Spotlight Series

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson A chance break in a West End theatre production forces a derailed actress to confront her demons and offers her an opportunity to escape her past and live life to the full. Cora, a once promising actress, is trapped by circumstances and immobilised by a disheartening career path, failed relationships and a battered sense of self. Set against a background of a country split by politics and disjointed through lives that are increasingly isolated and lonely, this is a short, sharp story of small victories and immense moral courage. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson The living have always told themselves stories about the dead, but few of us stop to wonder if the dead ever tell tales of the living. Through the prism of Haskell's identity as a deaf poet come the themes of communication—or miscommunication—across worlds, languages and between the living and the dead. Mythical dogs, the dead who mourn the living, and the sorrow of those reincarnated, join hands around Jacqueline Haskell's unique and very personal poetic Ouija board to resonate with the living, the dead and all those in-between. As forcible as they are humorous, these are poignant and thought-provoking poems. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson A gripping tale of post-natal depression, this short story reads like a modern retelling of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and has much in common with Sarah Water' The Little Stranger in its realisation of psychological distress as a supernatural phenomenon. A new mother, traumatised by an arduous labour, tries to come to terms with being abandoned as a baby by Olivia, the mother she never knew. Set in the eponymous 'Strawberry Water', a mysterious 1920s country bungalow which overlooks a fast-flowing river, the story begins with a faded photograph of the woman our narrator assumes to be her mother. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson The experience of living with the adventures and griefs of bipolar disorder forms the focus for this remarkable collection of poetry. Ridout uses the language of the fairy story and visceral images of the female form and femininity to explore how personal trauma and instability makes their mark on the wider world. Different voices and twisted accounts of the body and mind are combined with the mythological and the esoteric to create striking, beautifully unsettling and unusual poems—each a celebration of the extremes of being human. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson Written in the winding-down stages of a severe psychotic episode filled with manic delusions, this extraordinary story chronicles Julja's relationship with drugs, family and friends. Julja's teenage games take a serious turn as she becomes inducted into a computer cult. The surge of dopamine in her brain connects her with psychic aliens and chemical conspiracies, sordid and secret. On this dark journey of discovery, she pops pills prescribed by Big Pharm and relinquishes all ties to her sanity as she attempts to reach a heaven full of voices and gods. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson Feminist, philosophical and linguistically playful poems on identity, motherhood and the family from the perspective of someone with a mixed cultural heritage. In her debut collection, Sarah Windebank explores her Swedish roots, and especially the influence of Mormor, her grandmother, who brought her up until she was fifteen. Growing up in a household where her mother and grandmother always spoke to each other in a foreign language, but never taught her, she picked up 'glittering fragments, rather like a magpie'. With nods to Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop, this is an immersive collection of poetry full of accent and domestic detail, at once foreign and familiar. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.