For her fifth dinner party, author and host Susanna Crossman talks to writers Elizabeth Chakrabarty, Lily Dunn and Shamini Sriskandarajah about eliding the barriers between fiction and non-fiction, the ethics of (memoir) writing, diverse ways of reading via Lydia Davis and whether to “glam up” or dress down when sitting down to write.
In this delicious excerpt from her upcoming novel – a work about mother-daughter relationships, storytelling, women and murder – Faiqa Mansab has her heroine, feminist scholar Layla, discuss the role of food in myths and rituals whilst eating freshly cooked biryani with friends and family.
In this gorgeously vivid and whiplash smart short story, Paula Coston plunges us into the world and bodily experiences of Maggie Chine, a 70-year-old woman who continues to live life to its fullest.
A childhood teddy bear is the lens through which romantic and familial relationships are explored, in this darkly comic and tender short story by Laetitia Erskine.
A recurring dream featuring supermarket cheese aisles and knitting nurses circles around the same persistent question and painful realisation in Kerry Byrne’s tautly written and moving short fiction, ‘Miscarry’.
In her captivating novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield tenderly and credibly depicts the pain of absence, loss and transformation often experienced in romantic relationships.
A young woman slowly unravels during lockdown when compulsively chronicling her own body’s deterioration in Ramya Jegatheesan’s stunning short story, ‘Emanance’.
In her essay, author Katy Wimhurst explores how the experience of chronic illness challenges established (and often ableist) conventions of storytelling, opening up fiction – and indeed language itself – to new, imaginative possibilities.
In this powerful short story, an artist walks on the marshes near her home, treading a dangerous line between sea and land, haunted by her own demons and her memories of a drowned friend.
Natasha Brown’s powerful, deftly written debut explodes neoliberal myths of meritocratic success and reveals the stark reality faced by young Black women when attempting to make it to the top.
