Mailing List


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...

I broke three contracts in 2016 The first was verbal, a monogamy clause But he was fucking around too, and I knew, because everybody is psychic; I’d just become attuned to it The second was an NDA A man who gave me money asked me to sign it when we first met at the Hyatt near LAX But he got my name wrong, took my Twitter handle for the real thing, so I signed smiling The third and last was this reality show deal Making a documentary about my new, younger friends and their home in Koreatown   It’s been one year since I signed my friends’ lives away during my temporary stay, and two months since I officially joined their lease As is the nature of La Mariposa, most of them have since flown the co-op Morgan is living with her parents in the Bay Alicia is in New York Miffany’s been all over Ditto Max I can’t keep up The only one left is Nadezhda, the one who initially brought me in   Our relationship is sisterly I never had one She keeps asking me if I’m going to do something with this writing I was sharing it with her and the other girls as it came to me, checking my mirror, so to speak They consented yes, always I was told I was trusted, which is a large part of why I knew I had to break our contract – I didn’t want to risk compromising that   In many ways, I feel even more than a year older now I have been Saturn Returning, which is an astrological concept I’m no longer sure I believe in I’ve spent much of the last two years trying to determine how belief determines reality and how much Just last week a Kundalini instructor in Santa Monica speculated that one’s beliefs manifest as event and circumstance She was raised by a Vietnam-born mother, she said, who followed the Chinese zodiac Her mother believed that those years forecast to be bad for her astrological sign would be She feared them And they turned out to be

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

Interview

May 2013

Interview with Darian Leader

Kishani Widyaratna

Interview

May 2013

A practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst, Darian Leader is one of a dying breed. It is no overstatement to say that...

fiction

December 2013

A Lucky Man, One of the Luckiest

Katie Kitamura

fiction

December 2013

Will you take the garbage when you go out? My wife said this without turning from the sink where...

poetry

December 2012

Off-Season

Miles Klee

poetry

December 2012

As a boy I went on a strange vacation with a friend. His parents took us, I can’t remember why,...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required