One Sunday night a few weeks ago, I received an email from Podbean informing me my podcast had been taken down in response to a complaint that the content on the first ever episode, back in 2014, infringed on ‘intellectual property rights worldwide’. The complaint had come from AXG House, an ‘automated DCMA take-down service’.

I have a theory that frightens me: probably, the best job a writer can have is one that is as far away from the act of writing as possible – boilermaker, car salesman, exterminator.

The stories submitted for the 2019 VU Short Story Prize were incredibly impressive. Even the long list I read would make an amazing snapshot of the short story in 2019. In the end, I chose the stories that moved something inside me – a twist that made my stomach drop, a perfectly imagined moment that moved me to tears, a clever wit that made me laugh out loud.

The excitement over Yuanhui’s comments was kind of a brutal reminder of how present yet hidden menstruating is for people like me, who bleed on a monthly basis. On the one hand, there is the inescapability of my body, the ever presence of my period: it is on or just over or waiting to happen. I’m always acutely aware of this thing that is occurring inside me – and then there is this weird hiding of that fact.

The arrangement was, that if Ava didn’t turn up at school by four, Daisy was to walk over to after-school care. But she was to wait until four because the after-school care was expensive. Until four she was to go and play. But try and stay out of sight of the teachers. Ava had to watch how she explained the bit about staying out of sight. Daisy was frustratingly moral.