– Fiona Honor Hurley My sister Louise always loved music. Even before she could walk, she would hold onto the sofa’s edge and her chubby baby bottom would bounce up and down to the rhythm. She took her first steps while the radio played in our sitting room, teetering forward to collapse in my mother’s…
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– Anna Byrne ‘Children,’ my mother says. Above all else, she says, children are what will shake me out of whatever’s gotten into me. She uses the fingers on her right hand to point out all the good things I have. A career, a house, most of all a man that will put up with me….
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– Elizabeth Murray The karst rocks of el Torcal de Antequera rise up against the sky like bodyguards, sheltering us from the blinding mid-June sun. We should have bought more water in the over-priced gift shop, but as usual, we were too hasty. The moment you spotted the moon-like, limestone landscape, you hurried off – as…
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– Daniel Hickey 1. My parents and I are in our kitchen watching TV when our Filipino cleaning-lady Marissa explodes. Amid the shower of blood, which splatters the ceiling and floor, Marissa’s limbs hurtle and spin. Bing, bang, boom. Her right arm whacks my mother’s face, her left arm clatters my father on the chin and…
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– Holly Day 1 Across the street lives a woman with snakes in her hair. She watches me from between the rotting drapes that keep the sun from melting her living room furniture. Her eyes glow in the dark, and she thinks I can’t see her, but I am not as stupid as she thinks. I…
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– Conor O’Reilly Down one alley off the main Itaewon stretch there was a bar in a basement called The Old Crane. People could never really tell if it was named after the bird, as it was in Seoul which was in Asia so people assumed it was quite likely to be the case, despite…
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– Charles Bane Jr. This happened long ago, exactly as I will describe it to you. One morning, an Indian named Jacinto walked to the headwaters of the Amazon, where he lived. There was yucca in plenty at his home, but he craved protein, and cast his line into the coffee-colored water and hoped for a…
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– Jonathan O’Brien I walked away on a Wednesday. We were on holidays at the time. The Greek Islands. Paros. It was beautiful. The hotel was beautiful. The sea was beautiful. Blue skies, white beaches, warm days and endless sunshine. Just as the brochure had promised. But something felt off. I was cold. I was thirty-three…
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– Annalisa Deeney Jodie stared down at the small card which lay on the floor in the hallway.  She could see a drawing of pink flowers with handwriting beside it.  The handwriting was too small to read, unless Jodie picked up the card, which she was too nervous to do. It was a Friday and it…
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– Paul FitzSimons At thirteen minutes to one, the same time of day as the tsaritsa’s finest and most brutal accomplishment, 131 people in London died. She didn’t want it, it certainly wasn’t her idea but, when the time had come to act, she had accepted the slaughter’s cruel inevitability. She believed in rukopashnyy, the justice that that brings. But,…
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