y’ Roxane Gay
Back in October, 4th Estate hosted a meeting of two brilliant, whip-smart and erratic minds, Lena Dunham and Caitlin Moran, in a sell out event at London’s Southbank Centre.
July sees the publication of Yiyun Li’s short story A Sheltered Woman, winner of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2015. Auntie Mei is a live-in nanny for newborns and their mothers. She has worked for a hundred and twenty-six families and looked after a hundred and thirty-one babies, one set of clients easily replaced by the next. But the hundred and thirty-second baby and his mother Chanel prompts a crisis in Auntie Mei’s life – a tremor that threatens to destroy her resolute detachment. Read more…
Each of these books explore what it feels like to not fit in- either by being so blatantly different that you can never go unnoticed, or by having to conceal who you really to the point that your very identity dissolves. Although gay marriage is now legalised across all American states and high profile celebrity transgender people such as Caitlin Jenner and Laverne Cox have grabbed the media attention, these four short books remind us that the struggle for equality for people of all genders and sexualities isn’t over.
For many of us (particularly if you were fortunate enough to be born in the 70s or 80s), America was introduced to us at a tender, impressionable age thanks to Hollywood’s far-reaching and never-ending power.
For Hadley Freeman, American movies of the 1980s taught her everything she needed to know: comedy in Three Men and a Baby, Hannah and Her Sisters, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future and Trading Places; all a teenager needs to know – in Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club and Mystic Pizza; the ultimate in action – Top Gun, Die Hard, Young Sherlock Holmes, Beverly Hills Cop and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; love and sex – in 9 ½ Weeks, Splash, About Last Night, The Big Chill, Bull Durham; and family fun – in The Little Mermaid, ET, Big, Parenthood and Lean On Me. Read more…
Peanut butter and marshmallows go so well together in these chewy cookies. Depending on your tastes, crunchy peanut butter can be used if you want added bite to your cookies. We’ve made these with white marshmallows, but you can also mix it up a little by adding some pink ones for extra colour.
Summer is officially here.
And with it, the ever-present ice-cream jingle coaxing you out of the house, and sprawling, semi-clad bodies on yellowing patches of grass.
Glorious, right?
For so many of us, summer is about confronting our lack of confidence in our bodies, and the prospect of taking off our protective armour of clothing is actually quite terrifying.
Sali Hughes to the rescue, with this handy, straight-talking and utterly sensible edited extract from the chapter ‘Showing Some Skin’.
Our second Cover Reveal of July features another book with an enthusiastic recommendation from horrormeister Stephen King – Consumed, the debut novel from cult film director David Cronenberg.
This is a fantastic way of using up ripe tomatoes that are becoming too soft to use for salads. Because you cook the jam quite quickly it retains a beautiful colour and looks almost translucent in the jar. The kick of chilli offsets the sweetness, and it works best with something pungent like a mature cheddar or even a goat’s cheese. Read more…
