A Book of Short Stories by Tabitha Potts

A Book of Short Stories by Tabitha Potts

Tabitha Potts's 'Crow Girl' is wonderfully eldritch and twisted ... Potts's character building is quite spellbinding

William J Brown in Horrified Magazine

Tabitha Potts' work is also outstanding... Crow Girl, also caught my eye. Told like a traditional fairy tale but using language in sparse, poetic and powerful ways, she follows the life of an abandoned child who is protected more effectively by animals rather than human society. Expelled from her village, she learns to assert a power that bridges human society with the natural world and ultimately acts as a healing force.

I. Rosenfeld for the British Fantasy Society

This illustrated short story collection is a showcase for some of the dark short fiction the author has had published in literary magazines and online. She is inspired by nature, folklore, myth and local history and her interest in how women survive in a patriarchal society.

Various stories by her have been short-listed in the Booker at Birkbeck creative writing award, the MIR Folktale Festival and the Royal Academy Pindrop Award among others and a new short story recently received an Honourable Mention from the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize.

You will find supernatural stories in this short collection as well as realist fiction. The themes which link these short stories are transformation and transfiguration. The author is interested in liminal spaces and thresholds between worlds - there are other influences on her work such as folklore, murder ballads, the Gothic and local history.

Some of these stories fit into the folk horror genre, such as The Djinn and The Bells of London Town set in East London and Crow Girl and Hagstone set in rural England.

The Djinn tells the story of an exorcism in a British Bangladeshi household while The Bells of London Town explores folklore about fairy bells and the famous nursery rhyme to create a story about a banker lured to his fate by the mysterious bells of the City.

Crow Girl tells a story of an outsider in a remote community who fights prejudice and abuse. Hagstone is set in Norfolk and tells the story of a female academic in the throes of a divorce who finds a witch bottle in her home. The Edge is a realist story told from the point of view of a young girl on holiday.