Cover Photo: photo by Fabrice Florin/flickr
photo by Fabrice Florin/flickr

When Your Family Business Isn’t a Family

“It was disingenuous to pretend we were all in this out of love.”

Gluten-free ice cream cones. Salted fava beans. 1kg of Slippery Elm Powder.

The Lord of the Rings

Today, the way I talk about the place—often calculated, I admit, to make people laugh—makes Strewn Earth sound a bit like a cult. The way the managers talked about it made it sound like a family. Actually, though, it was neither: It was a business.

care

after that

did

Thank god I escaped

talking Slowly, I realized I didn’t know.

Mikaella Clements is an Australian writer currently based in Berlin. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Hazlitt, The LA Review of Books, Lithub, Buzzfeed, and more. She is currently working on her first novel, a literary rom-com co-written with her wife.