The Cuckoo Cage New Origin Stories

by Holmes, Gaia; Master, Irfan; Smith, Karline; Goldie, Luan; Alam, M. Y.; Mamata, Bidisha SK; Ghelani, Divya; Mohammad, Avaes; Newland, Courttia; Page, Ra

• ISBN13: 9781912697403
• ISBN10: 1912697408
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-02-17
• Publisher: Comma Press

Summary

The superhero of comic books and blockbuster movies may be a quintessentially American invention, forever saving the world in skin-tight spandex. But the cultural DNA of the superhero can arguably be traced to a much older, more progressive, British tradition: the larger-than-life folk heroes of historical protests – General Ludd, Captain Swing, Lady Skimmington, and others; semi-fictional identities that ordinary protestors adopted, often dressing up in the process. In this unique experiment, twelve authors have been tasked with resurrecting that tradition: to spawn a new generation of present-day British superheroes, willing to bring the fight back to British shores and to more progressive causes. From the dimension-jumping statue-toppler, to the shape-shifting single mum raiding supermarkets to stock local food banks... these figures offer unlikely new insights into shared, centuries-old political causes, and usher in a new league of proud, British (social justice) warriors...

Author Biography

Gaia Holmes is a freelance writer and creative writing tutor who works with schools, universities, libraries and other community groups throughout the West Yorkshire region. She runs ‘Igniting The Spark’, a weekly writing workshop at Dean Clough, Halifax, and is the co-host of ‘MUSE-LI’, an online writing group. She has had three full length poetry collections published by Comma Press: Dr James Graham’s Celestial Bed (2006) Lifting The Piano With One Hand(2013), Where The Road Runs Out (2018) and Tales from the Tachograph, a collaborative work with Winston Plowes (Calder Valley Poetry, 2017). Irfan Master is the award winning author of two novels for young adults, A Beautiful Lie which was shortlisted for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize and Branford Boase Award for debut authors and, Out of Heart which was longlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children. He also writes plays, poetry and has contributed short stories to numerous anthologies, most recently The Good Journal and The Bare Lit Anthology. Born to Jamaican parents who arrived in Britain in the 1960s, Karline Smith was one of the first black female crime writers to deal with the subject of drug gangs in inner-city Britain. She is the author of three novels, Moss Side Massive, which was dramatised by Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, Full Crew, and Goosebumps and Butterflies are Fairy Tales (published by Black Sapphire Press). She is also the author of several short stories, variously published in The City Life Book of Manchester Short Stories (Penguin), M.O.: Crimes of Practice, and Resist (Comma). Luan Goldie was born in Glasgow but has lived in East London for most of her life. She is a primary school teacher, and formerly a business journalist. She is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2017 for her story 'Two Steak Bakes and Two Chelsea Buns'. Her short stories have also been long and short listed by Spread the Word and the Grazia/Women's Prize First Chapter competition. Nightingale Point is her debut novel. M.Y. Alam is the author of Annie Potts is Dead and the award-winning Kilo (Route, 2002). Currently he is working on his third novel whilst also teaching and researching at the University of Bradford. His short story 'Finding Polish' is currently being made into a film, directed by Caleb Shaffer. Bidisha SK Mamata, known professionally as Bidisha, is a British broadcaster, film-maker, and journalist specialising in international affairs, social justice issues, arts and culture, and international human rights. She was one of the judges for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was announced as one of the judges of the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She is a patron of the SI Leeds Literary Prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women in the UK and is a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation. Divya Ghelani is a writer who holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and an MPhil in Literary Studies from the University of Hong Kong. Her novel-in-progress has been longlisted and shortlisted for four literary awards. She lives between the UK and Berlin and is Programme Associate for the UK’s leading literary salon, the Word Factory. She has published short stories and judged story and flash fiction competitions. She is lead writer and researcher on a HLF-funded exhibition and storytelling project about the 1974 strike at Imperial Typewriters. Avaes Mohammad works across poetry, theatre and performance. With a background in the chemical sciences, artist-alchemist Avaes Mohammad’s influences stretch from the Sufi-Saints of South Asia to the Dub-Poets of Jamaica and he has performed his poetry on stages across the UK, Europe, India, Pakistan and South Africa. His poem Bhopal, as commissioned by BBC Radio 4 won an Amnesty International Media Award. As a playwright Avaes has been commissioned by BBC Radio and several theatre companies across the country with his plays, including Bhopal (2003), In G