(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
 

Raw and Bloody (Alex Keegan Explains the Exercise)

I could take a small group of writers, I said, and in one week give them "hopeless" prompts and just 75 minutes thinking and writing time, and they would all produce stories good enough to submit.
 

Rear Projection

Everyone loves Sue. You said that yourself. You said she's the sort of person who gets on with everyone. It's because she's a little overweight and in a tracksuit.

by Zoe Lea
 

The Pigeon Gets His

Now the trouble with The Pigeon is, he's trouble.

by Zoe King
 

Killing Work

He prayed to be included in a layoff, but it was always someone else, and he was left with that someone else's impossible mound of work to do on top of the impossible mound he already had.

by Elizabeth Roy
 

Fucking Tragic

If Aeschylus's old man hadn't been pissed as a fart and in a funny mood, and if his nipper hadn't been a can short of a six-pack, we might never have had tragedy.

by Alex Keegan
 

Dreaming of Bananas in Bucharest

Picasso had a blue period, van Gogh a brown-greenish one and later a yellow one; bananas have green, yellow and brown.

by Cedric Popa
 

Writing a Truth

Truth was her thing.

by Pauline Abbott
 

Troop 345, More or Less

There are no rules when it comes to the fishes, except that they must have slept deep and have xx's where their eyes used to be and must, at some point, have been surrounded by men in gone-to-ruin Italian Suits (hand-tailored) whose Guccis are embedded in concrete.

by Donna McDougle
 

Something Pure

Paddy was the proverbial contender, gallant loser. He was noble in defeat, had a huge heart. People chuck those phrases around like confetti nowadays, but applied to Paddy, they really meant something.

by Fleur Chapman
 

Asparagus

Did I have any honour? I thought I did.

by Alex Keegan