In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster by Marie Hoy-Kenny You wake, your wife Jean still serene in sleep, breathing deeply beside you. The sky is dark through the cracks between the curtains, but last night you…
BackStory: Three Questions with Isabelle B.L
BackStory: Three Questions with Isabelle B.L Author of Cords What inspired you to write ‘Cords’? I was born in the 1970s and when I was a child, my mother wanted me to wear a girdle. I was on the chubby…
Cords
Cords by Isabelle B.L I’m a whale, a bell and a multifunctional cord. Today, I receive something to make my waist smaller. The giver says: “It’s made with 98 whale bones, my dear.” Hands of a woman I can’t see…
BackStory: Four Questions with Claire Loader
BackStory: Four Questions with Claire Loader Author of Hunger What inspired you to write ‘Hunger’? I think like many people, I found myself during lockdown delving deeper into late night online rabbit holes than usual. One night I stumbled on…
Hunger
Hunger 1315 by Claire Loader The storms came in the spring, slipped the waking earth, hushed her back to sleep again. We scraped the bottom of our winter bowls, stagnated hours lingering, listless – lips parched with thinning prayers. I…
BackStory: Five Questions with Robert Barrett
BackStory: Five Questions with Robert Barrett Author of Footprints in Water What inspired you to write ‘Footprints in Water’? I went to a boarding school in the 1980s. It was a sort of Irish Hogwarts where television was non-existent, the internet…
Footprints in Water
Footprints in Water by Robert Barrett On Christmas Eve, she fell; sucked downwards through the angry, screaming wind, head first, through two miles of unencumbered sky, and no thought can take root, only the biting of the seatbelt across her…
BackStory: Five Questions with Morgan Quinn
BackStory: Five Questions with Morgan Quinn Author of I Have Suffered the Atrocity of Sunsets What inspired you to write ‘I Have Suffered the Atrocity of Sunsets’ ? Back in 2018, my husband and I had the opportunity to go…
I Have Suffered the Atrocity of Sunsets
I Have Suffered the Atrocity of Sunsets by Morgan Quinn Today you wake up late, but Mama doesn’t scold. She plaits the inky waterfall of your hair as you eat your breakfast, then presses an onigiri into your hand and…
BackStory: Five Questions with Barbara Diggs
BackStory: Five Questions with Barbara Diggs Author of Granddaddy at War What inspired you to write “Granddaddy at War”? I’ve always found it poignant and confounding that the African-American men who served in World War I were determined to fight…