culture

Jennifer Mills Brown shapes move across the screen, leaving dark streaks in the mud behind them. Salt glitters, and some darker crystal. The bodies move purposefully, now and then a flash of teeth that must be laughter. Happy workers, covered in the earth they...

Carmel Bird I have recently taken it upon myself to work my way through the internet in search of my ancestry. I call it my 1080 Project. As a wise old tech-savvy male elder of the family Rattus rattus , and with no chance of a pleasant natural death, I’m...

Simon Webster We called him Santa – unimaginatively, on account of his white hair – but we might as easily have arranged those same five letters in a different order. He did not come down our chimney, but he did make his first impression via trespass – hearing a...

Gabrielle Carey At 15 Sebastian didn’t see himself as a vandal, as the law did. He saw himself as a writer. The secret language of tags and symbols, the liminal space of tunnels and railways, the argot of street writers, the underground camaraderie of the graffiti...

Anna Snoekstra At first Andrea thought there was a problem with her eyes. She went to the optometrist at lunch. He had her read off a chart and blew puffs of air on her corneas. “Tip-top,” he concluded. “You shouldn’t be having any trouble seeing the stage.” But...

Kathryn Heyman Mr Bull, our new teacher, arrived in the third week of summer term. He wore formal shorts and high grey socks and we named him Bullybum. He’d lived in the desert for three years before he came to our school, and when I said I wanted to be the prime...