FROM THE ARCHIVE A Good Job by Nicolas Townley
‘The familiar grey had returned to our city. The streets no longer gleamed bright and the colours appeared less vivid. Clouds had crept back.’
Sam Mills’ Shelf Life
‘A good writer should be a voracious reader. I never did a single creative writing course – I learnt everything from reading and studying other authors.’
FROM THE ARCHIVE Goat by Jona Xhepa
‘Maddie came to meet me in her jeep to collect me from town and I thought here’s a woman for whom no poems have been written.’
FROM THE ARCHIVE This Is Your Safe Place by Claire Gleeson
‘The name is familiar, maddeningly so, but Emily can’t work out who it is. Not because it is an unusual name, but rather because it is such an ordinary, placeholder one, instantly forgettable.’
Amy Twigg’s Shelf Life
‘I try my best not to read reviews - people can be cruel and I am a fragile thing. But there’s one review that always makes me laugh, which said, “‘Spoilt Creatures’ is not a novel that I particularly admire.” Speak your truth.’
In Brief - October’s Best New Books
New books by Tim Winton, Phillipa Holloway, Niall Williams and Gina María Balibrera
Sophie Parkes’ Shelf Life
'I’ve heard a few writers say - Zadie Smith being one of them - that the novel, short story, whatever it might be, is representative of the writer at that particular time. You will never think in exactly the same way and therefore you will never write the same again. A comfort, I think.'
Passing Mr Heachu’s Bodega by Poky Triage
‘On Wednesday
We listened to records and
Ate a kiwi fruit and
You are dead now’
Lunate vol. 5
Shipping now.
New stories by Lara Williams, Jamie Cameron, Noémi Kiss-Deáki, Han Smith and Heidi James
Philippa Holloway’s Shelf Life
'My short stories can take just a few hours, or years, to make it to the page. Again, I get a lot of my ideas from close observation of place, people, and asking why and how.'
FROM THE ARCHIVE The Weight of a Shoe by Philippa Holloway
‘Samuel Walker was driving in to work when he first saw the shoe; caught the flash of orange against the brooding green of the forest. Something bright in the grey of the Minnesota winter. Something different.’
In Brief - September’s Best New Books
New books from Elizabeth Hand, Richard Fortey, Mark Bowles and Sam Sax
Niamh Campbell’s Shelf Life
'Looking back, I really thought of the written world as a built, existing world - a discourse, to use the adult term - and my intention was not to make value judgements but orient myself within it.'
Liars by Sarah Manguso
‘I could tell you this is an angry book; I still doubt you’d be prepared. In Sarah Manguso’s latest novel, Liars, rage is the main character — sharper and more accented than any of its actual cast. More specifically, women’s rage.’
Noreen Masud’s Shelf Life
‘It is very hard to feel that those around you value book festivals more than doing anything possible to put a spanner in this poisoned system that kills and maims racialised children every single day. Most people want a quiet life. That’s hard, because if you’re marginalised that's not an option for you; you’re right up against the world’s clamour every single moment.’
Anne de Marcken’s Shelf Life
‘I have two primary ways of writing: 1) slowly and deliberately, and 2) accidentally. In the first case, a project usually starts with an idea that is persistent enough to grow more clear rather than dimmer in the time it takes me to attend to it. Once I am writing, the idea eventually yields a feeling—some line or passage reveals the heart of the piece.’
Claire Carroll’s Shelf Life
‘I am working on a new collection. It's set in Jersey, in the channel islands, where I spent exactly half of my childhood. It's a strange place, in lots of ways, but very beautiful too. Politically it's like Nigel Farage fell asleep watching The Truman Show, but the coastlines are breathtaking.’
Karen Powell’s Shelf Life
‘I need to reach a certain point in a novel’s development where I feel it has acquired the necessary heft, before I can begin to discuss or share it with anyone else. Before that point, everything feels too fragile and tentative to expose to the air.’
FROM THE ARCHIVE September Nice To Meet You by Caragh Medlicott
‘They guard class conversation like black oil Dobermans. The first seminar is a prospectus collage sticky with sun-softened glue resin.’