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Drawing Lessons

Anushka Jasraj

‘All colours are hurt spectacles, I think, and say aloud without intention.’ The 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner for Asia.

The Death of Margaret Roe

Nat Newman

The 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner from the Pacific. ‘Every person has their own secrets, but Margaret Roe had Havilah Brown’s.’

Train Dreams

Denis Johnson

In the summer of 1917 Robert Grainier took part in an attempt on the life of a Chinese laborer caught, or anyway accused of, stealing from the company stores of the Spokane International Railway in the Idaho Panhandle.

Happy Hour

Denis Johnson

The day was ending in a fiery and glorious way. The ships on the Sound looked like paper silhouettes being sucked up into the sun.

Consolata

Nuala O’Connor

‘Daddy always said our apples were blessed because the order lived beside us. He liked to gift crates of Egremont Russets, the sweetest of all his fruit, to the sisters.’

Strange Heart Beating

Eli Goldstone

‘Grief is the aggressive displacement of the self from a known universe to another.’

Roma

Deborah Levy

‘Her husband who is going to betray her is standing inside the city of Roma.’ Dreams of infidelity from Deborah Levy.

A Wooden Taste Is the Word for Dam a Wooden Taste Is the Word for Dam a Wooden Taste Is the Word For

Jesse Ball

‘My friends, what I mean is, this life is shallow like a plate. It goes no further.’

The New Me

Halle Butler

‘But I feel sure. Making some decisions today, no doubt about that! Not thinking about certain things today, no doubt about that!’

Los Angeles

Emma Cline

‘It was only November but holiday decorations were already starting to creep into the store displays.’

Uri

Joshua Cohen

‘There’s just no way, unassisted, to commit suicide. But then there’s no way to be just a human, isolated, stripped or just stripped of contexts – because even a cell must have a floor, a ceiling, walls.’

Trump Sky Alpha

Mark Doten

‘Mr President, we can get you into a bunker with full communication equipment and you can give your address there, you just can’t do it in a goddamn plastic blimp at the start of World War III.’

Revolutions

Jen George

‘Small praise was like a drug for party members, though we used real drugs too, hard ones, drugs that imbued one with the facility for ruthless violence and multiple orgasms.’

Day 4

Rachel B. Glaser

‘She sat sweating on the curb as her mother’s narrow face hovered over the parking lot like a hologram.’