Collaborative anthology centered around Norwich-based writers
I worked alongside a group of peers at UEA-based project, City of Stories. The project centered on Norwich-based writers, with participants divided into groups and assigned different authors. My group focused on Malcolm Bradbury and developed a chapter of short stories, poems, and creative non-fiction that evoked the writer's life, writing style, and original characters. I participated in seminar groups over several weeks, researching Bradbury's life and producing writing in response to that, as well as editing the writing of other group members. I wrote an individual experimental short story titled "In Search of Bradbury" about a university student and university professor's disparate attempt to collaborate on a project celebrating the author. I also collaborated on pieces exploring presentations of the author's biography through invented essay titles supposedly found in his desk, and a short story tying together the different pieces produced by people in the “Bradbury” group that I wrote alongside Georgina Pearsall.
Excerpt from "In Search of Bradbury"
"Official
I have a theory. I watched a documentary the other day about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining in which they said that Kubrick designed an impossible floor plan for the hotel he filmed in, so the audience watching feels disoriented whenever the characters move around inside. I have a theory that the LDC office building was designed very much the way Kubrick designed the Overlook Hotel. I also have a theory that stepping foot in that building adds an instantaneous twenty minutes on any time occurring to a body, but that’s a point for another day. After wandering around the halls of LDC for a time, I found Bradbury’s old office. Arts 2.36. It’s funny how inextricably “university” it is. I know it hasn’t been his in ages, but you can tell he was there, there’s something about it. There are Blu-tack stains on the wall. One of the shelves looks more worn than the rest. There is an ink spot on the ground, faded. It’s weird, and maybe a little sentimental, to think that I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t for him. And I don’t mean that in the metaphysical where-did-I-come-from sense. I’m being entirely literal. Lancaster was my second choice. I would have been perfectly happy there.
St. Peter Mancroft
It has turrets that point upwards as though to indicate the direction it can send you if you enter. There is something almost pitifully hopeful about the ivy growing up the side of it. To what end? Perhaps people like churches for the same reason they like Paris. It is too aesthetically pleasing for anyone to admit that they’d rather be somewhere else."
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