Slow Right

The Train Wrecked In Slow Motion

Grace Glassman | Slate | 26th November 2023

Account of childbirth in the US as an older woman, where maternal mortality rates are rising alarmingly. This writer, an emergency medicine doctor, has a scheduled C-section before ending up in a medical thriller that is engrossing yet horrifying to read. She lost about six litres of blood: “My body’s entire store, plus a third more. As quickly as they were giving me blood, it ran out of me” (5,100 words)

The Right To Choose How To Be Irish

Padraig Reidy | What Fresh Hell? | 2nd December 2023

Thoughts on the Irish diaspora after the death of Shane MacGowan of The Pogues. His “priceless self-awareness” showed that not everything has to be passed on to the next generation. “We want them to experience Irishness, without experiencing the burden — a burden that we, in our 40s, may have been the last generation to know. We want them to have songs and sport and pride” (1,300 words)