Books published by Arachne Press

How to be a Tarot Card (or a Teenager) explores, exploits, and sometimes downright twists the major arcana and the meanings they have accumulated, in the order in which the many hundreds of tarot decks now travelling the world present them. The Star, connoting hope, exists simultaneously as metaphor and feral dog; the rebirth nestled inside the Death card becomes female friendship and escape from patriarchal binds.

Poems that arise from Claire Booker's relationship to the East Sussex coastal, downlands and urban environments. Encounters on buses, streets, scarp slopes, sea shore, town, village, fishing boats and dream-scapes with an ecological edge.

On a wasted island in perpetual sun, the Father practices magic, laments his lost kingdom and commands a ragtag army of three: the passionate and damaged Daughter, the winged Spirit and an indigenous being known only as C. Behind their uniforms - white suits and full-face paper masks - the soldiers seethe with rebellion. The arrival of the Boy, a hapless prince, and the Brother, the Father's rival, unleashes desire, betrayal, insanity and revenge - all of it witnessed by an irate sea.Paper Crusade is a bold reinvention of Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. Michelle Penn's vivid imagery and startling, sensual language create an unforgettable dystopia for our own time.

London 1988: Agata grew up in post-war Prague and believes that her mother was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust.But not everyone died. Agata's search for her 'lost' family, set against the background of revolutions in Eastern Europe, threatens to tear apart not only the family she already has, but her own identity.

Fifty poems by Welsh poets celebrating the A470. Originaly written in Welsh or English, every poem has been translated into the other language and set out side by side as we travel the length of the country.

Stories and poems that respond to the floods and droughts and fires all around the globe caused by climate change with tenderness, compassion, fear, grief and rage. Gaia is represented in all ther power and glory, and butterflies and plants sow seeds of hope.

Poems, short fiction and scripts from UK Deaf, deaf and hard of hearing writers. Our theme is movement. Edited by Liosa Kelly co-editor of Magma 69, The Deaf Issue; co-Chair of Magma Poetry, and |Sophie Stone (RADA trained actor, Writer: Paine¿s Plough, The Bunker, BBC Radio 3 and Co-founder of DH Ensemble theatre Co) and with a preface from Raymond Antrobus.

UK authors from the Black and Asian ( and Chinese and Malay, and Latinx and Arab) communities give their responses to maps, and mapping. Stories and poems of finding oneself and getting lost, colonialism and diaspora, childhood exploration and adult homecoming.

Set in Cornwall, coastal errosion and flooding take on a near mythical power as the short stories in this collection weave in and out of the recent past and near future, as lives and relationships ebb and flow with the tide. From one maritime tragedy to another, the community, and three generations of women from the same family, struggle with their over-close affinity for the sea.

When Rob Walton went into lockdown, he didn't know that he would also go into mourning. Here he writes about the life and death of his dad, and how sadness seeped into various aspects of his life. He also manages to find cheap laughs, digs at the government, celebrations of the young and old, unashamed sentimentality and suddenly disarming moments of tenderness.

A man carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt. During World War II, a young soldier searches the houses and barns of the families with whom he grew up. An astronaut wonders whether she can adapt to life back on earth. In her second collection of short fiction, 100neHundred, Laura Besley explores a kaleidoscope of emotions through 100 stories of exactly 100 words.

"e;You have to understand,"e; says the woman, "e;an incorcism is nothing like its counterpart. No bells and whistles, no drama. All it takes is willingness, which you already have in spades."e; Strange stories about strange things for strange people. Tales of possession and obsession. Of destruction and restoration. Of the demons we hold inside us, and those we leave behind in others. An odd apocalypse freezes a supermarket on Mother's Day, a vanished village holds an ancient curse, an abandoned ice cream van tears a street apart. Rival rainbow setters, the woman who sowed a crop of elephants in her garden, and what happens if you keep on turning the clocks back. Perhaps you had a demon then lost it. Do you miss it? Our time here is brief and so are these curious fables. But the smallest of splinters are the hardest to dig out. Come and be snagged. Come, be unsettled. To be strange is to be human.

For Solstice Shorts Festival 2020, Writers respond or react to, or are inspired by, a sixteenth century poem: Robert Southwell's Tymes Goe by Turnes.

Stories and poems of immigration/emigration, making a living on and beside the water with an historical slant.

Arachne Press's 'official' #WomenVote100 publication, in collaboration with Liars' League.A celebration of the centenary of women in the UK getting the vote. Stories by women, and mostly about women, which have been performed at one of Liars' League's events in London, Hong Kong, or New York. Everything from fantasy and historical through magic realism to SF and humour.Edited by Cherry Potts and Katy Darby.Featuring Liars' League alumnae: Arike Oke, Carolyn Eden, Cherry Potts, Elizabeth Hopkinson, Elisabeth Simon, Elizabeth Stott, Fiona Salter, Ilora Choudhury, J. A. Hopper, Julia Kent, Jennifer Rickard, Jenny Ramsay, Joanne L. M. Williams, Katy Darby, Lucy Ribchester, Peng Shepherd, Rosalind Stopps, Swati Khurana, and Uschi Gatward.

As part of our celebrations of the centenary of some British Women getting the vote, a showcase for five authors Arachne Press has published previously in anthologies, giving a wider perspective on their writing with five stories each. The collection as a whole has a tendency towards fantasy and magical realism, with unforgiving reality tempered with warmth in Guatemala in Cassandra Passarelli's (Liberty Tales) stories of overweight truckers, pregnant teenagers, pilgrimages, stolen children and stolen toys.Katy Darby's (London Lies, Stations, Shortest Day, Longest Night) SF and historical stories - future where hygiene is everything, an historical murder, a spectacularly disturbing bedtime story, an inconvenient 'miracle' and an illicit meeting.Joan Taylor-Rowan's (London Lies, Lover's Lies, Stations) acid humour and modern desperation as characters make new lives 'Down From London', or as stowaways in a central London Department store.Sarah James' (Longest Day, Shortest Night; Vindication) elliptical poet's sensibility of Elegant twists and restraint brought to flash fiction.Helen Morris' (Liberty Tales, Solstice Shorts) ability to get to the heart of a story, with wide-ranging emotional rollercoasters of trolls outwitted, drunken boat trips, world domination and the heart ripped out of a family to make you laugh out loud or weep inconsolably.Each of these writers has featured in Arachne Press anthologies. We liked their work so much we asked them to send more. This is the result.

An appropriately large anthology of 25 long, complex, poems which are not afraid to take their time, and, however loosely, to tell a story. What started as a complaint about the '40-line rule' in much of the poetry world has turned into an anthology that not only breaks that rule, but stomps all over it.

More than twenty tales, varying in style from stories not out of place in One Thousand and One Nights, to the completely bemusing. Discover mirrors that predict the immediate future and museums where your personal future life is exhibited in the kind of ephemeral objects that might normally find their way into a dustbin. Meet tadpoles, lazy assassins, and assiduous poisoners; observe deals with the devil, and workplace stress taken to its logical conclusion. Heroes, villains, and animals ¿ anything and anyone could provide the twist in the tale ¿ cursed travellers, persistent dreamers, aliens, robots and even ice might be the object, or source, of love.

Stories and poems about leaving, and being left behind; or that take an unexpected turn, going completely off piste. From authors featured at The Story Sessions, the South London live literature evening. Stories from Emily Bullock, David Steward, Helen Morris, Nic Ridley, Barbara Renel, Carolyn Eden, Cherry Potts, VG Lee, Liam Hogan, Becky Ros, Joan Taylor-Rowan, David Mathews, Sarah Lawson, Oscar Windsor-Smith and Zoe Brigley. Poems from Kate Foley, Gloria Sanders, Nancy Charley, Joy Howard, Math Jones and Elinor Brooks.

Everyone thinks of noon as being a split second as the clock's hands draw together, the bell tolls twelve times - but there is so much more to it than that - Solar noon happens as much as half an hour either side of what the clock tells you, deadlines are met, or passed, shadows vanish, vampires hide - or do they? Stories and Poems from 2018's Solstice Shorts festival, read live in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Ynys Mon, Carlisle, London and Cork on the stroke of... or nearly, Noon.Featuring stories from: Barbara Renel, Clare Shaw, Diana Powell, Elaine Hughes, Karen Ankers, Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier, Liam Hogan, Lily Peters, Marka Rifat, Patience Mackarness, Roppotucha Greenberg, & Su Yin Yap.And poems from: Alison Gerhard, Alison Lock, Anne Elizabeth Bevan, Catriona Yule, Elinor Brooks, Gareth Culshaw, Graham Burchell, Ian Grosz, Jane Aldous, Laila Sumpton, Mandy MacDonald, Marika Josef, Michelle Penn, Natalie Gasper, Ness Owen, Nicholas McGaughey, Patricia McCaw, Paul Foy, Sara Elgerot, Stuart MacKenzie & Susan Cartwright-Smith.

November 2018 marks the centenary of the end of World War I. After all the commemorative works of art over the past four years, we felt it was important to reflect on what comes after - an outbreak of peace, and what that meant to the combatants and those left at home. This wide-ranging collection brings together stories and poems from many countries, on both sides of the 1914-18 conflict, finding their inspiration in many wars and their endings; together with stories and poems which are not about war at all, which is as it should be.Stories and Poems by: Ellery Akers, Jane Aldous, Karen Ankers, Annelise Balsamo, Valerie Bence, Anne Bevan, Elinor Brooks, Katy Darby, Peter DeVille, Sarah Deckro, CB Droege, Ken Farrell, Corie Feiner, Norman Franke, David Guy, Chantal Heaven, Anwar Jaber, Steven Jackson, Peter Kenny, Peter Shaver, Julie Laing, Katy Lee, Gerald McCarthy, Nicholas McGaughey, Nina Murray, Ness Owen, Clare Owen, Lily Peters, Nick Rawlinson, Rebecca Skipwith, Lucy Smith, Sarah Tait, James Toupin, Rob Walton, Nick Westerman, Martin Willitts, Jr, and Mantz Yorke.

The third of our #WomenVote100 Anthologies: a showcase for poets Arachne has previously published in anthologies, giving an opportunity to explore their writing in greater depth.These are poems made of myth and family, origins and anger, journeys and home: witty, clever, beautiful and sometimes harsh.Whilst not directly reflecting on the experience of women fighting for the vote, the concerns of women are foremost and are passionately addressed. My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, as if they were in perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.From Vindication by Anne Macaulay, a found poem based on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft.Poems by: Sarah James, Sarah Lawson, Jill Sharp, Elinor Brooks, Adrienne Silcock, and Anne Macaulay.Edited by Cherry Potts.

Stories and poems performed at Solstice Shorts 2017 Dusk: A Wave of Words across the UK.On 21st December 2017, the shortest day of the year, eighteen stories and twenty-eight poems celebrating DUSK were read live on twelve sites, from pubs to arts centres and libraries, by way of woodlands and hillsides, at DUSK: the 2017 Solstice Shorts Festival A wave of words across the UK.Starting in Ellon in Aberdeenshire at 17:07, the festival raced over the country at the speed of dark, with overlapping events taking place in Inverness, Carlisle, Holyhead, Lancaster, Rossendale, Nottingham, Birmingham, Greenwich, Kelston, and Warkleigh, ending in Redruth in Cornwall as full dark fell at 18:20."This is the perfect, atmospheric memento of one of the most imaginative, forward-thinking festivals in recent history: a nation's length celebration of the dying of the light at the turning point of winter." - Patrick GaleDusk lends itself to the anxiety that darkness brings, and there is a fair smattering of edge-of-horror, chills-down-the-spine and keeping-the-lights-on, but there is also humour and the in-between-ness of the cusp of day, when anything is possible.Stories:David Hartley, 'Daylight Savings'David Mathews, 'Flick'ring Shadows'Rob Schofield, 'Four Beaches'Samuel Wright, 'Here'Rosalind Stopps, 'One Two Three, One Two Three'Penny Pepper, 'Wolf's Head'Rob Walton, 'Words On Paper'Helen Slavin, 'At Sky's Edge'Lucy Grace, 'Breadcrumbs'Jackie Taylor, 'Cape Cornwall'Sherry Morris, 'Granda's Plan'Pippa Gladhill, 'In-Between Dog'Alex Reece Abbott, 'MacFarquhar's Bed'Fiona Salter, 'On The Evening Train'Cath Bore, 'The Dusk Runner'Kirsty Fox, 'They Said There Were Pirates'Katerina Watson, 'Threshold'Math Jones, 'Yes, Twilight'Poems:Mandy Macdonald, 'Gloaming'Katie Evans, '16:30'Joy Howard, 'Factory'Jane Aldous, 'After The Sun, Before The Stars'Eileen Carney Hulme, 'Blue Hour'Alice Tarbuck, 'Decoration Of A Fermented Season'Gabrielle Choo, 'Sundown Breath'Kate Wise, 'Tempus Erat'Alannah Egan, 'I Am Dusk'Alison Lock, 'Crow Haibun'Aziz Dixon, 'Calligraphy Of Starlings'Ness Owen, 'Female Blackbird Sings'Jeremy Dixon, 'Driving To Blackpool To Visit My Sister'Lindsay Reid, 'Summer Evening'Sue Birchenough, 'Roost'Nigel Hutchinson, 'Sometimes A Black Cloud'Sue Johnson, 'The Shortest Day'John Bevan, 'Afterglow'John Richardson, 'All This'Kelly Davis, 'Calling Them In'Katy Lee, 'Red Coat, Wolf, Etc'Laila Sumpton, 'Starling Time'Michelle Penn, 'End of Ramadan'Bridie Toft, 'Arrival'Nicholas McGaughey, 'Magic Hour'Lisa Kelly, 'Match Girl'Martyn Crucefix, 'Summers Ended In Sweetness'Elizabeth Parker, 'Dhusarah'Carl Griffin, 'Sea Wedding'