Many thanks to artist, Joe Young, for providing us with the cover artwork for
Kitchen Sink Gothic.
We will be contacting those who have submitted stories so far within
the next seven days. And a reminder that we are still looking for
stories for this anthology, which will be published by
Parallel Universe Publications later this year.
Parallel Universe Publications is now accepting submissions, either original or reprints, for an
anthology of stories inspired by the classic British cinema/theatre
phenomenon known as kitchen sink drama.
What Culture
described it as: "A determination to examine the lives of the working
and dispossessed classes in a non sentimental way...The movement began
in the late 1950s and has survived to this day with the oeuvre of Ken
Loach and films such as
Nil By Mouth. Tackling thorny themes is a trademark of the Kitchen Sink drama.
Abortion, divorce, homelessness, single motherhood, inter racial sex,
poverty and homosexuality were all ripe topics to be examined. There was
also the advent of The Angry Young Man – usually working class men
railing against everyone and everything."
That fount of all knowledge,
Wikipedia, describes it as: "a term coined to describe a
British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in
theatre,
art,
novels,
film and
television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men. It used a style of
social realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of
working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy
pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.
The films, plays and novels employing this style are set frequently in poorer industrial areas in the
North of England, and use the rough-hewn speaking
accents and
slang heard in those regions. The film
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a precursor of the genre, and the
John Osborne play
Look Back in Anger (1956) is thought of as the first of the idiom.
The gritty
love-triangle of
Look Back in Anger, for example, takes place in a cramped, one-room flat in the
English Midlands. The conventions of the genre have continued into the 2000s, finding expression in such television shows as
Coronation Street and
EastEnders.
[1]
In art, "Kitchen Sink School" was a term used by critic
David Sylvester to describe painters who depicted
social realist-type scenes of domestic life.
[2]"
We look forward to tales of darkness and horror, of the supernatural and
the weird within the overall framework of the social realism of the
kitchen sink drama.
Please send your submissions to rileybooks@ntlworld.com headed "Kitchen Sink Gothic" as an attachment in either doc or docx. We
welcome either new stories or reprints. If a reprint please add details
of previous publication. We have no firm maximum length though
obviously the longer the story the better it will need to be to be
accepted.
Payment will be £5 per thousand words and a contributor's copy of the book.
