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Last month, I was asked to contribute an editorial to Open Pen issue 26. These guys are delivering excellent (free!) short fiction and their publishing list is pretty damn good as well, so of course I said yes. I wrote two analogies comparing novels to short stories. The piece was huge fun to write and so I was so glad to get my copy today, alongside my purchase of Not Far From the Junction by Will Ashon.  Will Ashon spent the day of Tuesday May 21st 2019 hitching around the motorways and ‘A' roads of England, chatting to whoever picked him up about their lives, dreams, aspirations, fears and favourite foods. The resulting transcripts, presented here edited and cross-cut through one another into a collage of voices, form a work in which generosity plays a far greater role than hate, reminding us of our nation’s better self. Sitting somewhere between Svetlana Alexievich and Rachel Cusk, NOT FAR FROM THE JUNCTION is a fresh, funny, moving and quietly radical work of non-fiction, exploring who we are and how we see the world. The description triggers happy memories of collecting stories of Cornwall for my PhD. I hope Will had as much fun collecting his material as I did. Comments are closed.
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