Extract from Susan Sontag’s diary
“X” is when you feel yourself an object, not a subject. when you want to please and impress people, either by saying what they want to hear, or…
“The Question of Bruno” by Aleksandar Hemon
The writing grabbed me from page one: there is a real rhythm to it, and the description is beautiful. The first story…
How to explain the credit crunch to a five-year-old
1. The government promised Mummy and Daddy they would be happy if they spent their lives working to make someone else rich.…
“Prisons we choose to live inside” by Doris Lessing
"Of course, there are original minds, people who do take their own line, who do not fall victim to the need to…
Food crisis
Wonderful article in the December New Internationalist about the global food crisis. As the magazine points out, we hear a lot about…
Quote for the day
Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. Paulo Freire
“The Steep Approach to Garbadale” by Iain Banks
I particularly liked that although most of the story is told from Alban's point of view, he is described at first from…
Night Bus published
My short story Night Bus was recently published in issue 13 of Smoke: A London Peculiar. Among all the young, drunk people…