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Breaking Kayfabe: An Interview with Wes Brown

March 21, 2024

It takes awareness, intelligence and creativity to compete professionally at sport. Its exponents have to process multiple sources of ever-changing information in real-time and react accordingly, trusting their body to back their decisions. It’s arguable sportspeople are not given enough credit for how good they have to be to compete at the highest level; they are judged on post-match interviews and PR-filtered press conferences, and only their counterparts and opponents truly know what it takes to survive and thrive in any given sporting arena.… Continue reading →

iocus mortis by Joey Barlow

March 15, 2024

It’s another sellout crowd for Hugh Briss—his third in as many days at the famous Club Comedia. His set, titled ‘Laughter for a Lifetime’, consists of only one joke—not a particularly funny one, and one that isn’t even originally his, so they say, but according to the critics it’s all in his delivery. See, he does this thing, where he

pauses, for comedic effect. He starts talking, with this golden voice, a twinkle in his eye that says, “I have had a vision of the future, and you will still be laughing.”… Continue reading →

latest in fiction

Cue Ball, by Tom Meadows

January 23, 2024

Most people don’t live in a building with a Wikipedia page, or in a flat that would bankrupt you to rent, a flat that needs three boilers to heat, a flat that should normally be owned only by overseas oil barons. It squats across the top three floors of an old Georgian building plastered with false colonnades and bulging windows. You can see it from Green Park station.… Continue reading →

They Called Me Kyle, by Owen Bridge

January 16, 2024

They make us eat together. Altogether, so were never alone, sing it; – Never ever be alone –

– Don’t sing now Kyle, love –

That’s Mrs Turner, she’s old and from Yorkshire, she calls everyone ‘love’ even though Queen Bitch (I can’t say that word but I can think it) Abigail, big sour face, says it infantilises the service users. … Continue reading →

Well done me, by Cordelia Feldman – extract

December 5, 2023

I’m sitting up in bed at my parental home, writing this on Mum’s computer. At the moment I spend about four days per week here, and three days at my flat. This house, where I spent the first thirty years of my life, is in Radlett in leafy Hertfordshire, just on the edge of the green belt. My cat Spitfire, also known as the Fluffy Monster, or more recently, Precious Angel Fluffball lives here as I am too ill to look after him. … Continue reading →

Animal Husbandry, by SJ Ryan

November 24, 2023

“Little old ladies…they should be taken out and shot.” Flecks of saliva spat from his mouth as he banged down the discoloured telephone. “They get,” he said, testing the tip of his tongue against the gap between his lower front teeth, “technical problems.”

“So this is a man’s shop.” She stood in front of the counter, the only woman amongst the Saturday morning trade of farmers and handymen. Her right hand held the strap of her over-the-shoulder bag for support.… Continue reading →

Drim, by Nick Norton

November 24, 2023

Inside the villa they are taking no note of lines. Not of lines shall they be ruled, so it was said. Dr Ignatz is saying this.

‘For a day or so,’ (they whisper).

‘Soon enough,’ (they whisper), ‘best bet. They will be putting lines back in pronto.’… Continue reading →

Not The End Of The World, by Annabel Banks

November 24, 2023

Their fight will begin after dinner, once the plates are in the dishwasher, the surfaces wiped. This is unavoidable. Desperate to stall—her heating works, his flatmates don’t—he potters about in her kitchen, musing aloud on his cooking technique, the need for sugar and salt, and is just remarking upon how burnt onions leave their taste in the air—if a taste can be in the air—when it lands on the roof with a wall-shaking thwop.… Continue reading →

Dead Mouse, by Charlotte Turnbull

November 17, 2023

When we finally found it in the corner of the downstairs loo – the dead mouse – the children covered their noses with their sleeves and refused to eat breakfast in the kitchen because of an alleged lingering smell. They leaned into the drama. What child doesn’t relish revulsion and swoon? They defined themselves against something – it, or us – and found a purpose, a unity, that morning.
… Continue reading →

Moon, by Jo Stones

November 1, 2023

For the third time this morning Mary looks through all the spaces,  turns her head left, right, imperceptibly  alert  then tilts forward, bending herself in half,  walks,

More in Fiction

latest in POETRY

Breaking Kayfabe: An Interview with Wes Brown

March 21, 2024

It takes awareness, intelligence and creativity to compete professionally at sport. Its exponents have to process multiple sources of ever-changing information in real-time and react accordingly, trusting their body to back their decisions. It’s arguable sportspeople are not given enough credit for how good they have to be to compete at the highest level; they are judged on post-match interviews and PR-filtered press conferences, and only their counterparts and opponents truly know what it takes to survive and thrive in any given sporting arena.… Continue reading →

Five Poems from Speculum, by Hannah Copley

April 27, 2023

They were stones in a champagne flute,
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.… Continue reading →

More in Poetry

latest in creative non-fiction

X and I, by Bediye Topal

December 5, 2023

I belong to a race whose alphabet contains the letters Q, W and X. They are letters. Just letters like any others. But for the Turkish state, these aren’t just letters. They banned them.… Continue reading →

roscoe-head-liverpool-bill-boaden

Church Valley by Kenn Taylor

November 17, 2022

Creative Non-fiction: “People have got their corner here, however modest, and they get on with it, despite all that is stacked against them, all that is thrown at them.”… Continue reading →

Poetry and Coffee by Craig Smith

October 6, 2022

Whatever we feel as human beings, some poet down the years has distilled that emotion or experience into its elemental form. Poetry is language at its most perfect, the ultimate diviner of the human spirit. If we need solace, poetry will console us. If we need joy, poetry will take our soul and let us fly.… Continue reading →

More in Creative Non-Fiction