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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...

We all have tombs from which we travel To reach mine I have to get a lift with some strangers to a place in the Catalan Coastal Range I’ll be spending the weekend taking part in a workshop called ‘Live your Death’ The main challenge of this adventure will be to relate my death in the first person, without really dying, I hope In the brochure they talk about us facing things very similar to NDEs (near death experiences), watching the film of our lives, glimpsing the light at the end of the tunnel, having out-of-body experiences and seeing languid and distant little men calling us affectionately from the threshold where it all ends It’s also possible, I think, that I’ll be put on a plane and taken to an island where weird things happen In the meantime I’m getting to know some of my fellow passengers   ‘Did we meet at “Recycling Ourselves”?’ asks the man   No, it was at “My Place in the Universe”,’ she replies   ‘Oh yeah and have you found it?’   ‘Not yet’   ‘After all these workshops you still haven’t found it?’   ‘I’m working on it’   ‘What you need is a clear objective,’ says the man, who despite all the money he’s spent on self-help workshops seems not to have grasped certain basic principles For example, that you don’t greet a woman by asking her if she’s figured out what to do with her shitty life yet I can think of various things to say to them both to solve their problems and earn myself some cash: that he try closing his mouth every now and again and that she tell guys who reckon they know more about her than she does where to go   ‘Well, girls, are you ready?’ This is the man’s second time at the death workshop and he claims to know what he’s talking about   ‘You have to take your clothes off, yeah? Get naked, yes siree’   The woman and I look at each other The man turns around and just speaks to me this time:   ‘You must have good lungs because you’re from over there, down south, people have good lungs there

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

feature

Issue No. 20

From a Cuban Notebook

J. S. Tennant

feature

Issue No. 20

Beneath the rain, beneath the smell, beneath all that is a reality a people makes and unmakes itself leaving...

feature

February 2011

Red Shirts in Thailand

Sam Brown

feature

February 2011

The closest I had ever come to a protest was in 2003, in Bangkok, when I tried and failed...

poetry

January 2012

Matisse: Tahiti (1930)

Campbell McGrath

poetry

January 2012

If I were young again I would forego Tahiti and move to America to begin a new life in...

 

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