NW15: The Anthology of New Writing Volume 15

This collection of short stories, essays and poetry provides the reader with a wide-ranging variety of themes, ranging from Ursula Holden's serious essay on what it means to be a writer, through Rahat Kurd's serious and surprising story about why a Muslim woman chooses to cover her hair, to Anita Desai's haunting ghost story.

All of the pieces intrigued me; three leap to mind now that I've finished the book. The first—and I think the best in the book—was Selma Dabbagh's story, "Down the Market", of an American exchange student watching a terrorist raid carried out by Israelis on Palestinians. The second was Zoë Strachan's "The Secret Life of Dads", a very real tale about a young man connecting with his father. Finally, Adam Marak's show more "Batman vs. the Bull", a story of a confrontation between a young boy and a child molester, left me feeling quietly satisfied. I also loved Kate Rhodes' defiant little poem, "Four Things You Never Got to See" and Tod Hartman's riotous "Dear Dear Leader", an epistolary conversation with Kim Jong-Il.

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