on the carpet? Our clothes are all old, and surely have finished moulting some time ago. I see half a […]
