Be swept away by four transcendent tales celebrating feminine self-discovery and flight.
From growing wings to racing motorbikes, this curated anthology ventures into magical realms where women break free. Emerging talents Helen Kennedy, Katie Hale and more navigate fragile family bonds, forbidden desire, identity and loss with emotional power and lyrical flair.
Roam from a museum of memories to an avian awakening through "incredibly moving" stories that linger long after the last page. Lose yourself in worlds where sisters connect across time, housewives spread clipped wings and girls come of age astride speeding Suzukis.
Experience Helen Kennedy's bleeding prose compared to "a series of red ribbons" by scholar Sally Bayley and Katie Hale's award-winning poetic voice that holds "hauntingly melancholic" depths according to author Lara Williams.
Let the flight feathers fall where they may then soar into liberation and self-realization with four fearless tales edited by Isabelle Kenyon urging women to take wing.
Stories by Helen Kennedy, Katie Hale, Louise Finnigan and Jacqueline Ward.
Edited and compiled by Isabelle Kenyon
“An evocative and unflinching story which shines a light on fractured families, love, and regret, all seeped in Manchester’s past, present and uncertain future. Incredibly moving and beautifully written, I loved it.”
- Gaynor Jones on ‘The People’s History Museum is Closed by Helen Kennedy
"Ivy Wife is delicately spare, beautifully written and hauntingly melancholic tale about female identity in the face of a shapeless loss, that will linger long after the last line."
- Lara Williams, Author of Treats, Supper Club and The Odyssey on 'Ivy Wife' by Louise Finnigan
"Helen Kennedy takes us on a journal through a landscape of childhood scars, now healing; her writing reads like a series of red ribbons, some delicate, some more savage, in the style of tender personal documentary but always woven into the lyrical. Frank and pressing, her camera-I asks us to see stark things as we look around at the natural landscape we pass through, a metaphor for deposits of private history."
- Sally Bayley, Oxford University, author of ‘No Boys Play Here’ William Collins 2021 and ‘Girl with Dove’ 2019
Helen Kennedy
Helen Kennedy is Mancunian writer with an MA in Creative Writing in Oxford. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Bristol Prize (2022) , the TSS Cambridge Prize (2021)
Katie Hale
Katie Hale is the author of a novel, My Name is Monster, and two poetry pamphlets. She is a former MacDowell Fellow, and winner of the Palette Poetry Prize, Munster Chapbook Prize, and Prole Laureate Competition. Her short fiction has been longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Katie also runs Dove Cottage Young Poets for Wordsworth Grasmere, and is a Core Team Member of the Writing Squad. In 2022, she won the Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction for her second novel – and her debut poetry collection, White Ghosts, comes out with Nine Arches in March 2023.
Louise Finnigan
Louise Finnigan is a short story-writer and novelist from Manchester. She has been shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize, the Cambridge story prize and the Bristol prize. Her story Muscle and Mouth made its debut with Fly on The Wall Press as part of their 2021 shorts series.
Jacqueline Ward
Jacqueline Ward is a writer from the Oldham. She is a psychologist and her debut NOVEL, PERFECT TEN, was published by Corvus Atlantic Books in 2018. Her second NOVEL, HOW TO PLAY DEAD, was published in November 2019.
