Writing

Writing

Amanda Barry uncovered a trove of photographs, letters, and journals in her father's trunk, which set her on a journey to Antarctica, inspired by her father's legacy.

"It's so strange - all the memories are there. And it's not that I don't try and think about it, but going in such a linear manner, it becomes almost more clear when you talk about it this way."

Flashbulb memories are memories that are affected by our emotional state. Your brain takes a snapshot when the ground shifts under your feet, and that snapshot includes everything—the smell of coffee going cold in your cup holder, the static on the radio, the way your hands suddenly felt too heavy.

Asking for a laptop as she lay in a hospital bed during a frightening cancer ordeal, Wicklow woman Elaine Murphy could hardly have imagined that those first taps on the keyboard would lead to her debut work of fiction, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, a Garden County mystery born from the darkest chapter of her life.

As I grew into a pretentious young adult in the early 00s, I started to want more from games, and I wasn't finding it. So many of them were mindless, or juvenile, or needlessly violent. So few seemed to have anything to say.

Classic France is a country of nuance with a love of conversation and freedom and an aversion to fanaticism. Contemporary Houellebecq describes France as a museum, where landscape turns into decor and where rural areas are emptying out.

The story that stayed with a young Larry McMurtry, more than any of the cowboy exploits, was the one about a molasses barrel. McMurtry's grandfather had traveled by wagon 18 miles to Archer City for winter provisions, returning with an 80-pound barrel of sorghum molasses, the nearest thing to sugar at the time.

I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry. I won't add much to them, but she is someone of incredible integrity.

Helen DeWitt's refusal of the Windham-Campbell prize highlights the tension between artistic integrity and the demands of self-promotion in the literary world.

No one I know wants to go spend their one wild and magical life being a shill for some billionaire tech asshole, says Shannon, a character in Yesteryear, the buzzy new novel about a tradwife influencer by Caro Claire Burke.

I was also trying to hold my own. Honestly, I feel like she's the character I've played who I felt most similar to. I don't know if that's because Tony had also started writing it with me in mind.

You've created a character you can control, because you can't control me.

The Man is so absorbed in his trout-fishing hobby that he won't stop to watch a sunset with The Woman, even though he has romantically brought her to his remote cabin for the first time.

When I finished art school, I thought I was going to do monumental sculpture, big works, and I did for a while. But what I started loving the most-actually always loved the most-was the start, where you figure out what you want to say.

Morris was a sympathetic historian of empire who became a republican Welsh nationalist, and yet she accepted a CBE, showcasing her complex identity.