2nd February 2023
‘I remember my uncle cutting his toe nails with a razor blade. I remember my father drunk from Sunday to Sunday. There has to be a monument to the failures as well.’
9th November 2022
‘This was in Montpellier, in 2012. He was a legionnaire from Birmingham; his reclaimed name was Roger, and he was the most intelligent murderer I have ever met.’
17th June 2022
‘Over Zoom one night, a therapist tucks her dark hair behind her ears and introduces herself as Maeve. They are about the same age, in their late thirties. She doesn’t ask about Orla’s childhood, or root around for scars. She says, Tell me what’s happening.’
9th March 2022
Anam Zafar's translations of Najat Abed Alsamad's work offer shattering insights into everyday experiences of the war in Syria.
4th November 2021
"His mother had a choice between keeping the monkey or having the baby. She told the story often, in company, with a roll of her eyes and a helpless grin, as if this was the sore spot, the branching crossroads where her life had gone wrong. "
1st September 2021
‘Your mother’s on the radio,’ she said, ‘being racist.’ This had surprised me; the radio bit. My mother had an aversion to talk radio.
12th August 2021
"They wore travel outfits, comfy and subtle. Tiny shorts and big hoodies in creamy colours. Shorts said: actual holiday. Hoodies said: chill, not like the other young ones going away, flashing bikinis at baggage claim."
7th July 2021
'Sometimes I long for home, but not home as it is now, home back then. Back when it was nice. When the sun was always out, and we could play all day out of doors. Before I had to be a woman.'
14th November 2017
In Des Hogan's work, Ireland is exhibited as precisely what it is: a gaudy, teetering, beautiful, dangerous, hysterical, haunted, failing country.