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In exactly two months, it would be her ninety-ninth birthday. This they murmured repeatedly, although sometimes she thought it had been only once. Between bouts of dozing, her eyes wandered over the walls and ceiling, often returning to a tiny wisp of abandoned cobweb in one corner.

Olivia Laing is a British writer and cultural critic. She is the author of three books: To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City. Her tale 'The Abandoned Person's Tale' appears in Refugee Tales: Volume II, which is out now from Comma Press.

A review of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. 

In this fiction piece, the narrator finds herself falling for her sister's new love interest. Torn between loyalty to her sister and her desire, she struggles to control her emotions.

In 2011 I interviewed novelist Anna Lawrence at Pow Wow Festival of Writing.

Chicken a bawl … We used to keep chickens in the backyard. They came to us by way of My Uncle Sam’s Ford Cortina; yellow exterior, black roof and two furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror. Class.

Having been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for her novels All the Blood Is Red and Orange Laughter, critically acclaimed author and lecturer Leone Ross returns with Come Let Us Sing Anyway, a raucous, vibrant collection of short stories that rattles along, genre hopping with chameleon-like gusto.

An Interview with Lesley Nneka Arimah - Caine Prize Shortlist … Lesley Nneka Arimah (Nigeria) is shortlisted for The Caine Prize for 'Who Will Greet You At Home' published in The New Yorker (USA. 2015) .

Dogs Who Like Fish … The football field in Siolim’s still green, hopeful after yesterday’s monsoon rain. Only the dogs are out, sleeping sideways … as if fallen in constellation from the sky … like storm drops.

An Interview with Bushra al-Fadil - Caine Prize Shortlist … Bushra al-Fadil (Sudan) is shortlisted for The Caine Prize for 'The Story of the Girl whose Birds Flew Away' translated by Max Shmookler with support from Najlaa Osman Eltom…

Things Lost by Ioanna Mavrou … Things Lost, a preliminary report, scribbled on the margins of a Cyprus Airways magazine page I should remember to tear off before landing: Ten dollars on a book I don't feel like reading at all, not just on the plane, but possibly ever in my entire life.

Arinze Ifeakandu (Nigeria) is shortlisted for The Caine Prize for 'God's Children Are Little Broken Things' published in A Public Space 24 (A Public Space Literary Projects, Inc., USA. 2016). Arinze was the editor of The Muse (No.

Winnie M Li’s impressive debut novel Dark Chapter takes an unflinching look at rape through the experience of a young American-Taiwanese woman who is brutally attacked by a teenage boy while hiking through the West Belfast countryside.

Chikodili Emelumadu (Nigeria) is shortlisted for The Caine Prize for ‘Bush Baby' published in African Monsters, edited by Margaret Helgadottir and Jo Thomas (Fox Spirit Books, UK. 2015).

Magogodi oaMphela Makhene (South Africa) is shortlisted for the Caine Prize 2017 for 'The Virus’ published in The Harvard Review 49 (Houghton Library Harvard University, USA. 2016).

Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and book blogger. She reviews Caribbean literature for the  Trinidad and Tobago Guardian ’s Sunday Arts Section, and is the Book Reviews Editor for  Caribbean Beat  Magazine.

Owen had first seen her through glass, and from that angle she was distorted, belly distended as if in pregnancy, face and hips widened.

Durban, 1885 … MR KUMAR, a merchant from India, paced up and down behind the counter of his store on Water Street, blowing on a sheet of parchment and waving it in the air.

I feel as though I’ve been awake for hours or that I haven’t slept at all. But I must have. I was thinking of what you told me once about the solar plexus.

Ticker-Tape  by Rishi Dastidar reviewed by Dzifa Benson … On first encountering the idiosyncratic titles of poems on the index page of Ticker-tape (such as -  ‘Deconstructing an attempted date with Miss Pacific Standard Time’, ‘Joystick Valhalla’, ‘All the laurels in the world…

Ola Awonubi studied for an MA in Creative writing and Imaginative Practice at the University of East London and in 2008 her short story The Pink House, won first prize in the National words of colour competition.

The Cheekovit … The child is eavesdropping on her parents again. She’s seated cross-legged under the dining table, monitoring the situation in the kitchen. TUK-TUK-TUK. Tuk-tuhtuhtuh-Tuk. Tuk-te-Tuk-te-Tuk. That’s her father pounding onions and chillies for a sambal.

‘A story is active and a story changes the world. A story is changing the world as I write this.’ … An Interview with LeAnne Howe … LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, scholar, and writer of fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and plays.

The clock says twenty five past one and the moon is full. The wind rustles the trees of our leafy suburban street and the Count in his dark cloak keeps staring lecherously at my neck from the binding of Stoker's Dracula. All we lack now is a wolf to howl.