Overheard by Jonathan Taylor
Winner of the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Fiction Anthology From village storytellers to nineteenth-century serialisations, from pub anecdotes to dramatic monologues, storytelling is an enduring art form. This collection of short stories reconnects storytelling with its oral and performative roots. There are stories here for performance, stories which play with sound, stories which dramatise conflicting voices, and stories which are musical in style. Because of the way these stories speak from the page, it doesn’t matter whether or not they are actually read out loud. Rather, these are stories which might equally be ‘performed’ on the reader’s mental stage, heard in the reader’s mind’s-ear. There is a burgeoning culture in the U.K. and beyond of oral story-telling and prose writers performing their work live, a culture which has developed out of the popularity of poetry in performance. There are numerous collections and anthologies which aim to capture the energy of performance poetry on the page. There is, though, no comparable literature for stories in performance – making this collection unique. In order to demonstrate the huge diversity of possible performance styles in prose, the collection mingles flash fiction with more sustained stories, genre fiction with realism, experimental pieces with oral storytelling. Contributors are similarly varied in their styles, backgrounds, experience and genres, and include Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Louis De Bernières, Adele Parks, Kate Pullinger, Adam Roberts, Michelene Wandor, Vanessa Gebbie, Judith Allnatt, Jo Baker, David Belbin, Panos Karnezis, Jane Holland, Gemma Seltzer, Ailsa Cox and Will Buckingham.
Jonathan Taylor's new novel is Melissa, which was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award 2016. His previous books include the novel Entertaining Strangers (Salt, 2012) and the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007). He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. He is editor of Overheard, an anthology of short stories for reading aloud.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781907773266 |
| ISBN 10 | 1907773266 |
| Title | Overheard |
| Author | Jonathan Taylor |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Salt Publishing |
| Year published | 2012-11-12 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Prizes | Winner of Saboteur Awards: Best Fiction Anthology 2013 (UK) |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |