My story, 'The Overpass,' just won second place in the 2025 Brick Lane Short Story Prize :) You can purchase the anthology of the 12 shortlisted stories here.* The winning story is 'Little Venice' by Alice Zoo, which is a truly gorgeous, understated, incisive piece about a West London nanny.
'The Overpass' was first drafted 2 years ago. Set in mid-90s China in a minor city of millions of people, it is indebted to three moments in recent Chinese history where overpasses have been a site for spontaneous visual action. It's also about speaking while knowing what not to say.
Here's the extract I read at the (private) anthology launch party / prize winners' announcement this week:
At some point in their long friendship it had been established that Yi-ting had the prettiest handwriting. To make the flyer, she dipped a calligraphy brush in black ink and filled the bottom half of the page with their joke manifesto. ART IS OVER. THE ‘CONCRETE’ IS A FORM OF INVESTMENT. THE ‘SPIRITUAL’ IS A FUTURE RELIC. LET US FREE OURSELVES FROM ‘LIFE’. REJOICE IN THE ‘NEVER’. WHEN YOU ENTER THE RESIDENTIAL COURTYARD FROM THE EAST GATE, TURN RIGHT TO FIND BLOCK THREE, UNIT ONE. WE ARE ON THE FIFTH FLOOR AND THE SECURITY GATE WILL BE PROPPED OPEN BY A BRICK.
They’d decided on three key spots in the city. The overpass by Jiefang Road. The square in front of the new mall, with its shiny paving stones and young people loitering by shop windows. Behind the main train station, where they would mingle with the fat men who stood there day in day out, leaning against their mopeds, hawking rides in clicky, throaty voices. There had also been the big road that went past city hall, but in the end they’d decided against it.
Yesterday, they had gone to three of the bigger universities and wheatpasted some flyers onto noticeboards and along the walls of dormitory corridors. This isn’t anything troublesome, is it? a custodian auntie, spotting them, had asked.
Everything that is worthwhile is troublesome, Jia Jun had responded. Binbin had rolled their eyes.
It’s an art show, Yi-ting had supplied. Meishu are sending a reporter to cover it. We’re putting this city on the contemporary art map. You should come!
The auntie had clicked her teeth and said, Not my thing. But she’d left them alone after that.
When they’d finished with the universities and ridden the bus back to their apartment, Yi-ting and Binbin had gone to get takeout while Jia Jun dawdled at the payphone outside the convenience store, waiting for the village operator at the other end to retrieve his fiancée from her family compound.
Just walked around a lot, he’d told her when she’d come to the phone; she’d been in the middle of marking homework. Said goodbye to the streets. You wouldn’t like it here.
An amusing email I got from the BLB Prize team after the launch event—
I also wanted to apologise again for our huge oversight in removing of 'from the river to the sea' from your biography, after we had assured you that this would be included, as well as you and your guests feedback on the importance of confirming pronouns and pronunciations of names. I am so sorry that your name was mispronounced repeatedly in the evening and that you were misgendered during the ceremony, and I'm sorry that this tainted what should have been a celebratory moment for you. The team will be meeting to debrief on the event and prize at the end of next week and both these concerns have been included in the agenda. Thank you for bringing the latter to our attention, we genuinely appreciate this feedback and will take it forward to our planning for next year.
—which I'll just leave here without commentary, since there's nothing to say except: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Ceasefire today, liberation tomorrow. And: long live the resistance.
In other news, THE HAJAR BOOK OF RAGE is launching 30 October, and you can preorder it until then (and purchase it after then) here. My story, 'Sequence from a Dream,' was very insightfully and generously edited by Farhaana Arefin, who also helped secure (and fund) the rights to use quotes from Wisam Rafeedie and June Jordan. I feel moved to have it republished in this anthology exactly a year after I was first writing it; in the meantime, much has changed, more has stayed the same. I can't express how meaningful it is to appear in a publication with Hajar Press, a publisher I've supported and admired since its inception. I'd encourage everyone to get a subscription so that they, like me, can have an entire shelf full of every single Hajar Press book that's ever come out. (I'm missing my copy of YOU MUST BELIEVE IN SPRING, though—I must have lent it so someone and not got it back. If this is you, PLEASE return it to me!!)
Oxford's Refaat Alareer Community Library has found its new home at YWMP's The Nest on Little Clarendon Street. In October it will be open every Wednesday 5-9pm, and in November it will be open on Tuesdays 5-9pm. You can check out the October schedule, with small activities in addition to our operating hours, here.
I think that's all for now! —JQ
*Or if you just want to read 'The Overpass,' email me?