Elsewhere: Commissioned Writing

We commissioned fifty authors to write short stories or essays on the theme of ‘Elsewhere’. Leading writers for adults and children from across the world took part and their wonderfully engaging and varied writing is available for you to read and download here. Many of the authors have also recorded podcasts of their work which you can find in our audio gallery and on iTunes.

Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund.

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Billie D
Billie D by Vivian French

At ten in the morning I leave my front door behind me. Have I got my key?…

A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities by Yiyun Li

In a certain city in Florida, in the bars, there are young women sitting on high stools, and if an older man is interested in one of them, he asks the bartender to send over a cigar…

Other Times, Other Places
Other Times, Other Places by Joan Lingard

We go into our room. We do not speak of our day in the country, of our lunchtime visit to the collective farm, or the house where my husband lived as a child. We have been warned. Remember, one cannot be too careful…

Last Word
Last Word by Suketu Mehta

The Obit Expert offers a service: he will write your obituary, the short story section of the newspaper. "What if you die tomorrow?" he asks the rich, the powerful…

Once upon a time
Once upon a time by Debi Gliori

Stories? The importance of books? Don’t get me started. The harder life gets, the more the need to escape. Stories offer a way out, an alternative world-view, an elsewhere…

The Saga of Ragnar Erikson
The Saga of Ragnar Erikson by Michael Morpurgo

It was beautiful beyond belief.  Why would you ever leave this paradise of a place, to face the heaving grey of the Norwegian Sea, and a voyage into the unknown, when you had all this outside your door?…

Take Route Six to the Ocean
Take Route Six to the Ocean by Amy Bloom

Provincetown is a small town on a sand-bar in Massachusetts. On one side is the harbor, on the other side the dunes and the ocean…

As The Proverb Goes…
As The Proverb Goes… by Anne Fine

Elsewhere. For me the word had a magic ring right from the start, like the beginning of a fairy tale. Once Upon a Time… …

The Big Question
The Big Question by Garth Nix

A long time ago, as people measure time, but not so long that the stars have changed in the heavens or the rocks have turned to dust, a young man left…

Partytime
Partytime by Robin Robertson

You were quite the vision last night I remember, before my vision went…

Another Not Scotland
Another Not Scotland by Alasdair Gray

Nobody is more like God than a baby. Babies live in eternity, a present tense without past, future and thought…

Brook Crooks
Brook Crooks by Keith Gray

They’d built this massive gate.  And the first thing I thought was, Who’d want to break into Brook High? …

Another Country
Another Country by Margo Lanagan

‘Can you take me to Anna’s tonight?’ He stands in the kitchen doorway. His look says, Not that I care or anything. That terrible hair all the boys have right now, it makes them look as if they’ve just come in from a howling windst…

Red Wolves in the Mist
Red Wolves in the Mist by Elizabeth Laird

The wolf came towards us out of the mist, trotting on stilted legs. He was lean but his black-tipped tail was bushy. Unlike his grey European cousins, he was rust-red, bright enough to stand out vividly against the chalky green vegetation…

Paper Boat Paper Bird
Paper Boat Paper Bird by David Almond

Kyoto. Ky-o-to! Kyo-to! She feels so weirdly at home. She is herself, Mina, but it’s like there’s another Mina waiting to be discovered or created here…

Sullivan's Ashes
Sullivan's Ashes by Alan Warner

Myself, Cousin John, Sullivan’s third wife Aileen and the sergeant all sat together in the police station at Tobermory. We read once more the photocopied clause in Sullivan’s will…

Be Here Now
Be Here Now by Miguel Syjuco

It’s exciting to get to know your new kitchen and its appliances. The white promise of the stove-top. A microwave with unblistered buttons and walls still spatterless…

Elsewhere, Far From Here
Elsewhere, Far From Here by Alberto Manguel

Ulysses turned his back on the harbour and followed a rough track leading through the woods and up to the hills towards the place where Athena had told him…

Los San Patricios
Los San Patricios by Roddy Doyle

The writer had a new book out and he was touring America, a city a day, a reading a night.  He’d fly to a different city and hear the same question…

Horror Story
Horror Story by Kirstin Innes

The hotel felt like a place where bad things had happened, she’d decided. Something chilling about the uniformity of its too-long Soviet-functional corridors, their flickering lights…