Flowers and fruit

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Conditions of Entry

Poetry Thirty lines max, it says. Only twenty-nine left as some wag might have quipped but who’s counting? All bags must be opened for inspection. All poems disassembled and unpacked so...

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Heat and hope and attention

MemoirRules that were once rooted in religion have settled into our insides as secular, self-imposed rules about ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food and, by extension, ‘good’ bodies and ‘bad’ bodies.

FictionAs she lists the night’s specials, Claire attempts to figure out the party’s dynamic. Shared complexions make the elegant woman the little girl’s mother, surely. It’s the women’s relationship she can’t figure out. University friends? Distant cousins? Their conversation seems too polite for either. Unnatural.

Recipe for success

EssayFans used to approach my grandmother, Margaret, at events or book signings, professing their adoration and proudly presenting their 1969 yellow-bound original of The Margaret Fulton Cookbook. They’d tell stories about the book’s place in their hearts – it had been given to them when they moved out of home, or when they’d married, or it had been passed through two generations. Margaret would smile sweetly and flick through the pages as though looking for something. Then, often, she would close the book firmly and look mock-crossly up at them (I say ‘up’ because she was usually seated, but was also only just over five-foot-tall). ‘You’ve never cooked from this book. Where are the splatters, the markings of the kitchen, the stuck-together pages?’