Unthank Books – förlag

These twenty-two cleverly linked stories, written over two decades, trace a life from childhood to middle age. Beginning in Lancashire in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they follow a young girl as she becomes aware of what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a lover and a woman in a family where the relationships are

constantly changing. From a disappeared clutch of curlew’s eggs to the last piece of furniture left standing in a home, these bleak and funny stories bolster what is lost into poignant narratives; told with lyricism, economy and wit, they are observed with the unflinching eye of an incisive witness.

Gull Stones and Cuckoos is a clear-eyed, passionate and honest book of life-writing about contemporary country living in Norfolk.

Lost halls, early morning walks, stillness, fairy-light skies, telescopes on allotments, the loneliness of grief and the adventure of new places in rural Norfolk. The writers in this book are new to writing but their stories and observations are compellingly authentic.

This book has grown out of an Arts Council England project Rural Writes, a partnership between Norfolk Library and Information Service and Words and Women. 

This year’s anthology is an eclectic collection of high quality prose, a many-layered read of subtlety, passion, and depth. There are startling, compelling and moving texts: an insight into the dark and crippling relationships between husbands and wives, and the love between a father and daughter. Nocturnal visitors bivouac on the edge of vision, the lost follow a winter’s map. There is a rapid intellectual joy ride with a Komodo dragon. There are memories of haunted trees, the struggle for recognition and change, of living with the threat of sectarian violence, and so much more. This book reflects the way we live, hope and love now.

This is a book for the reader who wants to peel back the layers and wander through rich and complex worlds featuring winning entries from our annual new writing competition. This year’s guest judge Naomi Wood, author of The Godless Boys, has selected a range of texts that show us what it is to be alive in a time of change.

Jamilah Ahmed, Kate Harmond Allan, Deborah Arnander, Margaret Callaghan, Tricia Cresswell, Louise Dumayne, Kate Feld, Lilie Ferrari, Melissa Fu, Pia Ghosh-Roy, Guinevere Glasfurd, Sara Gowen, Anna Metcalfe, Clare Morgan, Helen Morris, Shiona Morton, Nasrin Parvaz, Marianne Picton, Ronne Randall, Kate Robinson, Cherise Saywell, Victoria Shropshire, Penny Simpson, Mary White

Tania Hershman is a former science journalist turned short story phenomenon. Her previous collections have attracted enormous praise and in this one she invites us to sample what life is like at the cutting edge of technology, where the future appears to be rushing ever faster to meet our present. Whether writing about genetics, laboratory etiquette, art and experimentation, or the simplest molecules that make up our myriad world, the stories exude the power of her precision prose. Ranging from poignant cameos and unlikely viewpoints to the most complex decisions humans can make, these extraordinary vignettes gently challenge our world view as we careen toward the unknown and ask us to assess what we wish to retain of ourselves, what to jettison, and what we hope to attain when we get there.

Stories from this, her third collection have been heard on Radio 4 and Radio 3.