Fiction - Five Dials

Mother’s Day Card From a Wooden Object

Mother! At an unusual time of year, and in an impractical format, this card is to say thank you (again) for raising me. I realize it’s a recurring theme with... Read more

Speaking to Emilie Pine

The author of Notes to Self on blood, the body and Beckett

As an associate professor of modern drama, Emilie Pine is used to employing the disembodied writing style of academic discourse. The voice comes from afar, or a... Read more

God’s Photograph

by Joe Stretch

Every hundred yards or so the motorway lights lit her face. She tilted her head and administered eye drops. She’d used a bronze foundation to blend the new part of her face with the old.

Her Lovely Meaningless Face

Sara Collins on Wide Sargasso Sea

As much as I hold the novel dear, for all the work it does to penetrate the experience of the white Creole, Wide Sargasso Sea never seems to cross the border of black skin.

Hannah has been in bed for a week. She knows the different textures and pressures and eccentric lumps of her bed like the back of her hand. Better. She does not know the back of her hand very well at all.

‘Older black women, who writes about that?’

Bernardine Evaristo reveals why she nearly populated her novel, Girl, Woman, Other, with one hundred characters

Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction. Her other writing includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, li... Read more

‘Gayness, queerness, gender plurality, plural pronouns – Africa got there two millennia ago.’

Marlon James on the vast world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

'War is complicated. Revenge is complicated. These things carry costs. It was very important for me, even though I was writing a fantasy novel, to make it a very grown up book.'

‘How could this possibly be mysterious? Where could this take us?’

A conversation with Tana French

'I’ve looked at criminal investigations through a detective’s eyes six times. But there are a lot of other people involved. There are witnesses, there are victims, there are suspects, there are perpetrators...'

The Body-Text Speaks

What happens when an author subverts the conventions of the book? By Alan Trotter

What are the parts of a book? There is a front and a back, there are the pages: not much to name. Let’s make the attempt though.

Shakespeare would have done well in any generation

Raymond Chandler to Jamie Hamilton

‘I don’t know why the hell I write so many letters,’ Raymond Chandler once wrote, in a letter. ‘I guess my mind is just too active for its own good!’ Chandler d... Read more

Oblivion

by Niamh Campbell

The man’s voice dropped, sounding conspiratorial; Caroline squeezed shut both her eyes, opened them, and nodded soundlessly. After a moment she said, OK. We will wait.

Scene Two

An excerpt from a play by Steve Toltz

Scene two: Hugo's office (HUGO is at his desk, on the phone.) Hugo This is Professor Hugo Fox. I sent down a couple of DNA samples. I was wondering if the ... Read more