I have been sitting with the light out for the past hour. My television is on but the sound is down. The girl’s bedroom is opposite my own. Her blinds are not closed and everything is lit up. She is on the bed, watching TV and painting her toe nails, white cotton balls between each, Read more […]

With Margo and Jo   ‘We’re lesbians,’ said Margo, on the first day I met them. ‘If you can’t deal with that, we won’t employ you.’ Every family in my country has an aunt who lives with a special friend or a cousin who shares his life with a man he met in the army Read more […]

Only after she secures her starched white blouse does she line her eyes and dab her cheeks. Otherwise she wears no visible makeup. Slinging the yellowing cloth bag over her shoulder, she locks her door and makes her way down the unpainted stairs. When she steps outside, she is confronted by the dust and commotion Read more […]

Eight minutes since yesterday and this was all that’s left of fifteen years, thought Kat. The silence, the stillness of the air that had greeted her as she had let herself into her house, confirmed that he had gone. She had managed to lock the door behind her before letting out a cry of joy. Read more […]

At the Hewitts   The Hewitts live in North London, in a big old house with high ceilings, long windows and a garden that has been photographed for a magazine. The carved oak dining room table came from the refectory of a French monastery and the teak four-poster bed was made in Goa. Mrs Hewitt Read more […]

Numair A Choudhury was born in Bangladesh in 1975. After finishing high school in Dhaka, he was enrolled in Oberlin College Creative Writing Program, from which he graduated in 1997. Shortly thereafter, Numair joined Andrew Motion’s Creative Writing Department in Norwich. Numair has published over a dozen short stories. He also taught college courses, mostly Read more […]

Emma Lee’s short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines including Gentle Footprints (Bridgehouse Publishing) and Extended Play (Elastic Press). She was runner-up in Writing Magazine’s Annual Ghost Story Competition. Her most recent poetry collection is Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015), she co-edited Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge (Five Read more […]

Miriam Burke is from the West of Ireland and now lives in London. She has a PhD in Psychology and worked as a clinical psychologist before becoming a full-time writer. Miriam has had stories published in anthologies and magazines, and some of her stories won awards.   Q: What is the first book you remember Read more […]

Jim Bartlett was born in California and spent the better part of his life living and working in the small slice of heaven known as Santa Barbara. Both he and his wife worked within the telecommunications industry, starting out in a time when there were still ‘0’ operators, and phones were still rented. From there Read more […]

Paul Blaney is a 50-year-old British fiction writer who now lives in the United States. He is an assistant professor at Rutgers University, a hiker, and an enthusiastic football coach. Paul Blaney’s first story won him a nice hardback of The Wombles, which was presented by Elizabeth Beresford herself. Subsequent prizes include a Tom Gallon Read more […]