New fiction by:
**Suad Aldarra, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Jan Carson, Elaine Feeney, Oona
Frawley, Sinéad Gleeson, Anna Jean Hughes, Caleb Klaces, Naomi Krüger,
Henrietta McKervey, Paul McVeigh, Mary Morrissy, Nuala O'Connor, and
Chris Wright
**
To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways
of being - linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller
operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a
slightly different perspective of the world.
In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan
Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from
Ireland and the UK powerfully and poignantly explore the depths and
breadth of the real dementia experience, traversing age, ethnicity,
class and gender, sex and consent. Each writer's story is drawn from
their own personal experience of dementia and told with outrageous and
dark humour, empathy and startling insight. Here are heroes and
villains, tricksters and saints, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends,
characters whose past has overshadowed their present and characters who
are making a huge impact on the world they currently find themselves in.
They might have dementia, but dementia is only a small part of who they
are. They will challenge, frustrate, inspire and humble you.
Above all, these brilliant pieces of short fiction disrupt the perceived
notions of what dementia is and, in their diversity, honesty and
authenticity begin to normalise an illness that affects so many and
break down the stigma endured by those living with it every day.
Find out more about the AHRC-funded research project based at Queen's
University Belfast, from which this anthology has emerged:
www.blogs.qub.ac.uk/dementiafiction/
