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Claire-Louise Bennett
Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before settling in Galway. Her short fiction and essays have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Penny Dreadful, The Moth, Colony, The Irish Times, The White Review and gorse. She was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize in 2013 and has received bursaries from the Arts Council and Galway City Council. Her debut novel, Pondwas published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015 and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Her second novel, Checkout 19, is published by Jonathan Cape in August 2021.

Articles Available Online


The Russian Man

Fiction

Issue No. 27

Claire-Louise Bennett

Fiction

Issue No. 27

Many years ago a large Russian man with the longest tendrils of the softest white hair came to live in the fastest growing town...

poetry

Issue No. 13

Morning, Noon & Night

Claire-Louise Bennett

poetry

Issue No. 13

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice. It ought not to be too ripe – in fact there should...

1 A book describes works that the author has conceived but not brought into being 2 The world is drawn from memory There are missing countries, altered borders 3 Proust’s head is drawn on a page of In Search of Lost Time The words tracing out the contour of his face form a grammatically correct sentence 4 Man-sized aluminium mannequins are dropped at different heights from a crane Metamorphosed by folds, they adopt the pose to which they are constrained by their new morphology 5 An exhibit displays pieces unalike in spirit, style, and technique, but with the same origin: their author saw them while dreaming 6 Entomological boxes contain invitation cards to exhibitions that didn’t take place The reasons for their cancellation are written below the cards The boxes are hung on the walls like a collection of insects 7 A woman’s voice describes the shapes she sees in the static snow on the television screen after the end of broadcasts Geometric forms, windmills, ghosts The video is shown on a monitor posed on a low table at the foot of a divan couch The visitor lies down and compares what he sees to what he hears 8 Museum of Nobodies Instead of the usual celebrities, a wax museum displays unknown characters Chosen at random from the telephone book, the models are representative of neither an epoch, nor a region, nor a profession At its inauguration, the museum shows thirty statues Two new models are added to the museum’s collection each year: as the years go by, an evolving, sculptural, and hyperrealist memory of society emerges 9 Every year in January, a painting is made from memory of the same photograph, which represents a square in Bangkok during a time of affluence Neither the model image, nor the preceding paintings are looked at After ten years the paintings are revealed and exhibited alongside one another 10 A film scene is shown backwards to actors so they can learn to act it in reverse Once they succeed, they are filmed anew The new scene, in turn projected backwards,

Contributor

August 2014

Claire-Louise Bennett

Contributor

August 2014

Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before settling in...

The Lady of the House

fiction

Issue No. 8

Claire-Louise Bennett

fiction

Issue No. 8

Wow it’s so still. Isn’t it eerie. Oh yes. So calm. Everything’s still. That’s right. Look at the rowers – look at how fast...

READ NEXT

fiction

August 2013

Foxy

Siân Melangell Dafydd

fiction

August 2013

If you don’t want to lose your eyes, grab them by the veins sticking out of their behinds and...

fiction

January 2016

Good People

Nir Baram

TR. Jeffrey Green

fiction

January 2016

Good People opens in Berlin in 1938. Thomas Heiselberg has grand plans to make the company he works for the...

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with André Schiffrin

Jacques Testard

Gwénaël Pouliquen

Interview

Issue No. 1

André Schiffrin founded non-profit publishing house The New Press in 1990 after an acrimonious split with Random House –...

 

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