Martyn Bedford - Writer

I’m very excited to be able to reveal the cover of my new book – Letters Home, a solo collection of short stories – which is coming out next month. The stories (for adults) include several new ones written especially for the collection, along with some previously unpublished pieces and others which have already appeared in anthologies, newspapers and magazines over the years.

Here’s the back-cover blurb:

“When an out-of-work actor discovers his bedsit once belonged to an obscure, suicidal painter, he turns his talents to re-creating the ultimate site-specific performance . . .
As a teenage girl drifts from depression into a permanent state of sleep, she becomes the focus of both scientific interest and an unexpected, cult following…
Against a backdrop of hooliganism and hostility, an asylum seeker writes letters home assuring his family how welcoming England is…
Many of the characters in Martyn Bedford’s stories find themselves at a point of redefinition, trading in their old identity for something new. Whether it is an act of retreat or escape – fantasising about storming out of a thankless job, or just avoiding a bad-tempered husband for a few moments on Christmas day – they each understand the first step in changing a reality, is to reconstruct it.”

I’ve been flattered to receive a couple of wonderful pre-publication quotes from other writers:

Haunting and intimate portraits of vividly different lives that get under your skin and stay there – Jeremy Dyson, co-writer of The League of Gentlemen.

Letters Home further establishes Martyn Bedford as a stand-out writer of highly memorable fiction – Jacob Ross, author of The Bone Readers, winner of the 2017 Jhalak Prize.

Letters Home is published on November 16th by Comma Press. Please click here for the Comma website, where physical and digital copies can be pre-ordered.