Rarebit

Celebrating Parthian's twenty-first birthday in 2014, this beautiful limited edition anthology of twenty one contemporary stories offers a kaleidoscope of identities, perspectives and settings which encapsulate much that is vibrant and exciting about modern Welsh short fiction.

About the Author :
Rarebit is edited by Susie Wild, General Editor at Parthian Books. Her debut collection of short stories The Art of Contraception (Parthian, 2010) was long-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2011. She is the literary programmer for Do Not Go Gentle Festival in Swansea and a co-organiser of xx women's writing festival held at Chapter Arts Centre. She currently lives in sin in Cardiff, where she is working on her second collection of stories and a novel.

Review :
Rarebit: New Welsh Fiction is a collection of twenty-one stories from both new and established writers. While style, form and narrative voice vary with each writer, as a whole Rarebit is consistently punctuated by honesty, poignancy and humour. The collection delivers authentic literary approaches to the modern short fiction genre. Explored in Rarebit are the themes of fear, grief and mortality, desire and sexuality, cultural discrimination and the performance of identity. Characters confront events, exchanges and miscommunications that disrupt their emotional or situational normality with transformative effects. Relationships, whether familial, romantic, generational or anonymous, are typically defined by their conflict, but with tender moments cutting through the tension. The reader of Rarebit is transported from forests, festivals and parks, to traveller sites, hotels and city streets. Place is particularly important in its influence on both individual and collective identities. The collection contains pieces by many literary award winners, including Wales Book of the Year winners Deborah Kay Davies and Rhian Edwards, the EFG Sunday Times short story prize shortlisted Roshi Fernando, Dylan Thomas Prize winner Rachel Trezise, Media Wales People's Prize winner Tyler Keevil and National Eisteddfod Literature Medal winner Siân Melangell Dafydd. Also included are stories by authors such as Dan Tyte, Eluned Gramich, Susmita Bhattacharya, Georgia Carys Williams, Holly Müller, Rebbecca Ray, Richard Owain Roberts, Carly Holmes, and others, with translated work by Peter Kristúfek and Monique Schwitter. Accompanying the stories is a series of original lithographs by artist John Abell, winner of the Print Prize and overall runner-up at Welsh Artist of the Year 2013. Besides being particularly beautiful in themselves, these strong images unify the individual narratives, as well as complementing them thematically.