Journal
Articles
The lists
I want to hold her. She doesn’t know it yet, but her world is about to change. Yes, all the things happening at home are bad and it’s an open secret throughout town, but she doesn’t know how much further she has to fall.
Endless summer
In a perfect world, every season would be summer – a time of seemingly endless promise. At least, that’s how I remember the summers of my youth: freedom from the confines of school or university, with nothing but lengthy, sun-filled days of play and pleasure. As pleasing as the nostalgic image is, I know it isn’t true.
There’s something wrong
Almost twenty years ago, before I left my parents’ house – my home, my country, my continent – to adventure into a new world, I did the maths. If I visited my parents every week for the rest of their lives, I might be able to spend another year with them.
A liability
THE JOURNALIST IS calling again. I don’t know how he got my number. I suppose it couldn’t have been...
Venerable
WHEN WE PULL up outside the block, she is waiting in her best grey skirt and pearl-pink blouse with...
Walking Upside-down Country
life, habitat & ruin / run recombinant // & helical in hurt forms / that keep life going & do...
Mushrooms
In the dark, out of damp black loam, they’ve sprung back in their bonnets and straw hats. Pale arms dusted by the...
A Million Eyes
for Eileen Chong The story has been told over and over: Saigon crossed out on maps in crimson ink, its refugees pleading...
Cinema speaks back
Hind Rajab’s story unfolded four months into the spectacular unleashing of Israeli military violence on the people of Gaza. Hind and her family had been following evacuation orders. She remained trapped in the car with the corpses of her six family members for hours as Red Crescent staff tried to arrange a rescue operation. When emergency workers finally reached her, the IDF used an American-made weapon to shell Rajab and her rescue crew. Three hundred and fifty-five bullets hit the car.
All my friends are getting EVs
I was working out with my friend Matt when he asked if I wanted some coolant. Confused, I quipped darkly that I was depressed, not suicidal. Then I twigged – he’d recently bought an electric vehicle (EV) and no longer needed the half-bottle of Castrol Radicool he was offering. I said ‘yes’, and later – in a group chat we’re both members of – ‘Happy to take it like the internal combustion engine-running schlub that I am’.
The motherload
I recently sent my best friend a document titled ‘The Motherload’: a manual explaining how to be me in the event that I die, am incapacitated or sent to jail for killing my husband. It includes gems such as the food preferences of each of my children, the sunscreen that doesn’t cause rashes and how often they need to see the dentist. The ostensibly trivial items on it are the ones that matter most – catering to kids’ idiosyncrasies makes for a happy family life.
A race to the bottom?
It seems increasingly inevitable to me that two markets will soon emerge from the literary sector: one market for cheap, AI-generated content and another for the current, traditional model of publishing. I believe that publishers must value both to be sustainable. In spite of the evolving marketplace, publishers still have an obligation to guide emerging authors, editors and publishers through the peaks and pitfalls of a career in a notoriously complex and veiled industry.
