Mailing List

fiction

What Everybody Knows

Fiction

Issue No. 24

Nael Eltoukhy

TR. Robin Moger

Fiction

Issue No. 24

I’m a woman who’s been through terrible trauma. I’m a woman whose first husband committed suicide, and whose second husband woke up out of...

Fiction

Issue No. 24

Vashti

Zakia Uddin

Fiction

Issue No. 24

I met John at the dance summer school. He was standing at the lower set of doors towards the...

Fiction

December 2018

Feebleminded

Ariana Harwicz

TR. CAROLINA ORLOFF

TR. Annie McDermott

Fiction

December 2018

WHISKY WITH MOTHER as the electric blue fades into the small hours and now, a long way from home,...

Fiction

August 2018

RETRIEVALS

Edward Herring

Fiction

August 2018

  About ‘Retrievals’:   I like to hear writing that is made out loud. Words vibrate in the air...

Fiction

July 2018

The Kid

Michelle Steinbeck

TR. Jen Calleja

Fiction

July 2018

There’s a child in the yard, its shoes flash every time it takes a step.   It carefully places...

Fiction

June 2018

They keep killing us

Sergio Loo

TR. Annie McDermott

Fiction

June 2018

They stuck photocopies in the urinals again and again we covered them in our names. Sheets of paper advising...

Green_fields

Fiction

Issue No. 22

Maria Hummer

Fiction

Issue No. 22

We were told to pay attention to things that were different, and it seemed to me that sex was no longer the same. Now,...

Fiction

May 2018

Self-Improvement

Sophie Mackintosh

Fiction

May 2018

I had been sent back from the city in disgrace, back to my parents’ house in the country. It...

When I was born my mum and the nurses had laughed at my long baby fingernails ‘You were a soft ball with these sudden sharp surprises,’ my mum said, ‘like finding bits of eggshell in your omelette’ I think about this a lot I wedge my thumbnail into the omelette-y skin behind my other thumbnail I do it until red appears like tomato juice   I have always had long and fast-growing fingernails I am getting revenge on the woman who lives upstairs   *   On February 17th I meet Melanie in the foyer of our building To ‘meet’ a person can have three meanings:   To see or talk to someone for the first time To come together with someone intentionally To come together with someone unintentionally   When I ‘meet’ Melanie on 17 February in the foyer for me it is the third meaning   The building is supposed to be called Benson Tower but the first ‘e’ and the second ‘o’ have been gone since before I moved in It has always been Bnson Twer The building is marginally nicer on the inside that it is on the outside Melanie is standing by the fluffy green notice board but she isn’t looking at the flyers, she’s looking at her phone I close the front door behind me and walk past her I wait at the door into the stairwell She hasn’t looked up   ‘Are you coming this way?’   (Now she does look up)   ‘Sorry?’   ‘Upstairs Are you going upstairs?’   ‘Oh Yeah, sorry In a sec’   ‘I can wait’   ‘Do you live here too?’   It is clear that Melanie thinks we are ‘meeting’ in the first sense, even though we’ve met several times I can remember all of the times that we have met Once, we met in the doorway She approached me from behind and we stood side and side, looking at the street It was raining and I said ‘It’s raining,’ and she said ‘Cats and dogs,’ and then she laughed She pulled her scarf over her head and walked out She was wearing tan ankle boots and I wondered if they would fill up with rainwater like two novelty flowerpots   Another

Prize Entry

April 2018

The woman in the corner of the painting with the long fingernails

Susannah Dickey

Prize Entry

April 2018

When I was born my mum and the nurses had laughed at my long baby fingernails. ‘You were a...

The Great Awake

Prize Winner

April 2018

Julia Armfield

Prize Winner

April 2018

When I was twenty-seven, my Sleep stepped out of me like a passenger from a train carriage, looked around my room for several seconds,...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required