• What do you call writing that’s neither fact nor fiction, and over in a flash? Flash faction, of course! Ehm, well … whatever the terminology (microfiction, sudden fiction, prose poetry), it’s a genre or set of genres I’ve tinkered with on and off over the years. My 2005 Imaginary Cities: PC Bangs project was essentially 40-odd…

  • i.m. Gunilla Bergström (1942–2021)

  • It seemed that the show’s producers had spent more on wigs than they had on the script.

  • “I’ll tell you to rack off in a minute if you’re not careful.”

  • Screen

    Your windowsills strewn with corpses of too-slow flies.

  • “He had read about this particular type of behaviour …”

  • for alicia sometimes

  • No more tracked changes — this time it’s final (.docx).

  • My flight had been delayed by an awkward incident during a brief stopover in Z—. One of the passengers — an older man in a crumpled suit — had been pulled from the boarding queue. Two persons, who did not look as if they belonged to airport security, searched the man’s carry-on luggage. From my…

  • So excited that I just had to share this here, too. My imaginary #Netflix series ‘You’re Killing Me’, a gritty, eight-part murder mystery based on the true story of US indie rock band #Pavement, has been name-checked on a podcast about Pavement, entitled The Pavement Conundrum! Listen in from 27:20 to 28:35 for some smooth…

  • Tracer

    Even at the very end, when it seemed almost hopeless to everyone else, I still believed there was a small chance they’d make it. I fact I’d held onto that belief — stubbornly, I admit, and without logic — since the beginning of their journey. Of course, I’d had no way of knowing who they…

  • I am humbled, proud, excited and just a tad braggish to announce three huge milestones in my previously unacknowledged career as a parent. First, our oldest child, who is six, started school this week, and kicked so many goals in doing so that it left a small, permanent tear in the corner of my eye.…

  • Anyone who’s known me for longer than five minutes might want to sit down for this post. Today I ran a 10-kilometre race for the first time in my 49 years on this mortal coil. I’m now collapsed on the couch having applied a full bag of peas to my right knee, imbibed an ibuprofen-paracetamol…

  • Anyone who’s known me for longer than five minutes might want to sit down for this post. Today I ran a 10klm race for the first time in my 49 years on this mortal coil. I’m now collapsed on the couch having applied a full bag of peas to my right knee, imbibed an ibuprofen-paracetamol…

  • I’m really proud to have played a small part in helping the International Forum for the Challenges of Peace Operations put together the second edition of its groundbreaking study on leadership in UN peace operations, Considerations for Mission Leadership in UN Peace Operations. My role in the project entailed editing and bringing together six chapters…