Part of Series
“I am writing only for my shadow . . . I must make myself known to him.” – Sadegh Hedayat “Ghost stories,” as Elizabeth Bowen observed, “are not easy to write—least easy now, for they involve more than they did.” But these eleven writers take up the challenge, each in their own way, with expert awareness of the genre’s limitless possibilities. Uncertainties is an anthology series—featuring authors from Ireland, France, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—each exploring the concept of increasingly fragmented senses of reality. These types of short stories were termed “strange tales” by Robert Aickman, called “tales of the unexpected” by Roald Dahl, and known to Shakespeare’s ill-fated Prince Mamillius as “winter’s tales”. But these are no mere ghost stories. These tales of the uncanny grapple with existential epiphanies of the modern day, when otherwise familiar landscapes become sinister and something decidedly less than certain . . .
Authors
A.K. Benedict read English at Cambridge and Creative Writing at the University of Sussex. She lives in Hastings and writes in a room filled with teapots and the severed head of a ventriloquist’s dummy. She did have a blow-up pirate but punctured it. Alexandra was the front-person of an underground indie band, has composed music for film and television and is currently writing her second novel. Her short stories and poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including The Best British Short Stories 2012. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was published by Orion in 2013.
Also publishes as Brian Catling. Brian Catling was born in London in 1948. He is a poet, sculptor and performance artist, who makes installations and paints egg tempera portraits of imagined Cyclops. He has been commissioned to make solo installations and performances in many countries including Spain, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Germany, Greenland and Australia. He is currently writing novels. He is Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford, and a fellow of Linacre College.
Eric Stener Carlson (Minnesota, 1969) is an author currently based in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote his first book, "I Remember Julia: Voices of the Disappeared" (Temple University Press, 1996), when he was right out of college. It is based on his work with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team identifying the remains of people killed by the military dictatorship in the 1970s. After working for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, he wrote his second book, "The Pear Tree: Is Torture Ever Justified?" (Clarity Press, 2006), a very personal investigation into the use of torture and its moral consequences. Eric became a novelist with the publication of "The Saint Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires" (Tartarus Press, 2009), a surreal, supernatural mystery. He followed this up with the novel, "Muladona" (Tartarus Press, 2016), "Anxiety of Ghosts" (Amazon, 2017) and his first short story collection, "GAS" (Abraxas Press, 2018). He has a number of other novel projects in the works. His short stories and articles have appeared in journals in the US, UK, Argentina and Spain. Eric holds a BA in International Affairs from The American University, an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was also a Fulbright scholar affiliated with the University of Buenos Aires. Eric frequently lectures and is always happy to give talks to book clubs and universities.
