Everyone has an elsewhere
Remembrance is central to memoir writing, but our memories are often unreliable. Psychologists assert that as every time we recount an episode in our lives it is often tweaked and subtly fictionalised. In ‘Everyone has an elsewhere’, nine writers answer the challenge of writing without verifiable facts and few sources. They explore the elusive emotional truth behind narratives and storytelling.
Download WritersMosaic Quarterly 05 as published in The Bookseller June 2026
Edited by: Colin Grant
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Editorial
Colin Grant
"Meeting yourself coming back."
Nine writers answer the challenge of writing without verifiable facts and few sources, exploring the elusive emotional truth behind narratives and storytelling.
Searching for Nelsa Lowe
Hannah Lowe
"Moy in Cantonese means little sister – a term of endearment and familiarity."
Reconstructing a life using only a photograph, a brief mention in a newspaper, a death certificate and a man who knew her in passing 50 years ago.
Sketches from the edges
Naneh Hovhannisyan
"With every soothing sentence, she watered seeds of hope; every word leaving her mouth lifting me for that day."
Memories of an upbringing in the outskirts of Yerevan, Armenia, known as 'Bangladesh'.
Think pathology?
Colin Grant
"It took me five more years to recognise that if I remained in medicine, I would count amongst the sick, at least mentally."
A medical school reunion resurfaces questions around shortcomings of being taught to pathologise humanity.
Forests where past and present meet
Maria Jastrzębska
"‘Is this paranoia?’ I ask Jola.
‘Well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you,’ she replies."
A return to Poland and remembrance of World War II inspires compassion for today's refugees.
My father’s places
Mirza Waheed
"I have remained in that glorious garden ever since, going back to it forever in my memory."
A son's remembrance of his father through idyllic seasons at a Kashmir mountain resort.
Luc and Peggy
Suzanne Harrington
"Luc had no time for fools. Even perfectly nice and inoffensive people he dismissed as 'yoghurts'."
On being inducted into the 'cult' of Luc and Peggy in Barcelona.
Anna Freud at the Freud Museum
Andy Bay
"Anna Freud’s insistence that children are not miniature adults sounds less like theory and more like a survival code for an overstimulated generation."
An appreciation of Anna Freud's pioneering work as a child psychologist and her place in the Freud Museum, London.
King Herod in Florida
Isabelle Dupuy
"The humid air and flat, monotonous Florida landscape jarred with the fragrant hills of ancient Galilee."
A writer's pilgrimage to Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida.
Devotion
Sarah Issever
"I thought you would strike me. But you lowered your hand to my forehead and, without irony or bitterness, swept my bangs aside and walked away."
An autofiction of yearning for reunion and an act of familiar devotion towards a brother who left home aged six to start rabbinical training.