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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...

They stuck photocopies in the urinals again and again we covered them in our names Sheets of paper advising what to do if you hook up with someone in the club: always use a condom, introduce your hook-up for the night to someone you know, tell people where you’re going to be But the thing is, we don’t listen, we really do just think with our asses, scrawling our email addresses and phone numbers all over the pieces of paper along with our names and specifications: ‘I’ll suck you off’, ‘Hung’, ‘Goes all night’, ‘For bondage and threesomes’ They’re killing us It’s no joke and the worst part is we enjoy falling as if we’re wounded little swallows with our tight trousers and our cold, shining eyes like disco balls in an empty nightclub Last week, for instance, there was another murder in the papers Someone hooked up with a guy, here in the Vaquero according to some people, though others say it was right in the Calle de Cuba, in front of the police car on patrol or the hotdog stand, and he was found stabbed to death a few blocks away near the Plaza Garibaldi Horrible Other people say it happened in the Marrakech Salón – the Marra – and that the victim was one of those art-school kids who think they’re so alternative because they drink guava-flavoured pulque in La Risa on Mesones and then head to the Marra or La Purisima or Bellas Hartas to dance electro-cumbias That he made art using PowerPoint That I’d slept with him It’s not true: he was a sculptor and he rented a tiny room in an old building on the Calle República de Brasil where there was barely enough space for his sculptures – all of which were of cocks – and a microwave and a mattress He was an artist on the mattress too I don’t remember his name but I remember he had really good weed Really good Apparently it was him in the papers last week His five minutes of fame A photo of what

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

poetry

September 2011

Sleepwalking through the Mekong

Michael Earl Craig

poetry

September 2011

I have my hands out in front of me. I’m lightly patting down everything I come across. I somehow...

Prize Entry

April 2015

Every Woman to the Rope

Joanna Quinn

Prize Entry

April 2015

My father believed the sea to be covetous: a pleading dog that would lap at you adoringly, sidling up...

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,...

 

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