Online, ex-pat writing community Writers Abroad published Kaleidoscope, their fifth anthology of poetry, flash fiction and short stories, on Monday 12th October. The theme is light, as 2015 is the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies.
Every writer in this collection is an expatriate: a person who, for whatever reason, has ended up in another place, another country than his or her own. A number of the contributors live in France and have written about French settings.
The stories and poems selected for Kaleidoscope evoke many varied interpretations of light: from a force that dispels evil or illuminates to one that can be destructive, from sunlight to firelight, or from the glow of an Arctic summer night to the brilliance of a Mediterranean afternoon.
All the proceeds from the sale of Kaleidoscope will be donated to Room to Read, an international charity that promotes literacy and gender equality in education.
This anthology is dedicated to two writers and members of Writers Abroad, Mary Davies and Jäny Graf, who both died in June 2015 during the planning of Kaleidoscope. Two pieces written by them are published in the anthology.
Author and former Writers Abroad member Chris Allen, who lives in Germany, has written the foreword. His writing has appeared in a wide range of publications. A finalist at Glimmer Train in 2011, Chris Allen has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize twice.
Writers Abroad was founded in 2009. It provides an online forum for expat writers to exchange ideas, views and news on writing and to offer support and constructive feedback on each other’s work. All the work to produce Kaleidoscope was carried out online.
