Newly commissioned short stories that explore and represent the lives of those living with dementia, unique in its diversity, depth and breadth of the dementia experience.
To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways of being – linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a slightly different perspective of the world.
In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from Ireland and the UK powerfully and poignantly explore the depths and breadth of the real dementia experience, traversing age, ethnicity, class and gender, sex and consent.
Each writer’s story is drawn from their own personal experience of dementia and told with outrageous and dark humour, empathy and startling insight. Here are heroes and villains, tricksters and saints, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, characters whose past has overshadowed their present and characters who are making a huge impact on the world they currently find themselves in. They might have dementia, but dementia is only a small part of who they are. They will challenge, frustrate, inspire and humble you.
Above all, these brilliant pieces of short fiction disrupt the perceived notions of what dementia is and, in their diversity, honesty and authenticity begin to normalise an illness that affects so many and break down the stigma endured by those living with it every day.
Find out more about the AHRC-funded research project based at Queen's University Belfast, from which this anthology has emerged: www.blogs.qub.ac.uk/dementiafiction/
JAN CARSON is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She is the author of three novels including The Raptures (2022), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. She published a short-story collection, Children’s Children, in 2016, followed by two micro fiction anthologies, Postcard Stories (2017) and Postcard Stories 2 (2020). Her second novel, The Fire Starters, (2019), won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award.
www.jancarson.co.uk
@JANCARSON7280
Dr JANE LUGEA is Senior Lecturer in English Language in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research explores the language of literature and other creative texts, from movies to memes. She is author of World-building in Spanish and English Spoken Narratives (2015) and co-author of the forthcoming textbook Stylistics: Text, Cognition and Corpora.
