2017

Still can't get over the fact that this is where I'll be working come April 2017. Such excitement.

The Next Review

Very excited to have my story C O U P L E in the latest edition of The Next Review. If you want to have a read you can pick up a copy in Foyles or from the website here.
SaveSave

Clarice Lispector

Discovered these beautiful images of a young Clarice Lispector in Venice with her camera and now I can think of little else. I now intend to spend the rest of her birthday devouring her writing.

Their mysteries could only meet if one surrendered to the other: the surrender of two unknowable worlds made with the trust by which two understandings would surrender to each other.

Her body soothes itself with its own slightness compared to the vastness of the sea because it’s her body’s slightness that lets her stay warm and it’s this slightness that makes her a poor and free person, with her portion of a dog’s freedom on the sands. That body will enter the limitless cold that roars without rage in the silence of six o’clock. The woman doesn’t know it: but she’s fulfilling a courage. With the beach empty at this morning hour, she doesn’t have the example of other humans who transform the entry into the sea into a simple lighthearted game of living. She is alone. The salty sea is not alone because it’s salty and vast, and this is an achievement. Right then she knows herself even less than she knows the sea. Her courage comes from not knowing herself, but going ahead nevertheless. Not knowing yourself is inevitable, and not knowing yourself demands courage.

– Clarice Lispector

Coming soon.

Best Small Fictions 2017

Honoured that my short story 'B-R-E-A-K' has been nominated for the Best Small Fictions 2017 anthology. The anthology will be guest edited by the incredible Amy Hempel, which only makes it even more exciting to have been nominated. In the excitement I've found myself re-reading her work and her brilliant interview with The Paris Review.

Most of the time you don’t really hear it. A pulse is a thing that you feel. Even if you are somewhat quiet. Sometimes you hear it through the pillow at night. But I know that there is a place where you can hear it even better than that. Here is what you do. You ease yourself into a tub of water, you ease yourself down. You lie back and wait for the ripples to smooth away. Then you take a deep breath, and slide your head under, and listen for the playfulness of your heart.

– Amy Hempel, 'Tub' 

Ways of Seeing

The Golden Decade

Orto Botanico

Spent a beautiful afternoon wandering around the maze of the Botanical Gardens in Padua.

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

Reading A Little Life and unnerved by the beauty and pain of Yanagihara's prose. 

‘I wanted everything turned up a little too high’

Vicenza

 Vicenza in November. 

Packing

This is a list which was taped inside my closet door in Hollywood during those years when I was reporting more or less steadily. The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do. Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture. Notice the mohair throw for trunk-line flights (i.e. no blankets) and for the motel room in which the air conditioning could not be turned off. Notice the bourbon for the same motel room. Notice the typewriter for the airport, coming home: the idea was to turn in the Hertz car, check in, find an empty bench, and start typing the day’s notes. 

It should be clear that this was a list made by someone who prized control, yearned after momentum, someone determined to play her role as if she had the script, heard her cues, knew the narrative. There is on this list one significant omission, one article I needed and never had: a watch. I needed a watch not during the day, when I could turn on the car radio or ask someone, but at night, in the motel. Quite often I would ask the desk for the time every half hour or so, until finally, embarrassed to ask again, I would call Los Angeles and ask my husband. In other words I had skirts, jerseys, leotards, pullover sweater, shoes, stockings, bra, nightgown, robe, slippers, cigarettes, bourbon, shampoo, toothbrush and paste, Basis soap, razor, deodorant, aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax, face cream, powder, baby oil, mohair throw, typewriter, legal pads, pens, files and a house key, but I didn’t know what time it was. This may be a parable, either of my life as a reporter during the period or of the period itself.

I either love packing or I loathe it. I'm still undecided. But every time I'm sitting surrounded by clothes, books, notepads and pens I turn to Joan Didion. Her succinct list reminds me that less is more, and that time is too precious to be spent wasted on worrying what to pack. I've just arrived in Italy for the rest of the month after packing in just an hour. My case is small, and mainly filled with presents – next time I'll remember to write a list like Didion. 

Reading

2016 A Reading List

When you get the Job.

Singing Mia Martini style with joy. 2017 you can't come fast enough.
British Institute of Florence here I come. 

Lago di Garda

The largest lake in Italy. Garda is named after the town of the same name. Apparently this evolved from the Germanic word warda, meaning "place of guard" or "place of observation", fitting when there is so much to see on the shores of this incredible inland sea.

SaveSave

In Altre Parole

“È un libro di memoria, pieno di metafore. Racconta una ricerca, una conquista, una sconfitta continua. Un’infanzia e una maturità, un’evoluzione, forse una rivoluzione. È un libro d’amore, di sofferenza. Racconta una nuova indipendenza insieme a una nuova dipendenza. Una collaborazione, e anche uno stato di solitudine.” 

“It’s a book of memory, full of metaphors. It recounts a search, a victory, a continual defeat. Childhood and adulthood, an evolution, maybe a revolution. It’s a book of love, of suffering. It recounts a new independence together with a new dependence. A collaboration, and also a state of solitude.”

Ritorno

Take me back to Torri del Benaco and Campari under the sun please.

Work

Sheila Hicks (1963) Photo: Ferdinand Boesch

Lago di Garda

Lake Garda 

Purple hues before the fog came. They call this peak Napoleon's nose. Lago di Garda is the largest lake in Italy. We drive up in bumpy buses all the way from Verona and hide away in the mountains till sunset and the peaks are tinted pink by the setting sun.