The Shackles of the Tongue: A Quiet Tyranny Language is often described as a gift — the mother tongue, a homeland of thought. But for most writers on this planet, language has functioned as something else entirely: a velvet prison. It embraces you with its intimacy, but bars you…

I suppose many of you have heard that now-iconic Beckett quote: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. The fact that I’m beginning to reflect on this particular theme is, of course, no coincidence. Failure as theory and failure as reality are two…

The sky over the city hung like old laundry, worn and faded from too much washing. A fine, sharp drizzle shaved the air; people scurried along, apologizing to one another when their umbrellas touched. The bloated, pretentious building — seemingly dulled by the constant roar of…

In a house filled with broken toys and forgotten dreams, nine-year-old Anne — called Firecurl for the wild red hair she cannot tame — stumbles into a game far older, and far more dangerous, than it first appears. When a strange model landscape bewitches her and a storm of anger…