1960s London. Driven by deep suspicion of the charlatan psychiatrist her sister frequented before her suicide, a young woman decides to visit him herself, under the guise of an alter ego. The psychiatrist in question, Collins Braithwaite, is a notorious celebrity quack, famed for his unconventional methods. In seeking the truth, she finds that even the nature of truth is uncertain
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The deadline is Wednesday, January 31st 2024 at 5 pm.
“Little old ladies…they should be taken out and shot.” Flecks of saliva spat from his mouth as he banged down the discoloured telephone. “They get,” he said, testing the tip of his tongue against the gap between his lower front teeth, “technical problems.”
“So this is a man’s shop.” She stood in front of the counter, the only woman amongst the Saturday morning trade of farmers and handymen. Her right hand held the strap of her over-the-shoulder bag for support.
Inside the villa they are taking no note of lines. Not of lines shall they be ruled, so it was said. Dr Ignatz is saying this.
‘For a day or so,’ (they whisper).
‘Soon enough,’ (they whisper), ‘best bet. They will be putting lines back in pronto.’
Their fight will begin after dinner, once the plates are in the dishwasher, the surfaces wiped. This is unavoidable. Desperate to stall—her heating works, his flatmates don’t—he potters about in her kitchen, musing aloud on his cooking technique, the need for sugar and salt, and is just remarking upon how burnt onions leave their taste in the air—if a taste can be in the air—when it lands on the roof with a wall-shaking thwop.
When we finally found it in the corner of the downstairs loo – the dead mouse – the children covered their noses with their sleeves and refused to eat breakfast in the kitchen because of an alleged lingering smell. They leaned into the drama. What child doesn’t relish revulsion and swoon? They defined themselves against something – it, or us – and found a purpose, a unity, that morning.
For the third time this morning Mary looks through all the spaces, turns her head left, right, imperceptibly alert then tilts forward, bending herself in half, walks, folded, with tiny, quick steps, searching along the edge of skirting, the floor, under a wooden chair. She pulls herself upright, stands, sighs, then bends
“Obviously, a huge part of recent history has been the AIDS epidemic. It has been a medical, emotional, social, economic, and political topic for so many including those we have lost, and those living with HIV/AIDS who are still stigmatised today.”
1960s London. Driven by deep suspicion of the charlatan psychiatrist her sister frequented before her suicide, a young woman decides to visit him herself, under the guise of an alter ego. The psychiatrist in question, Collins Braithwaite, is a notorious celebrity quack, famed for his unconventional methods. In seeking the truth, she finds that even the nature of truth is uncertain
Our submissions window is now open for literary fiction and poetry.
UK and internationally-based writers
We highly encourage underrepresented writers to enter.
The deadline is Wednesday, January 31st 2024 at 5 pm.
Thematically, Sea of Tranquility is a fairly standard time travel mystery, offering three distinct timelines, linked by a fourth. In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. John. St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic to the new world, adrift and uncertain of much at all. In 2020, Mirella Kessler mourns her friend Vincent Alkatis Smith (both of these characters also appear in Mandel’s earlier novel The Glass House) and tries to make sense of the circumstances around her death.
“Obviously, a huge part of recent history has been the AIDS epidemic. It has been a medical, emotional, social, economic, and political topic for so many including those we have lost, and those living with HIV/AIDS who are still stigmatised today.”
“is there something in adopting the voice of a god, but giving him very human qualities and frailties? It turned out that adopting a persona that revolved at once about both being powerful and powerless was a great parallel for exploring subjects like climate change.”
They were stones in a champagne flute,
I was always bound to smash.
But they were there for a while,
hanging on, two faceless punters waiting
for the gag, and then it all slipped out
of me as easily as a giggle. Once is a mistake.
Twice is careless. By the end of it
you could hear a pin drop in my heart.
“In the case of obstetric and gynaecological history, it felt important to resist chronological or medical linearity. Working towards a happy ending would have been too easy and would have felt like a formal parroting of the unstoppable trajectory of ‘scientific progress’ that I wanted the book to question. “
“The 7 – 11 age group is for me the most joyful of childhood – their imagination is boundless, they are brave and unjudgmental, and the self-consciousness of the teen years has not yet set in.”
MIR (The Mechanics Institute Review) will be holding its first live event of the academic year on Friday, December 8th (Keynes Library, Gordon Square 6pm). The event will include eight readings, including one from Wes Brown (Programme Director of the MA in Creative Writing and the author of Breaking Kayfabe)
Listen: In this episode of ANP, Louise, Christina and Peter critique Sacaran Nights
Author Not Present is a podcast in which Louise Hare, Christina Carè, and Peter J Coles critique anonymous submitted pieces. In the sixth episode, Louise, Christina, and Peter discuss ‘The Entertainer’. Listen to find out what they liked and what they thought could be improved as they deal with structure
In the fourteenth episode of the MIR Podcast, Peter J Coles talks with the winner of the Bricklane Bookshop short story prize, 2020 Alice Haworth-Booth, and the head of the prize, Kate Ellis. They discuss writing climate change and what it takes to run a big prize. Show Notes: Bricklane Bookshop
This episode was recorded before the outbreak of the current crisis so we apologise for any inaccuracies! Author Not Present is a podcast in which Louise Hare, Christina Carè, and Peter J Coles critique anonymous submitted pieces. In the third episode, Christina and Peter are joined by author Jarred McGinnis