Lucy Caldwell

Intimacies exquisitely charts the steps and missteps of young women trying to find their place in the world. From a Belfast student ordering illegal drugs online to end an unwanted pregnancy to a young mother's brush with mortality; from a Christmas Eve walking the city centre streets when everything seems possible, to a night flight from Canada which could change a life irrevocably, these are stories of love, loss and exile, of new beginnings and lives lived away from 'home'. Taking in, too, the lives of other women who could be guiding lights - from Monica Lewinsky to Caroline Norton to Sinéad O'Connor - Intimacies offers keenly felt and subtly revealing insights into the heartbreak and hope of modern life.

Intimacies

From Belfast to London and back again the ten stories that comprise Caldwell's first collection explore the many facets of growing up - the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative - or 'the drunkenness of things being various'. Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.

Multitudes

Edited by prize-winning author and playwright Lucy Caldwell,Being Various brings together original stories from Ireland's current golden age of writing with some exciting new voices, never before published. Following her own brilliant short story collectionMultitudes, Lucy Caldwell guest edits the sixth volume of Faber's long running series of new Irish short stories, continuing the great work started by the late David Marcus and subsequent guest editors Kevin Barry, Deirdre Madden and Joseph O'Connor. Contributors to this richly diverse collection include: Kevin Barry Eimear McBride Lisa McInerney Stuart Neville Sally Rooney Kit de Waal Belinda McKeon

Being Various

Yakinliklar

These Days

The much-anticipated new collection from the BBC National Short Story Award-winning author of Multitudes and Intimacies.
I still sometimes wonder if one could draw a window in the wall, or in the air, and step through it together. To somewhere else, entirely new.

From a passionate affair in Blitz-era London, to a highly charged Christmas party in Belfast, to a trip to Marrakech which could form a new family, the thirteen striking stories of Openings pulse with possibility and illuminate those fleeting but recognisable moments of heartbreak and hope that can change the course of a life.

Openings

Georgina Harding

Danny Rhodes

Rory Gleeson

Richard Smyth

A group of teenage boys take turns assessing each other’s changing bodies before a Friday night disco… A grieving woman strikes up an unlikely friendship with a fellow traveller on a night train to Kiev… An unusually well-informed naturalist is eyed with suspicion by his comrades on a forest exhibition with a higher purpose… The stories shortlisted for the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University take place in liminal spaces – their characters find themselves in transit, travelling along flight paths, train lines and roads, or in moments where new opportunities or directions suddenly seem possible. From the reflections of a new mother flying home after a funeral, to an ailing son’s reluctance to return to the village of his childhood, these stories celebrate small kindnesses in times of turbulence, and demonstrate a connection between one another that we might sometimes take for granted. The BBC NSSA is one of the most prestigious prizes for a single short story, with the winning author receiving £15,000, and four further shortlisted authors £600 each. James Runcie is joined on the judging panel by a group of acclaimed writers and critics including: Booker Prize shortlisted novelist Fiona Mozley; award winning writer, poet and winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize, Derek Owusu; multi-award winning Irish novelist and short story writer, Donal Ryan; and returning judge, Di Speirs, Books Editor at BBC Radio.

The BBC National Short Story Award 2021

Two sisters, four nights, one city. April, 1941. Belfast has escaped the worst of the war - so far. Over the next two months, it's going to be destroyed from above, so that people will say, in horror, My God, Belfast is finished. Many won't make it through, and no one who does will remain unchanged. Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz, These Days is a timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.

Adam Roberts

Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Sarah Schofield

Toby Litt

Julian Gough

Claire Dean

Sean O'Brien

Stuart Evers

Robin Yassin-Kassab

Martyn Bedford

Margaret Wilkinson

Zoe Lambert

Adam Marek

Joanna Quinn

Andy Hedgecock

K.J. Orr

Annie Kirby

Dinesh Allirajah

Computers are changing. Soon the silicon chip will seem like a clunky antique amid the bounty of more exotic processes on offer. Robots are changing too; material evolution and swarm intelligence are creating a new generation of devices that will diverge and disperse into a balanced ecosystem of humans and ‘robjects’ (robotic objects). Somewhere in between, we humans will have to change also… in the way we interact with technology, the roles we adopt in an increasingly ‘intelligent’ environment, and how we interface with each other. The driving motors behind many of these changes will be artificial life (A-Life) and unconventional computing. How exactly they will impact on our world is still an open question. But in the spirit of collective intelligence, this anthology brings together 38 scientists and authors, working in pairs, to imagine what life (and A-Life) will look like in the year 2070. Every kind of technology is imagined: from lie-detection glasses to military swarmbots, brain-interfacing implants to synthetically ‘grown’ skyscrapers, revolution-inciting computer games to synthetically engineered haute cuisine. All artificial life is here. Featuring scientific contributions from: Martyn Amos, J. Mark Bishop, Seth Bullock, Stephen Dunne, James Dyke, Christian Jantzen, Francesco Mondada, James D. O'Shea, Andrew Philippides, Lenka Pitonakova, Steen Rasmussen, Thomas S. Ray, Micah Rosenkind, James Snowdon, Susan Stepney, Germán Terrazas, Andrew Vardy and Alan Winfield. Supported by TRUCE (Training and Research in Unconventional Computation in Europe).

Stories From an A-Life Future

Beta-Life

Two Sisters, Four Nights, One City

We are where we come from?' That's not true. That's not true because if that's true there's no hope for any of us. Lori is coming home from her first term at university. It's only been a few weeks and already things have gone badly wrong. But none of the rest of the family knows, or understands, what really happened. In this fiercely observed family drama, three teenage girls struggle to define who they are, and why, and where they might be going. Leaves won the George Devine Award 2006, the premier award for new writing by an emerging playwright in the UK and Ireland. The play opened at the Druid Theatre, Galway in March 2007 before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London.

Leaves

Theatre & Performance Biographical File].

Judy's my mom. It's an understatement to say she's a bit of a hippy. I mean who else but a New Ager calls their baby 'Philosophy Rainbow'? I try to go by 'Sophie'. Sophie and Calliope have never been to school. Their mum ran away from home when she was seventeen to join the New Age movement and the girls were raised in a series of ashrams, communes and impromptu raves. When Sophie gets ill, they return to Birmingham - a strange new world where meditation and tree-hugging are replaced with maths homework and TV and the grandmother they have never met. And it's against this bewildering new backdrop - the normality she's always longed for - that Sophie must come to terms with her mortality. Lucy Caldwell's Notes to Future Self opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in February 2011.

Notes to Future Self

It is Belfast in the 1980s and Daisy and Saoirse are living through the hottest summer ever. The yard is too hot, their mother keeps flying off the handle and their father doesn't come home until late. Things aren't improved by the neighbourhood children who call them names and leave nasty things on their doorstep. Police sirens whine through the streets at night and Daisy asks why they can't have a mural painted on their house like the other houses down the road. Then one day a tragedy occurs and life changes for good. Ten years later Saoirse is in Gweebarra Bay in Southern Ireland, living with her aunt and uncle, far from the sadness of her childhood in Belfast. She has managed to hook a good-looking local lad and is preparing for the school dance. But there is still an aching absence in her life and soon she will discover that her extended family is holding the secret to what really happened when she left her childhood home.

Where They Were Missed

When Lara was twelve, and her younger brother Alfie eight, their father died in a helicopter crash. A prominent plastic surgeon, and Irishman, he had honed his skills on the bomb victims of the Troubles. But the family grew up used to him being absent: he only came to London for two weekends a month to work at the Harley Street Clinic, where he met their mother years before, and they only once went on a family holiday together, to Spain, where their mother cried and their father lost his temper and left early. Because home, for their father, wasn't Earls Court: it was Belfast, where he led his other life... Narrated by Lara, nearing forty and nursing her dying mother, All the Beggars Riding is the heartbreaking portrait of a woman confronting her past just as she realises that time is running out

All the Beggars Riding

Jo Lloyd

Tamsin Grey

Lynda Clark

Jacqueline Crooks

A young boy takes delight in his mother’s ability to shapeshift from one animal to another, only realising how odd she is when it comes to parents’ evening . . . The values of a small farming village are challenged by talk of a well-heeled community living on the other side of the lake that only one person can see . . . A writer researching the life of a 19th century child custody reformer discovers all too many parallels between that century and ours . . . The stories shortlisted for the 2019 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University variously explore the sanctity of the home and family, and the instinct to defend what’s closest to us. Against a backdrop of danger or division, characters sometimes struggle – like the 15-year-old charged with looking after her siblings whilst her mother works through the night – and sometimes succumb – like the young woman who allows herself to be manipulated by an older, richer man. But in each case, these stories demonstrate what Nikki Bedi argues in her introduction: short stories are not a warm-up act, they’re the main event.

The BBC National Short Story Award 2019

Eley Williams

Kamila Shamsie

Luan Goldie

Martin Edwards

Nikita Lalwani

Julia Bell

Irfan Master

Bidisha

SJ Bradley

Jude Brown

Steve Chambers

Uschi Gatward

Gaia Holmes

Anna Lewis

Donny O'Rourke

Karline Smith

Kim Squirrell

Lucas Stewart

At a time that feels unprecedented in British politics – with unlawful prorogations of parliament, casual race-baiting by senior politicians, and a climate crisis that continues to be ignored – it’s easy to think these are uncharted waters for us, as a democracy. But Britain has seen political crises and far-right extremism before, just as it has witnessed regressive, heavy-handed governments. Much worse has been done, or allowed to be done, in the name of the people and eventually, those same people have called it out, stood up, resisted. In this new collection of fictions and essays, spanning two millennia of British protest, authors, historians and activists re-imagine twenty acts of defiance: campaigns to change unjust laws, protests against unlawful acts, uprisings successful and unsuccessful – from Boudica to Blair Peach, from the Battle of Cable Street to the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. Britain might not be famous for its revolutionary spirit, but its people know when to draw the line, and say very clearly, ‘¡No pasarán!’ This project has been supported by the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and the Lipman-Miliband Trust, as well as Arts Council England. Part of Comma's 'History-into-Fiction' series.

Stories of Uprising

Resist

When Euan and Ruth set off with their young daughter to live in Bahrain, it is meant to be an experience and adventure they will cherish. But on the night they arrive, Ruth discovers the truth behind the missionary work Euan has planned and feels her world start to crumble. Far from home, and with events spiralling towards war in nearby Iraq, she starts to question her faith - in Euan, in their marriage and in all she has held dear. With Euan so often away, she is confined to their guarded compound with her neighbours and, in particular, Noor, a troubled teenager recently returned to Bahrain to live with her father. Confronted by temptations and doubt, each must make choices that could change all of their lives for ever. Compelling, passionate and deeply resonant, The Meeting Point is a novel about idealism and innocence, about the unexpected turns life can take and the dangers and chances that await us.

The Meeting Point

Lucy Caldwell

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