Roelof Bakker (ed.), Still: Short Stories Inspired by Photographs of Vacated Places (2012)

Still is the first title from Negative Press London, and it’s a very intriguing prospect indeed. Artist-photographer Roelof Bakker invited contributors to write a short story inspired by one of his photographs of Hornsey Town Hall in north London (there are examples on Bakker’s website). So this anthology is the book of Still the exhibition, but it also gives Bakker’s images a new context. For me, the mix of writers is so interesting that I want to do a story-by-story review. Here are the stories:

• Mark Piggott, ‘Midnight Hollow‘
• Nina Killham, ‘My Wife the Hyena’
• Andrew Blackman, ‘Sanctuary’
• Evie Wyld, ‘Corridor’
• Myriam Frey, ‘The Staircase Treatment’
• Jan van Mersbergen, ‘Pa-dang’
• Ava Homa, ‘A Rose for Raha’
• Nicholas Royle, ‘The Blind Man’
• James Miller, ‘From the Archive‘
• Tania Hershman, ‘Switchgirls’
• Mary Rechner, ‘The Playwright Sits Next to Her Sister’
• Aamer Hussein, ‘The Tree at the Limit’
• Richard Beard, ‘Lift Under Inspection Do Not Touch’
• Preeta Samarasan, ‘Odd Job’
• James Higgerson, ‘Noise’
• S.J. Butler, ‘A Job Worth Doing’
• David Rose, ‘Sere’
• Sarah Ladipo Manyika, ‘Morayo’
• Justin Hill, ‘Waiting’
• Jan Woolf, ‘Ten a Day’
• Barbara Manghami-Ruwende, ‘Opportunity’
• Claire Massey, ‘In the Dressing Room Mirror’
• Nicholas Hogg, ‘The Owl at the Gate’
• S.L. Grey, ‘Still’
• Deborah Klaassen, ‘How to Make a Zombie’
• Xu Xi, ‘Winter Moon’

The titles of those stories will turn into links as I work my way through the anthology. I’m looking forward to the exploration.