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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...

In the grape hyacinth blue jersey – yellow strip at V-neck, blue tie, navy trousers of Kinsale Community School, Wesley Loramar would wait in cubicles at the public lavatory at the beginning of Pier Road, Kinsale, aged sixteen, with the look of the bored cherub in Raphael’s The Madonna of the San Sisto   Kinsale, with its whaling frame houses, was where the pirate, Anne Bonny, was from   Anne’s lawyer father, William Cormac, got a servant girl, Peg Brennan, pregnant The three fled to Charleston, North Carolina where William became a plantation owner   When she was thirteen Anne stabbed a servant girl At sixteen she married and went off with James Bonny, a pirate On sea she had a homosexual companion, Pierre Bouspeut   She decided to elope with another pirate, John ‘Calico’ Rackham On the ship Revenge she met Mark Read who was really Mary Read and they became lovers   The ship was captured October 1720, the men executed, the two women spared because they claimed pregnancy   Wesley, wheaten and auburn hair, Titian red eyebrows, body like a military road, hoping to be picked up, would be seen hitchhiking in school uniform on the Inishshannon Road, three miles North West of Kinsale, close to Dunderrow, not far from the Bandon River   Dunderrow – fortress of oak plain   There is an American chemical factory there now   Coins left by Elizabeth’s forces before the Battle of Kinsale 1601, have been found here   In yesteryears Mrs Harrington would travel by pony and trap from Kinsale each day to teach here, picking up pupils on the way   Her pony was cared for while she was teaching by the Bowen family   A man named Billy the Butlerowned the local manor just prior to Miss Harrington’s career   Bankruptcy had dogged successive owners of that manor and he too went bankrupt   Wesley would be seen coming out of Dunderrow wood, which had the sow-like smell of lesser celandine in spring – slight moustache like the down inside the foxglove – where he’d lain with workers from the chemical factory He was like Orpheus who stole their husbands from the Thracian women   Some said he’d been doing this since he’d worn the grey

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. 4

Tibetan Kitsch

Evan Harris

feature

Issue No. 4

I first glimpsed the Potala Palace behind the bending legs of a prostitute. She swayed, obscuring a vista of...

fiction

Issue No. 19

Once Sublime

Virginie Despentes

TR. Frank Wynne

fiction

Issue No. 19

The music is sick! This guy’s a genius. Always trust Gaëlle. When they first saw him, everyone thought who...

Interview

March 2017

Interview with Lidija Dimkovska

Sara Nović

Interview

March 2017

I met Lidija Dimkovska at the Twin Cities Book Festival in October, fleetingly, and completely by accident. I had...

 

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