BumpingNominated for the 2010 Portico Prize for Fiction Bumping, set on contemporary Tyneside, interweaves three stories. Each presents a character whose obsessions and attachments become magnified through chance encounters, leading to unforeseen and ultimately catastrophic results. The bumping of the title conveys something of these random processes, as well as one characters passion for recreational lock picking. The stories are told in a number of voices:

Svetlanha Chulkova

Behind these fictions is the young Dannie

In general

Maisoon Saqr – Selected Poems

Like Hands

Paul Henry was born in Aberystwyth and came to poetry through songwriting

is regarded as one of the finest examples of contemporary Catalan writing

‘“Just a bit of a lark” is the way that Nat Gonella would have you remember his life but

Heroes (1996) and At the Salt Hotel (2003)

trying to come to terms with the meaning of what Philip Larkin

restlessly pushing words beyond their given forms and meanings to say new things in new ways about our complicated knife-edge times"

even if it’s only the return from the local grocery store