Reaching out and Other Stories and Poems (Paperback)

Reaching Out introduces new and emerging voices in short story and poetry. Joanna Campbell's Carr's 'Aurora and the Book Trolley' spins us into fantasy worlds woven by a child who uses a medical dictionary to role play adults into territories way outside their comfort zones - "it's her way of reaching out to people" her mother confides to a confused hospital librarian, whilst Tyler Keevil's winning short story is literally 'Reaching Out', as a man driving down a mountain picks up a young hitch-hiker carrying something strange and as their stories entwine. In Frances Spurrier's winning poems vodka stains light "with a translucent guilt" and "images of the great and the good line the tube walls". The details are precise and visceral "Around are piers of shallow chalk lit into wide bays of flint, / shifting dunes and marram grass." A wonderful range of new voices in poetry and fiction.