Alphareader - Danielle Binks

While our bodies move ever forward on the time-line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as an arrow seeking its mark.

'Autobiography of a Face' Lucy Grealy 

Every time you look up at the stars, it’s like opening a door. You could be anyone, anywhere. You could be yourself at any moment in your life. You open that door and you realize you’re the same person under the same stars. Camping out in the backyard with your best friend, eleven years old. Sixteen, driving alone, stopping at the edge of the city, looking up at the same stars. Walking a wooded path, kissing in the moonlight, look up and you’re eleven again. Chasing cats in a tiny town, you’re eleven again, you’re sixteen again. You’re in a rowboat. You’re staring out the back of a car. Out here where the world begins and ends, it’s like nothing ever stops happening.

‘Lost At Sea’ by Bryan Lee O’Malley

I’m glad it was Dylan who laughed first. Once he did I felt myself unravel. I giggled and he giggled. We were the experiment. And then there came a time when we weren’t laughing. When we locked eyes and breathed each other’s breath. Ohmystars! The firmament shakes and then everything settles. In the end everything settles.

'Everything Beautiful' by Simmone Howell 

I howl. I howl at the roof like a hotted-up bomb doing donuts, full of screeches. I howl like an air-raid siren, my arms stretched out wide. Howls are like songs. They can’t be summoned; they just happen. They come from a place that I barely understand. And then something else climbs to the surface, something black and jagged, something from the deep. Imagine all your worst feelings surfacing. Imagine coughing up razor blades. Imagine not being able to stop the pain from coming out, and not knowing when it’s going to end.

'This is Shyness' by Leanne Hall 

Little news ☺️ “Alyssa Miele at HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books has bought ‘The Year the Maps Changed’ … Publication is set for fall 2022; Annabel Barker at Annabel Barker Agency handled the deal via Jacinta di Mase at Jacinta di Mase Management.” 🗺 ‘Maps’ is a very Australian-focused book, and I am incredibly thankful that it’s been acquired by a US-publisher who is intending to keep it that way. Quill Tree has this motto; “Many branches, Many voices,” and I’m so grateful that with such an outlook, they saw fit to take onboard my little #LoveOzMG book. Most of you would probably know how important this particular aspect is to me, and I am truly just so floored and happy!

Boy you really missed the boat. I'll make it simple, so's even fuckin you can understand. Papa God growed us up till we could wear long pants; then he licensed his name to dollar bills, left some car keys on the table, and got the fuck outta town". Water rushes to his eye-holes. "Don’t be lookin up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers". He takes hold of my shoulders, spins me around, and punches me towards the mirror on the wall. "You're the God. Take responsibility. Exercise your power

'Vernon God Little' by DBC Pierre