Letters Home

A young woman falls into a seemingly endless sleep, and what begins as a form of depression, transforms into a social-media sensation, with acolytes camping outside her hospital, sleeping in vigil…A man waiting to hear the result of his asylum application sets about learning two versions of English - the official Queen’s English taught at his evening class, and the one he decodes from the taunts and abuse of local teenagers who don’t want him there…When an 11 year old’s mother disappears, to distract him, he is given a detective kit, and sets about trying to solve the problem himself…Martyn Bedford’s short stories ask a difficult the question: how do we re-define ourselves in the age of ‘post-truth’ reasoning, identity politics and social media echo-chambers. What constitutes personal identity, and what can we call ‘home’, when the places we come from are either no-longer accessible, or not what they claim to be. Informed by Bedford’s early career as a thriller writer, these stories read as much like mysteries, waiting to reveal themselves, as literary short stories.Covering everything from the lingering legacies of industrial disputes, through to futuristic visions of police detection, Bedford’s stories also offer a fascinating portrait of the changing face of modern, Northern Britain.