The recent lockdown has our imaginations spinning new futures – for the world, for our nation, for us – as humankind waits, restlessly, at the cusp, unable to move forward, and thus, visiting the only place that can be explored with certainty: within. Within days of the countrywide lockdown, we announced a short story contest inviting writers to share stories from self-isolation. The ten stories in this collection are a result of things they discovered within – comfort in old memories, new perspectives for old relationships, a sense of humour in the face of crushing uncertainty, courage to make peace with oneself and an unwavering faith in humanity. Sucharita Dutta-Asane is an award-winning writer and independent books’ editor based in Pune. She has been editing manuscripts for publishing houses and for individual writers for more than a decade. She teaches a course in Writing and Editing at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce and at Flame Liberal Arts University, Pune. Gargi Mehra is a software professional by day, a writer by night and a mother of two at all times. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous online and print literary magazines. Lawrence Houldsworth is a trained mathematics teacher and now works in teacher education and training. Malini Gupta has spent nearly three decades as a development worker. She has experienced an upheaval of her attitudes, values and beliefs in her journey from a student of geography and rural development to a seasoned and well-travelled practitioner of her craft, and she writes of this personal perspective of change. Kanishq Banka is a Mumbai-based writer and traveller. He has finished his double master’s degree in Sociology and Journalism & Mass Communication. He is presently working on a couple of scripts and on his next novel about a poet from Kashmir. Rajni Mishra has been writing verses and cooking up stories for as long as she can remember. She has been a patent expert, an innovation strategist and a café floor manager in the past. At present, she works as a product marketer and copywriter to support her writing habit. Pragya Bhagat is a spoken word poet, an award-winning essayist and author of two books. Her work examines the intersections between mental health, body image and belonging. Amit Singh studied print journalism at Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. He has worked with the Star Network as a writer. Taking cue from the twin peaks of Neil Gaiman and Varun Grover, he wants to explore all kinds of writing, from short stories to scripts, comic books and novels. Purva Grover is a journalist, poet, playwright and stage director. She made her debut as an author with The Trees Told Me So, is the founder-editor of The Indian Trumpet, a quarterly digital magazine for Indian expats, and works as assistant editor with a UAE national daily. Ajay Patri is a graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, and has experience working in a corporate law firm and a think tank. His works of short fiction have appeared in several journals and short presses in the past, and have been nominated and long-listed for many awards and prizes. He is currently working on his first novel.

"In this personal and passionate account, activist and researcher Sahba Husain documents her deeply engaged and empathetic involvement with the politicised terrain of Kashmir. As she meets people that she speaks with and, more importantly, listens to, she begins to question her own 'Indian' identity. Recognizing the anger, despair and helplessness of a people caught in conflict and violence, Husain forms deep friendships during her time working in the state. It is these relationships that form the backdrop of this book, in which Husain focuses on certain key areas: the health of a people, militancy and its changing meanings for local people and the state, impunity and the search for justice, migration and the longing for homes left behind, and women's activism in the faultlines of nation-state and community. A book of surprising beauty in its engagement with human relationships, of love for a land and a people and of hope for a future free of violence, Love, Loss, and Longing in Kashmir is a compelling and necessary read." --Publisher's description.

When his attempts to get to know his dying father fail, William Bloom makes up stories that recreate his father's life in heroic proportions.

From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father: “With raw eloquence, Notes on Grief … captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided” (The Washington Post). Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner National Bestseller Lambda Literary Award Finalist NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys “Irreverent and original.” –New York Times “Magisterial.” –The New Yorker “An intoxicating writer.” –The Atlantic “A classic!” –Mary Karr “A true light in the dark.” –Stephanie Danler “An essential, heartbreaking project.” –Carmen Maria Machado A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society. In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.

Featured in multiple “must-read” lists, No One Tells You This is “sharp, intimate…A funny, frank, and fearless memoir…and a refreshing view of the possibilities—and pitfalls—personal freedom can offer modern women” (Kirkus Reviews). If the story doesn’t end with marriage or a child, what then? This question plagued Glynnis MacNicol on the eve of her fortieth birthday. Despite a successful career as a writer, and an exciting life in New York City, Glynnis was constantly reminded she had neither of the things the world expected of a woman her age: a partner or a baby. She knew she was supposed to feel bad about this. After all, single women and those without children are often seen as objects of pity or indulgent spoiled creatures who think only of themselves. Glynnis refused to be cast into either of those roles, and yet the question remained: What now? There was no good blueprint for how to be a woman alone in the world. It was time to create one. Over the course of her fortieth year, which this ​“beguiling” (The Washington Post) memoir chronicles, Glynnis embarks on a revealing journey of self-discovery that continually contradicts everything she’d been led to expect. Through the trials of family illness and turmoil, and the thrills of far-flung travel and adventures with men, young and old (and sometimes wearing cowboy hats), she wrestles with her biggest hopes and fears about love, death, sex, friendship, and loneliness. In doing so, she discovers that holding the power to determine her own fate requires a resilience and courage that no one talks about, and is more rewarding than anyone imagines. “Amid the raft of motherhood memoirs out this summer, it’s refreshing to read a book unapologetically dedicated to the fulfillment of single life” (Vogue). No One Tells You This is an “honest” (Huffington Post) reckoning with modern womanhood and “a perfect balance between edgy and poignant” (People)—an exhilarating journey that will resonate with anyone determined to live by their own rules.

*'The Republic of Motherhood' Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem* ‘I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.’ In this bold and resonant gathering of poems, Liz Berry turns her distinctive voice to the transformative experience of new motherhood. Her poems sing the body electric, from the joy and anguish of becoming a mother, through its darkest hours to its brightest days. With honesty and unabashed beauty, they bear witness to that most tender of times – when a new life arrives, and everything changes.

"[B.C. Edwards] is a writer possessed of a quicksilver anarchic imagination and I recommend his fiction highly to all and sundry."--Patrick McGrath From "My Recipe for the Best Tuna Salad in the World": 'Malcolm,' 'I've finished clearing out the apartment, you boy-hungry mongoloid. The last of your things are in the vestibule. I'd come pick them up soon, as I'm sure you're aware, the front door won't shut completely and the glass has been broken in and so the rain is doing a number on that collection of forty-fives you inherited from your father but never got around to playing a single one of.' 'Meanwhile, as requested, here is that recipe for tuna salad that you've enjoyed so much over all of these apparently bitter years.' Every story in 'The Aversive Clause' has its own unique world: the quiet moments of a couple's destruction as one inexorably turns into a monster, a girl trapped in a tree at the end of the world, acrobats hired to tumble at an oil tycoon's birthday, an entire city come to life to terrorize a dwarf.B.C. Edwards is a producer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and attended the graduate writing program at The New School in New York. The winner of the 2011 Hudson Prize for Fiction, he is the author of the collected stories "The Aversive Clause" (Spring, 2013) as well as two collections of poetry "To Mend Small Children," (February, 2012) and "From the Standard Cyclopedia of Recipes" (Spring, 2014). He was raised in Newburyport, Massachusetts and lives in Brooklyn.

The irreverent, brilliant memoirs of the legendary filmmaker James Ivory In Solid Ivory, a carefully crafted mosaic of memories, portraits, and reflections, the Academy Award–winning filmmaker James Ivory, a partner in the legendary Merchant Ivory Productions and the director of A Room with a View, Howards End, Maurice, and The Remains of the Day, tells stories from his remarkable life and career as one of the most influential directors of his time. At times, he touches on his love affairs, looking back coolly and with unexpected frankness. From first meeting his collaborator and life partner, Ismail Merchant, at the Indian Consulate in New York to winning an Academy Award at age eighty-nine for Call Me by Your Name; from seeing his first film at age five in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to memories of Satyajit Ray, Jean Renoir, The New Yorker magazine’s film critic Pauline Kael (his longtime enemy), Vanessa Redgrave, J. D. Salinger, George Cukor, Kenneth Clark, Bruce Chatwin, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Merchant—Ivory writes with invariable fluency, wit, and perception about what made him who he is and how he made the movies for which he is known and loved. Solid Ivory, edited by Peter Cameron, is an utterly winning portrait of an extraordinary life told by an unmatched storyteller.