Anna Vaught – författare

The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 - or perhaps why she stole him.

The Alchemy is a robust, frank and loving guide to an often opaque industry. As well as offering tips on working in gentle increments and re-imagining what productivity and the work of writing looks like, there is advice on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go. Let's do this together.

A beautifully written, lyrical work, Her Winter Song is a folkloric fable about white horses, shadows, possession and terrible deeds in the Wiltshire uplands that gives a firm nod to the classic ghost-story writer M.R. James, and, with the help of the gorgeous illustrations by Maya Chessman, breathes new life into winters yet to come.

After the death of her steady, constraining husband, Catherine discovers that grief can be a liberation. With her adult children appalled by her sudden transformations, and a strangely familiar presence in the house urging her on, she begins to test the boundaries of who she might become. A call arrives on her newly purchased phone – a widower, Alec, still dialling the number once owned by his dead wife. What follows is a transgressive, intoxicating relationship built on longing, lies and the hunger to feel alive. All the Days I Did Not Live is a haunting exploration of loneliness, taboo and the dangerous, but delicious, magic of reinvention – where freedom comes at a cost and even the ghosts refuse to stay quiet…

In this dark and toothsome collection, Anna Vaught enters a strange world of apocryphal feasts and disturbing banquets. Famished explores the perils of selfish sensuality and trifle while child rearing, phantom sweetshop owners, the revolting use of sherbet in occult rituals, homicide by seaside rock, and the perversion of Thai Tapas. Once, that is, you've been bled dry from fluted cups by pretty incorporeals and learned about consuming pride in the hungriest of stately homes. Famished: seventeen stories to whet your appetite and ruin your dinner.

This diverse and varied anthology of short fiction, essays and poems confronts our present political `tempestuous' times. Some of the contributions have a science-fiction flavour to include dystopian, authoritarian and imagined worlds.

Writer Phillip Lopate described the essay as ‘an open-ended adventure, an invitation to doubt and self-surprise’. The essays in this special issue use the form as a platform to allow a multitude of voices to ring clear, inviting us to explore topics as varied as nature, trauma, last lines of poetry, and Esperanto.Featuring writing by Tom Bailey, Susmita Bhattacharya, Bonnie Lander Johnson, Constance Kresge, Christopher Linforth, Zachary D. Shell, Rob McClure Smith, Charlie J. Stephens, S.Y. Tam, Jack Young, and Anna Vaught