When Machado was at the Iowa writers’ school in her late 20s, she met a witty, worldly, petite blond Harvard graduate who spoke French and was a “mix of butch and femme that drives you crazy”. With hindsight, her short story, Mothers, which deals obliquely with domestic abuse between two women, now appears to be a rehearsal.įor all the experimentation, the basic narrative is straightforward. She was shortlisted for a US National book award in 2017 for her gothic-flavoured short stories about sex and gender. Machado is at the forefront of a wave of writers (including Sarah Hall, Julia Armfield, Fiona Mozley and Sophie Mackintosh) producing sensual, defiant, highly inward stories that centre on the female body. It ensnares and unsettles, tantalises and wrongfoots. But that doesn’t quite capture how it haunts the grey areas of abuse, how it shatters the memoir form, how like a dream it shapeshifts.
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