Anywhere Out of the World
- Submitting institution
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Swansea University / Prifysgol Abertawe
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 29267
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
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- Publisher
- Cillian Press
- ISBN
- 978-1-909776-16-6
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- July
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- Anywhere Out of the World (2016) is a compendium of short stories written between 2009 and 2016, linked by a concern with the unstable border between reality and dream, the mundane and the impossible. The collection therefore contributes to the ongoing re-evaluation of Surrealist ideas in the Twenty First Century, as well as to the debate regarding the epistemological and ontological status of Magic Realist texts. The stories were created as a response to Surrealist practices of the Twentieth Century, as well as drawing upon personal memory, fantasy and intuition. I thus employed practices intended to ‘short-circuit’ rational interpretation, alongside an interest in forms of popular culture, stressing both comedy and horror. Film, painting, philosophies of the absurd, cartoons, and dada practices all played a part in this. By stressing the ways in which the uncanny seems to short-circuit or bypass the functioning of the logical, rational mind, the collection also suggests new modes of expression that challenge conservative models of realism and fantasy by collapsing distinctions and antinomies. I have discussed the collection in talks and workshop sessions across the UK, including the Hay Literary Festival (2016 and 2017) where I was a Hay ‘Writer-at-work’. I have also discussed the material at Writers’ groups and libraries, encouraging participants to explore their own dream fiction and how this might be both expressed and communicated. These sessions have been very well received, feedback from attendees stressing the inspirational and imaginative aspects of these ideas. Readers have also contributed other suggestions and interpretations that have also made a positive impact on my own creative practice.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
