Edited by Ra Page
ISBN 0-9548280-70
£7.95.

Rampaging behemoths, giant, washed-up fishtails, mysterious briefcases, role-playing cuddly toys... The world of the short story is a weird and wonderful one, made even stranger by the unique assortment of characters that crop up in them. Incongruity seems to be their secret ingredient - or rather the right kind of incongruity, an artful one that punctuates the flat realism of most literature and inserts an isolated moment, an atomised truth.

Comma's second anthology of new writers showcases 20 of the most imaginative and daring voices taking up the form; writers dedicated to charting the far reaches of this terrain right at the outset of their careers; writers who prove it's best to stay short.

As with Bracket, the first in this series, all the writers here have no major publication behind them, but show remarkable skill and daring in their work. Stories were drawn and edited from over 600 submissions, after a call out to aspiring writers and creative writing courses the length and breadth of the UK. Unlike Bracket, Parenthesis called specifically for experimental writing. And whereas its predecessor was found by critics to have 'an impressive amount of control on display', Parenthesis celebrates just those writers who take a risk and cut loose.

Now available: mp3 preview of stories

Listen to four stories here:
Adam Marek reads 'Testicular Cancer vs the Behemoth'
Anna Ball reads 'The Art of Gutting a Fish'
Alistair Herbert reads 'Road'
L.E. Yates reads from 'Lucky and Unlucky'

Featuring 20 New Writers:

Anna Ball is writing a PhD thesis in cultural theory at the University of Manchester, where she also works as a teaching assistant in the English department. She is the editor of ManuScript, an academic journal in Literary Studies. She also has a short story in the forthcoming Redbeck Press Anthology.

Suzanne Batty is a poet and editor of the Manchester magazine Rain Dog. The Poetry Business published her pamphlet Shink in 1977, and in 1999 North West Arts gave her a grant to complete her first collection ‘The Barking Thing’.



Paul Brownsey was once a newspaper reporter in Luton, Bedfordshire, and is now a lecturer in philosophy at Glasgow University. He finds the mind-set required for writing fiction entirely different from that required for academic writing. His stories have appeared in literary magazines throughout the United Kingdom and in others in Canada, the U.S.A., and Germany. He lives in Bearsden, on the outskirts of Glasgow.

John Carnahan is a student at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and a lecturer at California State University, East Bay. His fiction and criticism ha appeared in The Comics Journal, The Misfit Library, and On the Page. He has freelanced as a writer and editor for Chaosium and Quick Trading, proud publishers of fantasy role playing games and cannabis DIY books respectively. He can't carry a tune in a bucket.

Graham English is currently studying creative writing at Kent University.




Tracey Emerson has lived in Edinburgh for ten years, working as a performer and workshop leader in theatre and community arts. She started writing prose fiction in 2003 and in 2004 was a runner up in The Scotsman and Orange Short Story Award. She recently received a New Writer’s Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council and is writing more short stories as well as starting her first novel.

Crista Ermiya is of Filipino and Turkish-Cypriot parentage, originally from London and now living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She is a co-editor of Other Poetry magazine and runs indie poetry press Dogeater. Her stories have been published on Pulp.net (2006) and in Wonderwall (Route, 2005).



Thomas Fletcher was born in Worcester in 1984 and grew up in Cumbria. In 2005 he achieved a First Class BA in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds, and has since divided his time between Leeds and Cumbria whilst working on a novel and a collection of short stories.



Alistair Herbert grew up in Leek and graduated from the University of Manchester in 2005. He currently works in Stretford and is writing for several projects, among them a novel and a collection of pop songs. He is 21 years old.


Paul Hocker’s neighbours, Emily and Sarah, said: ‘He once told us he used to be an actor and was in ‘The Bill’ for 12 episodes but we checked on the internet and he was lying. Paul is noisy at night and has participated in four vast Catholic romances.’



Alice Kuipers was born in London and now lives in Saskatoon, Canada, where she works as a Pilates teacher. She has had stories published in literary magazines and produced for CBC radio. She is a graduate of MMU.



Adam Marek was born in 1974, and has been writing fiction since his teens. After leaving film school he worked in the music video industry for a few years, but is now part of the Editorial Team at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In 2003, his short story 'The 40-litre monkey' was a supplementary winner in the Bridport Prize. In 2004, his story 'Bobby and Sun-Li' was a runner up in the Douglas Coupland Award. He read 'Bobby and Sun-Li' at the Poetry Café in London, and the story was then published by Pulp.net. In 2005, he won second place in the Bridport Prize with his story 'Robot wasps'. He has recently completed a collection of short stories and is working on a novel. Adam lives in Bedfordshire with his wife and sons.

Melanie Mauthner's first piece of fiction 'Prudence' was published in My Cheating Heart (Honno, 2005). Her short story 'The Lido' won first prize in Lambet's 'Impressions of Brixton' competition in 2003. She also writes non-fiction and her most recent book is 'Sistering' (Palgrave, 2005). She lives in South London.

Andy Murray has worked as a film reviewer for Manchester’s City Life and the website www.kamera.co.uk. Since graduating with an MA in Scriptwriting from Salford University, he’s collaborated on several short films, and written a biography of legendary scripter Nigel Kneale for Headpress. His story ‘One Down’ appeared in Comma’s Manchester Stories 7. He is now working on an academic study of TV writer Russell T Davies, and feeling weary.

Gabriella Reed is Filipino-American and was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1985. She is currently a short-term student of English at the University of Kent in Canterbury and will return at the end of the year to her home university in Milwaukee.



C.D. Rose is from Manchester but currently lives in the south of Italy, where he enjoys not feeling at home. He spends far too much time writing improbable short stories about fish, shoes, ships, jewels, paintings, photographs, violins, cats, kites, big cities, small towns, bets, promises, deals, dreams, thefts, displacement, exile, love, loss and death.

Mandy Sutter, who can see Ilkley moor from every window of her house, has been a freelance writer since 1988 and is currently Writer-in-Residence for Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust. Her award-winning poems and short stories have appeared in literary magazines and on BBC Radio 4. She published two short poetry collections in the 90’s and has 2½ unpublished novels up her sleeve (and on her PC). Recent publications include two stories in “Are You She?” a women’s showcase anthology published by Tindal Street Press last year.

Pat Winslow worked for twelve years as an actor and left the theatre in 1987 to take up writing. Her new poetry collection Skin & Dust is available from Blinking Eye. Other collections include The Girl in the Iron Lung (Crocus), The Fact of an Eye (Amazing Colossal) and Harvest (Jackson's Arm). Pat’s short fiction has won competitions and appeared in anthologies and magazines. She’s currently working on a novel and a children’s story.

Ann Winter has been writing short fiction for two years and has just completed a novel, Intimacy, about a teenage refugee arrested and threatened with deportation. She teaches English language and literacy to adult and teenage asylum seekers in West London. Ann has been writing fiction since completing a research MA in Experimental Fiction in 2003.

L.E. Yates grew up in Manchester and has a degree from Cambridge University in English Literature. She is currently taking an MA in Creative Writing at UEA, and finishing her first novel, based on the life of an eighteenth century Scottish poet and forger, James Macpherson.

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