Anthologies Books

Book SynopsisExtracts inspired by the Shropshire countryside from writers including John Betjeman, Tom Sharpe, Charles Dickens, DH Lawrence, Samuel Johnson, Wilfred Owen and AE Housman each matched with a stunning specially-commissioned photograph.

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Book SynopsisNew Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year we publish the very best from emerging and established writers, and list many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among our contributors.

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Book SynopsisShakespeare Vs CthulhuAn anthologie of fine stories inspir'd by the Bard of Stratford and the Lovecraftian MythosImagine if it had been William Shakespeare, England's greatest playwright, who had discovered the truth about the Great Old Ones and the cosmic entity we know as Cthulhu, rather than the American horror writer H P Lovecraft. Imagine if Stratford's favourite son had been the one to learn of the dangers of seeking after forbidden knowledge and of the war waged between the Elder Gods in the Outer Darkness, and had passed on that message, to those with eyes to see it, through his plays and poetry.Welcome to the world of Shakespearean Cthulhu!To mark the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, Snowbooks proudly presents fifteen stories of eldritch horror that blend the Bard's most famous plays with Lovecraft's most terrifying creations. But before you dip into this curséd tome, be warned that way madness lies...

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Book SynopsisMembranes - porous biological interfaces which regulate flows between one zone and another - are the foundational image for an issue guest-edited by Granta contributor and best-selling novelist Rana Dasgupta.Featuring new poetry from Andrew McMillan and Tishani Doshi, photography from Ruchir Joshi, Arturo Soto Gutierrez, Monica de la Torre and Anita Khemka, as well as cutting-edge fiction and thought-provoking essays: Fatin Abbas on the border between Sudan and South SudanLydia Davis on faultlines in families Mark Doty on homelessness in New York CityAnouchka Grose on infidelity and the idea of the unwanted thirdDaisy Hildyard on membranes in the human bodyAdam Jasper on Christian Enzensberger and ''smut''Kapka Kassabova on lakes and EuropeAnita Roy on the newtEyal Weizman on contemporary architectural strategies for repelling and dividing people

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Book SynopsisWe all like choosing the best-ever Welsh rugby team, but here is a XV with a difference. Here they are not players but writers. The exploits of the people's heroes from Gould to Gareth Edwards are vividly recaptured in some classic prose. So too are the expectations and emotions of the most passionate followers in the world. They deserve the best team we can put out. Here it is, a selection of world beating writing on Welsh rugby: The First XV. With an introduction by Gerald Davies, the featured authors include Richard Burton, Gwyn Thomas, Frank Keating, Alun Richards and many more.

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Book SynopsisIceland is a land of stories; from the epic sagas of its mythic past, to its claim today of being home to more writers, more published books and more avid readers, per head, than anywhere in the world. As its capital (and indeed only city), Reykjavik has long been an inspiration for these stories. But, as this collection demonstrates, this fishing-village-turned-metropolis at the farthest fringe of Europe has been both revered and reviled by Icelanders over the years. The tension between the city and the surrounding countryside, its rural past and urban present, weaves its way through The Book of Reykjavik, forming an outline of a fragmented city marked by both contradiction and creativity. Includes a foreword written by award-winning Icelandic author Sjon. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb, Philip Roughton, Lytton Smith, Meg Matich and Larissa Kyzer. Published with the support of the Icelandic Literature Center.

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Book SynopsisAn inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate - the way so many of the city's residents already have - to the mainland... An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with 'global pilgrims'... An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place... The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the 'impossibly beautiful', frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year - a city about which, Henry James once wrote, 'there is nothing new to be said.' Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.

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Book SynopsisFrom flash fiction to mini-novelette, Fairlight presents twenty-four of its best short stories from some of the world's most talented new and emerging English language writers. Chosen from work sent to Fairlight over several years by writers around the globe, this anthology celebrates the art of the short story form: a vehicle with the power to delight, entertain or instantly transport the reader to another state, another world, another emotion. Twenty-four stories by twenty-four writers, including various award-winning short story authors, and Women's Prize-longlisted author Sophie van Llewyn.Trade Review'We at Fairlight have continually posted short stories online, every week, in support of our ethos, to promote the work of new and emerging writers. This has enabled us to build a network of authors, whose talent we have proudly advocated. We are so excited to share this array of their excellent work in a physical publication and to expand their readership.' - Louise Boland, CEO Fairlight Books; 'A pleasingly dizzying experience, leaping from one beautifully depicted life to another' —Lynda Clark, author of 'Beyond Kidding'; 'An intriguing collection, with fantastic range and depth' —Beth Underdown, author of 'The Witchfinder’s Sister'; 'This gem of an anthology has all the oddness, unsettling incidents, and questing souls that make good fiction so compelling' —'Nuala O’Connor, author of 'Joyride to Jupiter'; 'Vivid and diverse, this is an admirable and highly enjoyable collection of new voices' —J.S. Barnes author of 'Dracula's Child'

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Book SynopsisIntroduced by Farindokht Zahedi, Associate Professor, College of Fine Arts / Theater / Faculty of Performing Arts and Music, University of Tehran. Editors Aubrey Mellor and Cheryl Robson. A wide-ranging collection of plays from new and established voices from today's Iran and the global Iranian diaspora. Plays cover life in contemporary Iran, the hopes of women finding new ways to assert their individuality in a time of great of upheaval, the lives of those trapped in a migrant camp and the need to challenge stereotypical views. The plays shine a light on a rapidly changing Iran, one that is vastly different from the misconceptions outsiders have of it. Includes: A Moment of Silence by Mohammad Yaghoubi - (Iran) Home by Naghmeh Samini - (Iran) Shame by Sholeh Wolpe -(Iran-USA) Manus by Leila Hekmatnia (Iran), Keyvan Sarreshteh (Iran), Nazanin Sahamizadeh (Australia) Isfahan Blues Torange Yeghiazarian - (Iran-USA) Editors: Aubrey Mellor Aubrey is a leading Australian Theatre Director. Currently Senior Fellow at LASALLE, in Singapore, he was the first Australian to study Asian writing. Formerly Director of the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), he is well-known as an acting teacher to a generation of acclaimed Australian actors. He has directed for all major companies, commissioned and premiered plays by Australia's leading playwrights and is a leading proponent of new Australian writing. Aubrey founded several writing awards for playwrights and is an advisor to arts bodies including the Performing Arts Board of The Australia Council and The Australian National Playwright's Conference. Awards include the OAM in 1992, the Australian Writer's Guild's Dorothy Crawford Award for services to Playwriting and the International Theatre Institute's Uchimura Prize for best production, Tokyo International Festival. Cheryl Robson Cheryl has edited several collections of international drama. After studying drama at Bristol University, she worked for the BBC and as a film lecturer. She founded the Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2009 in the UK. She is an award-winning playwright who has received Arts Council UK commission and option awards and had several plays produced. She ran a theatre company for several years in London, developing and producing international plays by women. She has won numerous awards for her filmmaking and was recently named a finalist in the ITV National Diversity awards - Lifetime Achievement. .Trade Review“I was drawn to the characters. A Moment of Silence made me think about life, art, and freedom of expression.” – Mooney on Theatre; “Isfahan Blues is presented as a memory play…[and] this is a play that knows how to have fun with itself.” – Bay Area Reportero; “Manus, however, for all its pain, hums with vital life – not least the power, good and bad, of storytelling.” – The Guardian; The soggy wetness is a metaphor for the state of mind of detainees at Manus Island, whose real-life stories of oppression are told verbatim in this production by Iranian playwrights Leila Hekmatnia and Keyvan Sarreshteh. It also, however, has a more literal meaning: representing how these “boat people” tried to reach Australia and a new life: by floating on – and sometimes drowning in – water." - The Guardian.

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Book SynopsisThe best fishing writing is never really about fishing, or never only about fishing, and the writers collected in A Twitch Upon the Thread use angling as a way to write about love, loss, faith, and obsession. This is an anthology of fishing writing ranging from medieval times to the present, taking the reader from riverbank to open ocean, from England to New Zealand, from the shore to the depths. Read it and be hooked. Included are contributions from Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Ota Pavel, Arthur Ransome, George Orwell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and dozens more.Trade Review"This pocket-sized book is perfect for taking with you to read on the riverbank. Jon Day has compiled some of the best fishing writing from the medieval to the present day, and it is presented in a beautiful, cloth-covered volume, enhanced by elegant typesetting." —Alexandra Henton, The Field Magazine "[A] lovely little anthology of writing on the idle pleasure of fishing." —The Idler

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Book SynopsisWhy do people love ghost stories, even if they don’t believe (or say they don’t believe) in ghosts? Is it simply the adrenaline rush that comes from being mesmerized and terrified by a great storyteller, or do these tales yield deeper meanings—telling us things about our own inner shadows? Stephen Johnson brings together some of the most memorable encounters with ghosts in world literature, from Europe, Russia, the United States, and China. Recurring themes and imagery are noted, interpretations suggested—but only suggested, since ambiguity and resistance to rational interpretation are key elements in the best ghost stories. As the writer Robert Aickman observed, often the decisive moment comes when someone, somehow, makes a “wrong turning”—literally, perhaps, but at the same time psychologically, even morally—and some mysterious nemesis takes over. Old favorites by M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are interlaced with extracts from longer works by Emily Brontë, Henry James, and Alexander Pushkin,, along with slightly left-field apparitions from Tove Jansson and Flann O’Brien. With such expert guides, who knows what we will be led to encounter in the haunted chambers of our minds?

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Book SynopsisThis collection brings thirty authors in from the margins to occupy centre-page. Queer storytellers. Working class wordsmiths. Chroniclers of colour. Writers whose life experiences give unique perspectives on universal challenges, whose voices must be heard. And read. Emerging writers chosen from open-submission are placed alongside established authors— Aisha Phoenix, Alex Hopkins, Bidisha, Chris Simpson, DJ Connell, Elizabeth Baines, Gaylene Gould, Giselle Leeb, Golnoosh Nour, Hedy Hume, Iqbal Hussain, Jonathan Kemp, Julia Bell, Juliet Jacques, Justin David, Kathy Hoyle, Keith Jarrett, Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal, Lisa Goldman, Lui Sit, Nathan Evans, Neil Bartlett, Neil Lawrence, Neil McKenna, Ollie Charles, Padrika Tarrant, Paul McVeigh, Philip Ridley, Polis Loizou.Trade Review"In these locked down and unfocused times the short story is a much needed respite from the current Covid-19 bleakness. With Mainstream, Inkandescent has gathered together a wonderful collection of fascinating and eclectic stories. Sad, funny, horrifying and demystifying, the unique voices within take us on an open-minded journey around the world. Loved it." – Kathy Burke; "A riveting collection of stories, deftly articulated. Every voice entirely captivating: page to page, tale to tale. These are stories told with real heart from writers emerging from the margins in style." – Ashley Hickson-Lovence, author of The 392 and Your Show; "A triumphant celebration of exiled voices" – Cash Carraway, author of Skint Estate; “MAINSTREAM. An Anthology of Stories from the Edges was published by the indie publisher Inkandescent, crowdfunded through Unbound and edited by Justin David and Nathan Evans, who also run the press. So many aspects about this book and the stories caught my interest – from the publisher to the crowdfunding campaign, to the way they 'found' the authors and, of course, the stories themselves. I’m always a bit nervous to write about anthologies, concerned not to do justice to their authors and the breadth of their topics, takes and techniques, but I will give it my best because I really enjoyed it and encountered so many authors I would like to read more from. The publishers actually had me at their name… (I’m a sucker for an evocative pun). But it’s not just the name, it’s also their "by outsiders for outsiders" statement and their invitation in the anthology’s dedication that reads: "for everyone who’s ever been kept out because of who you are or where you are from, come in…" I’ve heard a few of those promises and they often wake the cynic in me. After having read the stories in the anthology and after having browsed their front- and backlist, this seems to be one of the genuine ones. Interestingly, in our research about the 'diversity' in British publishing, my colleague Anamik Saha and I encountered an unease or ignorance of publishing staff about how to approach and sell to people beyond the white middle-class and their fictitious impersonation "Susan". Inkandescent just do it. Another revealing but maybe not surprising observation is that MAINSTREAM (Inkandescent, 2021) – just like Common People (Unbound, 2019 ), The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Writers (Unbound, 2022), The Good Immigrant (Unbound, 2016; UK edition), and Nasty Women (404ink, 2017), to name just a few – is yet another crowdfunded anthology that aims to rectify an imbalance in publishing and give a stage to voices that are often marginalised and/or ignored. I’ll leave it at that. Golnoosh Noor read from her story "Happy Ending" at the anthology’s launch in July 2021. There are 30 contributions in this anthology – 15 written by established writers, 15 by emerging ones – and it’s rather impossible to sum them all up. They vary in style, theme, mode, perspective and every other possible element of a good story. Some follow realistic conventions, others not at all; one contribution even uses the structure of a nursery rhyme. While some stories are rather straight-forward, others take more time to figure out. The narrators reveal different levels of reliability, but they all suck you into their respective story. I was tempted to just quote some of the endorsements, but I’ll try to be more specific. Let me start with this first observation: what the stories have in common is that they don’t fall into the trap of the single story. There would have been many opportunities to tell the story of a queer Muslim woman in Iran and Saudi Arabia or an encounter between a gay teenager and an older man in the lavatories of a train station that would have perpetuated the stereotypes with which we are so often confronted. Golnoosh Nour ("Happy Ending") and Neil Bartlett ("Twickenham") created complex characters and scenarios with round characters (and, in my opinion, very credible teenage minds) that give you a completely different view. Throughout the book, I found, the round characters provided a welcome change from often stereotypical depictions of, e.g. gay teenagers, working-class children, trans women, people who are HIV positive, street sweepers (not that I have come across that many before), and Muslim families. In the MAINSTREAM anthology, you will find stories written from the point of view of children and elderly people with dementia and everything in between. In fact, the stories are arranged according to the age of the characters and that makes for a very interesting read (says the person who likes to jump around in anthologies). Some of the recurring topics are the barriers that marginalised people encounter in the UK and beyond – and it’s not just London or England and not just contemporary settings – experiences of a pressure to conform as well as the search for and finding ones 'tribe'. Hedy Hume’s "The Beach" is such a story about the life-changing effect that the encounter of a loving community and becoming part of it can have. Some stories are told in retrospect from a more mature perspective, so we’re observing the characters trying to make sense of their lives and how they got where they are now. In "The Beach", the retrospective is interrupted by some memories on another time level, while the act of remembering and sense-making is solved differently in other contributions. In Neil Bartlett’s "Twickenham", the narrator thinks about the many "kinds of silence there are in this story" and how these could be seen as "places we might need to get back to, if we are ever to understand how we got from there to here". Families play a rather important role throughout the anthology. As they do in life, I guess. Here, I felt they were often included as the first space in which the characters explored their identities – or the first collective that demanded conformity ("people like us aren’t like that" – Nathan Evans, "Going Up, Going Down"). Many contributions directly or indirectly allude to the past and the families of their protagonists. How families can be a loving and nurturing environment, or how they can have a detrimental effect on the very fabric of your body (an allusion to "Scaffolding" by Giselle Leeb). And in some cases, the reflection of the protagonists can change their perception of the past: “sometimes the way we choose to love perpetuates the damage we seek to diminish.” (Alex Hopkins, "Last Visit") However, the stories are never just about one thing, one aspect of a character’s identity, one issue with the family or one ‘problem’ they need to overcome. They are also not 'just' about the struggles the off-mainstream characters face, even though it does play a role how the characters are marginalised and hindered in their choices by ‘mainstream’ society. Or how they are discriminated within what one could see as ‘their own’ community at first glance, e.g. for being gay and HIV-positive. The 30 stories leave lots of space to come to one’s own conclusion. And they also provide opportunities to check your own perception and maybe even your own tendency to pigeon-hole as you read.” – Sandra van Lente, Literary Field; "Mainstream, the new anthology of short stories from Inkandescent, is a kaleidoscope of experiences. For a reviewer, this is a challenge — it seemed almost impossible to compress each narrative together into one single review. The resounding message from the collection, ‘stories from the edges’, is as promised in the title and also more – these are universal challenges told from the margins, but also with the ugliness and discomfort which is symptom of demystifying hard truths. Mainstream should come with a trigger warning: it’s furious and it doesn’t take prisoners. You can expect to feel uncomfortable as you intrude on the lives of each of the narrators in these works. You can also rest assured that nothing will be glamorised for your benefit. David and Evans write in their introduction that their publishing company was: founded "by outsiders for outsiders", to celebrate original and diverse talent and to publish voices and stories the mainstream neglects – specifically those of the working class and financially disadvantaged, ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community and, crossing the Venn diagram, those with physical disabilities and mental health issues. From this, you can gain that Mainstream will not be a smooth or homogenous read, but I also had my concerns upon reading this. Would it be one of those book collections that only accepted each ‘minority’ writer under a certain condition? That they might be compelled to only talk about their particular disadvantage? But Inkandescent are more aware than that. While each story does chime with the next, following a coming-of-age trajectory that navigates desire, identity and self-worth, there is very little else that joins each of the writers together. Whether you are reading about the fantastical island of Massor in Bidisha’s 'The Initiation' or the heart-wrenching autofiction-esque talk on a park bench in DJ Cornell’s 'Coup de Grace', there is a lack of pandering to a reader’s desire for a similar tone or genre. There are no heroic, plain and likeable underdogs. Cruelty and neglect are systemic to the five very different childhoods that are presented in the opening five stories by Kathy Hoyle, Lui Sit, Padrika Tarrant, Lisa Goldman and Gaylene Gould respectively. The distorted grip on reality that each of these young narrators show reveal real worlds that have turned against them, although some understandings of this are better than others. In Lisa Goldman’s 'Easy Peelers', the death of a loved one and the discrediting of the working class are recounted through the easily impressionable nature of a young girl. With her mastery of the slightly-altered language in this piece, the writer shows how an impressionable mind is shifted from what is real into the dominant version of a tragedy: where being an 'easy peeler' is due to your own laziness, where ‘England’s plugged into the sun’ and it’s ‘making the world better […] because we’re the best and things are bad', and finally where the 'May Day Massacre' can be quickly softened into the 'London riots'. Innocence is synonymous with invisibility, and imaginative inner worlds are often discredited in these stories – 'we’d just read a story about an alien who talked to a flower [..] she had to believe me,' Lui Sit’s narrator writes in 'Giant’' and yet his inner world must be disbelieved if he is to conform to his mother’s idea of the real world. The final story I wanted to single out from this impressive, opening five was Gaylene Gould’s 'The Spinney'. Tracing the movement through puberty of a young woman, Gould presents stigmas around period shame and rape culture in the unfolding of a painful warning tale. The power of myths written in to cover up a taboo, in this case the 'Witch' who is fabricated in the place of a rape at school, holds such influence that it remains with the narrator even when she reaches adulthood with a daughter of her own — 'Elaine breaks into a run and with each breathless step reminds herself that she is no longer ten years old, and that there is no such thing as witches, especially those that come to take your bleeding daughter as retribution.' The power of the myth is tangible and silencing, leaving a terrible taste in the reader’s mouth. Being susceptible to the power of someone (or something) else is also another ongoing presence throughout the collection, and there are no sudden acts of heroism or deus ex machinas popping out through the structures of any of these stories. Neil Bartlett’s 'Twickenham', Golnoosh Nour’s 'Happy Ending', Juliet Jacques’s 'A Review of "A Return"', Justin David’s 'Serosorting' and Keith Jarrett’s 'It May Concern' all resonate in their navigation of love and its disturbing relationship with power. Sometimes brutally sensory and exciting, other times revealing the blandness of casual relationships, self-worth is often a victim here. As Keith Jarrett’s narrator writes — 'I searched for the ugliness I thought I deserved'. Being an object of desire also feeds off these narrators, and relationships are formed out of disassociations where even being named becomes a danger — 'if you name something, you can fix it to you'. There is also a lonely beauty in the language and detail of these stories too, like this passage from Neil Bartlett’s 'Twickenham': 'Most inexplicably of all, there’s a piano — really — a great, big, black grand piano– something I didn’t know anybody had in their house — and it seems to be collecting all the light in the room. The lid is a pool of oil — and there’s a sheet of music on it, floating. It looks like something somebody must have lost.' Another connection to make between these stories is an obsession with physical and psychological dismorphias. Giselle Leeb’s haunting 'Scaffolding' is a frightening study of the psychosomatic, finding parallels with DJ Connell’s comment in 'Coup de Grace' that 'this caring for the bruises of others was what had me trapped'. The AIDS crisis looms in several of the stories too – it is a grim shadow running through the bodies and psyches of multiple characters. Justin David’s character in 'Serosorting' pointedly marks it as the 'grubby stains of mortality… an infection running through us all […] we are all unclean'. Polis Loizou’s 'Pixmalion' is a subtle study of the impact of social media on the modern relationship. Louizou’s multimedia narrative describes the defensive rhythms of messaging a stranger online, and the desire to seem both unattainable and uninterested: 'There’s a "sticker" on the photo, with a flame emoji to slide up so as to express your lust for him. It takes Herculean effort, but I only slide the flame to just over halfway. I’m sure I’m alone in doing so. Let his ego be starved a little; the doubt may even nourish him.' This piece exposes those safe, 'screen' flirtations which usually trail off immediately. It is brilliantly captured. Iqbal Hussein’s 'The Reluctant Bride' is the study of the Partition, in which the harsh politics of love are told through the allure of an almost unbelievable fairy tale. A homage to the magical realist format, a semi-real churail narrates the piece with a playful layering of stories and a spine that 'rat-a-tats like a burst of firecrackers'. Full of imagination yet equally weighted and painful, I was glad that the curators of this anthology included the more fantastical and speculative genres alongside pieces that were more obviously social commentary. Mainstream is blunt, sexy and unapologetic. I was intrigued by the liveliness of each voice that Inkandescent gave ear to, and the great difficulty for a reviewer trying to pull each of the works together. Each story is its own very different act of defiance, making for an unexpected and addictive read.” – Georgie Proctor, The Word Factory

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Book SynopsisCovering US foreign policy from 1945 to the present day, an anthology of specially commissioned stories by authors from across the globe addressing America's history of intervention.

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Book SynopsisIn the title story, Inspector Dreadlock Holmes and his sidekick Rudeyard Fly are sent for by the Criminal Investigation Department of Middleham-by-Sea - a little town known for tea shops, pet shops, and florists - in short, a rustic retreat for naughty weekends. Keen to kick-start their diversity policy, the Department sends for two Black cops who see this as a chance to prove their cross-cultural mettle and solve the brutal attack on Lord Montagu, a controversial political figure found unconscious with a courgette by his side. In other stories, an Anansi spider stows away on the Windrush, Cod and Chips are usurped by Chicken Tikka Marsala, and a white landscape gardener who admires Capability Brown has a mixed-race child, Cosmopolitan Brown, who is dispossessed by voices from history, including that of Martin Luther King. Surreal and playful, John Agard's stories reveal hidden truths that subtly change our view of who we are and where we come from.Trade Review'... If Agard had not already been forged in the roller-coaster aftermath of empire, there would be an urgent need for society to invent someone like him' FINANCIAL TIMES

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Book SynopsisIntertitles is an anthology of work situated at the intersection of writing and the visual arts. The anthology aims to explore their confluence and is conceived in response to a twofold observation: the increased presence of written, spoken and performed language in the work of visual artists and the simultaneous increase in visibility and circulation of the work and voices of writers in the visual arts arena.Bringing together a substantial and significant collection of work, the anthology recognises that both writers and artists are attracted to the possibilities of language as a material. Through essays, performance texts, scores, poetry and more, Intertitles plots a course through contemporary writing practices and lends perspective to the question of why this might be of particular interest at this moment in time.In art as in poetry, meaning is made in the very conditions of the encounter itself. The knowledge produced is not instructive or strictly informational but subjective and relational. Artists build the worlds that viewers may inhabit temporarily in the moment of their becoming. The physicality of these temporary utopias, however, is frequently realised in the contested spaces of our museums and galleries. This anthology asks if poetry, and the world it is capable of building outside of these normative structures, is poised to be the most constitutive form of all. Putting poetry into the social milieu, as a shared goal of artists and writers, might be understood as a gesture towards a truly radical reimagining.

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Book SynopsisSeven Rooms brings together highlights from Hotel, a magazine for new approaches to fiction, non-fiction & poetry which, since its inception in 2016, provided a space for experimental reflection on literature's status as art & cultural mediator. Co-published by Tenement Press and Prototype, this anthology captures, refracts, and reflects a vital moment in independent publishing in the UK, and is built on the shared values of openness, collaboration, and total creative freedom.Table of ContentsFeaturing, in order of appearance ... Mario Dondero, Erica Baum, Jess Cotton, Rebecca Tamas, Stephen Watts, Helen Cammock, Salvador Espriu, Lucy Mercer, Lucy Sante, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Ryan Choi, John Yau, Nicolette Polek, Chris Petit, Sascha Macht, Amanda DeMarco, Mark Lanegan, Vala Thorodds, Richard Scott, Joshua Cohen, Hannah Regel, Nick Cave, Daisy Lafarge, Holly Pester, Matthew Gregory, Olivier Castel, Emmanuel Iduma, Joan Brossa, Cameron Griffiths, Imogen Cassels, Hisham Bustani, Maia Tabet, Raul Guerrero, Velimir Khlebnikov, Natasha Randall, Edwina Atlee, Matthew Shaw, Aidan Moffat, Lesley Harrison, Oliver Bancroft, Lauren de Sa Naylor, Will Eaves, Sandro Miller, Jim Hugunin, Levina van Winden, Aram Saroyan, Glykeria Patramani, Will Oldham, Antonio Tabucchi, Yasmine Seale, Elizabeth Harris, Nina Mingya Powles, Isabel Galleymore, Makiko Faruichi, Jason Shulman, Jeffrey Vallance, Preti Taneja, Stanley Schtinter, the Wayne Koestenbaum papers ( Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library), Sophie Seita, Ralf Webb, Jonathan Chandler, Iain Sinclair, SJ Fowler, Cass McCombs, David Grubbs, Agustin Fernandez Mallo, Pere Joan, Thomas Bunstead, Adrian Bridget and John Divola. With a foreword by Dominic J. Jaeckle & Jess Chandler, and an afterword by Gareth Evans.

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Book SynopsisCollection, colonialism, translation, and the ephemera that shapes the stories we tell about ourselves.Featuring new original works by: Yásnaya Elena Aguilar, Cristina Rivera Garza, Joseph Zárate, Juan Cárdenas, Velia Vidal, Lina Meruane, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Dolores Reyes, Carlos Fonseca, Djamila RibeiroThe Central and South American collection at the British Museum collections contains approximately 62,000 objects, spanning 10,000 years of human history. The vast majority cannot be displayed, and those objects are the subject of Untold Microcosms , a collection of ten stories from ten Latin American writers, and inspired by the narratives about our past that we create through museums, in spite of their gaps and disarticulations.Trade Review

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Book SynopsisExplorers, Dreamers and Thieves is an adventure through memory and archives. This book is an exercise in invention that emerges from the complex history of encounter between Europe and the Americas. Following the success ofUntold Microcosms which saw ten Latin American authors write stories inspired by objects from their countries held by the British Museum the curatorial team at the Museum and at Hay Festival have joined forces again, this time with a slightly different proposal.Six writers Selva Almada ,Rita Indiana ,Josefa Sánchez ,Philippe Sands ,Juan Gabriel Vásquez andGabriela Weiner were invited to examine a series of ethnographic documents: a profusion of diaries, letters, drawings, thoughts and transactions, all referring to the acquisition of works for the collection. Using this material as a starting point, they were asked to imagine narratives about the people involved in bringing those pieces to the museum. The journey through these texts is not unlike the one that, i

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Book SynopsisA collection of twelve new contemporary short stories by Welsh writers, representing the winners of the 2024 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. Including short biographical notes on the authors.

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Book SynopsisGhosts and vampires, zombies and werewolves. A mirror with danger at its heart. A child is delighted to discover she is a witch, and a village disappears under a fairy curse. Then a selkie finds her way back to the waves, before a blood moon rises, bringing its own secrets ... Full of the spooky and the gothic, fairy tales and poetry, this is a brilliant and intriguing collection where nothing and no one is as they seem. Bringing together authors from across the UK: featuring Penny Ayers, Michael Bartlett, Patrick Booth, Amaris Chase, Holly Anne Crawford, Ivor Daniel, Amanda Jane Davies, Daphne Denley, J. J. Drover, Harriet Hitchen, Rebecca McDowall, Jane Phillips, Angela Reddaway, Joe Robson, Margaret Royall, with illustrations by Lorna Gray

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Book SynopsisThis is a rather unusual reference work. With elements of index, dictionary, encyclopaedia, concordance, and collection of quotations, it has been designed to act as a comprehensive and accessible guide to the whole of the Complete Works. Sangharakshita?s life of creative engagement with the world of reading, writing, and knowledge began with the years he spent, confined to bed by a childhood illness, absorbed in the many volumes of an encyclopaedia, and he once declared that ?the most useful book in the world, leaving aside the scriptures, is the dictionary?. There?s a pleasing symmetry in the completion of his Complete Works by a reference work of his own. Sangharakshita once said that a dictionary is full of interesting surprises, and that is certainly true of this concordance. It answers one?s questions, raises other questions, and above all it is full of signposts to help the reader find their own particular way through the vast forest of the Dharma.

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Book Synopsis"Basking in the twilight of Late Romanticism, Meier ...finds the rays seductive but damaging ...Meier's sophisticated debut promises further developments."-Publishers Weekly on Terrain Vague Domesticity, nature, and heartbreak inhabit this seriously playful second collection. Through precise description and inventive vocabulary, Meier's poems are relentless in their efforts to sincerely address contemporary uncertainty and love. A great book for readers looking to rediscover Romantic poetry: "Embrace was a word first used of forts, / until the one body fell down inside the other body, and was lost."

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Book SynopsisArchetypes are real. Muses are real. Writers are the channels of these spirits & if that sounds like witchcraft that's because it is. These stories gave me chills. Sylvia Plath & Lana Del Rey course through the veins of these dark, sexy, mind-bending, fantastical, romantic, & haunting tales. Authors from different genres came together in their love & passion for these muses.

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Book Synopsis“The home of great, sex-driven stories from female creators, across a wide variety of genres, genders, and sexualities.” — i09 The future of filth is here! The latest in the Smut Peddler series of erotic anthologies, Sex Machine is a stellar array of comics talent taking sex to the furthest reaches of your imagination. Whether it’s out in wild space or deep in coded virtual realms, the galaxy’s sexiest robots, cyborgs, AI’s, and some humans here and there explore their hottest desires in the bravest of new worlds. Our most wildly inventive collection yet, Sex Machine reminds fans of quality filth why Smut Peddler is the last word in top-shelf sexy comics. Featuring the work of FIONA STAPLES, FAITH ERIN HICKS, MEREDITH MCCLAREN, BLUE DELLIQUANTI, and many more!Trade Review“A full array of relationships, bodies, situations, and art styles. Consent is present and enthusiastic.” — LOVE IN PANELS “[Smut Peddler] proved once and for all that erotic comics focusing on women’s sexualities could sell.” — THE MARY SUE “Features titillating technological tales from more than a dozen superstar creators.” — PASTE MAGAZINE “The home of great, sex-driven stories from female creators, across a wide variety of genres, genders, and sexualities.” — i09

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Book SynopsisBrittle Paper''s "Anticipated African Books of 2024" From Short Story Day Africa, eleven writers from Africa and the African diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive us apart. Passion and apathy, creation and destruction, honesty and deception—the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts, the writers of Captive investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans. Journey from the fantastical Heaven’s Mouth where time stands still, to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the songs of Tom Jones . . . flip the page to Ghana to examine a fertility fetish, or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us . . . visit the deceptively beautiful islands off the Tanzanian coast, where the ocean is always hungry, and women pay the price. Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the shape-shifting nature of the soul.

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Book SynopsisFast Fallen Women includes 75 previously unpublished pieces on the topic of the ways in which women fall— whether they reach the boundaries of their lives and take flight, whether they stumble, or are pushed over the edge. Holding a compact mirror up to life, given that all the essays are under 750 words, the book bears witness to women's resilience, creativity, and wit as women write about rising up against all odds. With new and original works by Amy Tan, Jane Smiley, Bobbie Ann Mason, Caroline Leavitt, Darien Hsu Gee, Honor Moore, and Lynn Peril, as well as a dazzling range of emerging authors writing from diverse perspectives, ages 20-92,Fast Fallen Women gives whispered conversations a full voice.Table of Contents1. Maggie Mitchell— Party Girl 2. Caroline Leavitt— Lousy Dancer 3. Amy Tan— Fallen Woman 4. Marna Deitch— Woman on the Motorcycle, Riding Alone 5. Ebony Murphy-Root— Feeling 39 6. Deboarh Hochman Turvey— Planned Parenthood 7. Honor Moore— Good Calcium and a Red Sky 8. Pamela Katz— Breaking Ground 9. Jane Smiley— Looking Up 10. Kelly Andrews Babcock— Bruce Whore 11. Darien Hsu Gee— Platitudes 12. Gina Barreca— The Other Woman 13. Jianna Heuer— That Girl 14. Heidi Rockefeller— Stability 15. Ilene Beckerman— Good Girls 16. Rosie Gonzalez— Leveling the Playing Feild 17. Katherine Jimenez— Rubbers 18. Emily Heiden— Uncharted 19. Anne Bagamery— Feminism and Mom 20. Nicole Catarino— Rituals 21. Michelle Carter— Hystorechtomy Hysteria5 22. Louisa Ballhaus— I Can Keep aSsecret 23. Claire Lasher— Gingerbread Woman 24. Pia Bertucci— Baba’ s Mirror 25. Pat Myers— Burnice Kotkin 26. Lynn Peril— Summer 1976 27. Jennifer Rizzo— On Some Days 28. Lisa Douglas— Paper Robes and Good Panties 29. Madiha Shafqat— Roti-making dreams 30. Greta Scheibel— Beware of the which bites 31. Emily Toth— When Your Friends Say “ OOH LA LA” 32. Jennifer Scharf— First Kiss 33. Kylie Ramia— Sweet Tooth 34. Meredith Tibbetts— Hope and Pain 35. Sarite Konier— POP Star 36. Jessie Lubka— The Toxic Friend 37. Melissa Llarena— Imagine a Better Way 38. Laura Pope— Aspiring Mother 39. Joyce Saltman— Virgins and Sluts: Then and Now 40. Amy Hartle Sherman— Taking Off 41. Kelsey Tynik— When Will Enough Be Enough? 42. Bobbie Ann Mason— Bobbycoddle 43. Sydney Melocowsky— How to Scramble an Egg 44. Joan Seigler Sidney— How I Escaped Mom’ s Voice 45. Angela Bonavoglia— Close Encounters of the Episcopal Kind 46. Krysia Carmel— Nelson Life Alert 47. Monique Heller— Green Beans 48. Erica Buehler— Worth my Salt 49. Cindy Eastman— Moving Out; Moving In 50. Dana Starr— Put out to Pasture 51. Angel Johnstone— Taking It Off 52. Cristina Caruk— Falling for the Baby 53. Pat Pannell— Lost and Found 54. Susan Cossette— Letter to My 18-Year-Old Self 55. Melissa Johnson— Old Friends 56. Kim Hanson— The Iron and the Belt 57. Bonnie Jean Feldkamp— Depths of the Damned 58. Julie Danis— Hostage for a Prayer 59. Kathleen Jones— Virtue Signaling 60. Brenda Murphy— Salem Witches 61. Barbara Cooley— A Singel Woman 62. Jane Cook— Scar 63. Erin Brochu— Good as Nude 64. Jennifer Forrest— Getting up 65. Cara E. Kilgallen— Rituals & Resurgence: 66. Carol Gieg— Swept Off My Feet 6 67. Misty Knight— A Calculated Fall 68. Cecilia Gigliotti— Psycho Killer, Twelve Years Old 69. Heidi Woods— Falling in Love While Falling Apart 70. Amy Mullis— Rebel Pants 71. Tammy Rose— In Clover 72. Emily Raymond— The Couch Story 73. Mia Yanosy— The Gift 74. Joan Muller— Nursery Rhymes 75. Emma Corby— Emerald Shoes

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Book SynopsisBe transported to a realm of magical kingdoms, mysterious beings and mythical lands.Japanese Folktales is the most complete collection of Japanese stories in English. It introduces readers to the enchanting world of ghouls, goblins, ogres, sea kings, magical birds, dragons and of course, Momotaro, the lovable Peach Boy.Japanese folklore is richly imaginative and the 22 classic stories presented here are some of the most popular tales ever told, including: The story of goldfish dancers and carp musicians who entertain a brave warrior The tale of a lonely girl whose life is changed by a shining disc left by her mother The explanation of how the jellyfish lost its bones The adventures of a boy born from a peach that washes up on a riverbank These well-loved folktales are sure to delight readers young and old, while introducing them to vivid world of Japanese myths and legends.Trade Review"Drawn from many Japanese sources and enhanced with dozens of woodcut-style drawings by Tokyo artist Kakuz Fujiyama, the stories succeed in meeting Ozaki's intention "to interest young readers of the West." Most intriguing is Fraser's encouragement of a more critical reading, with an eye toward imperialist expansion, indigenous conflict, and gender inequity, issues as prevalent today as in centuries past." --Booklist

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Book SynopsisJapanese Legends and Folklore invites English speakers into the intriguing world of Japanese folktales, ghost stories and historical eyewitness accounts. With a fascinating selection of stories about Japanese culture and history, A.B. Mitford—who lived and worked in Japan as a British diplomat—presents a broad cross section of tales from many Japanese sources. Discover more about practically every aspect of Japanese life—from myths and legends to society and religion. This book features 30 fascinating Japanese stories, including: The Forty-Seven Ronin—the famous, epic tale of a loyal band of Samurai warriors who pay the ultimate price for avenging the honor of their fallen master. The Tongue-Cut Sparrow—a good-hearted old man is richly rewarded when he begs forgiveness from a sparrow who is injured by his spiteful, greedy wife. The Adventures of Little Peach Boy—a tale familiar to generations of Japanese children, a small boy born from a peach is adopted by a kindly childless couple. Japanese Sermons—a selection of sermons written by a priest belonging to the Shingaku sect, which combines Buddhist, Shinto and Confucian teachings. An Account of Hara-Kiri—Mitford's dramatic first person account of a ritual Samurai suicide, the first time it had been reported in English. Thirty-one reproductions of woodblock prints bring the classic tales and essays to life. These influential stories helped shape the West's understanding of Japanese culture. A new foreword by Professor Michael Dylan Foster sheds light on the book's importance as a groundbreaking work of Japanese folklore, literature and history.Trade Review"One of the first and in many ways still one of the best books on Japan." --The Japan Times"An excellent introduction to Japanese literature." --Mainichi Daily News"Mitford's collection and observations have held through to today, a century and a half later. His reporting is accurate and reflects the mindset of Japanese people then and now. This book is not only extremely interesting to read but also should be required reading for anyone studying Japanese culture." --Journal of Folklore Research

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