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Black tea in the snow
I went round to Leila Segal’s for afternoon tea to talk about her contribution as a guest booker. Leila's tea pot has the air of a rare find on Antiques Road Show. I think it really might be worth a...
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Fireproof
Just back from New York, I go upstairs to the spare room and retrieve a huge dusty rucksack that contains all the notebooks from my Cuban project*. Plus a fireproof box. Before going away, I got...
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So far, I have lied
I am going to start with The Party. This is the first short story that I ever wrote. Living in a small, dark room in Havana, I decided to write. I read Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande, and she...
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Courage
I’m feeling today like I might disappear. Silent and remote. An image comes into my head – I look for it before I start. It’s a photograph of the actress Cookie Mueller, lying sick on her bed, being...
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Child
I decide to hand-write the new draft. I’m getting quite distracted these days – can’t sit still too long, and my mind seems to jump around. But maybe I always was this way – as a child I used to write...
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Five years after (1) — on writing again in Cuba
Venceremos! - We will overcome! (Cuban revolutionary slogan on The Malecon, walkway along the Havana coast) I was in Cuba again to gather material for my stories, face to face with her contradictions,...
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Five years after (2) — ‘this far away’
I’m completing a short story collection set in Cuba. I recently returned to the island after an absence of five years. Here is an extract from my notebook, where the stories start. Part of what I wrote...
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