Books / addiction

Anthology of recovery stories crowdfunded by Unbound Books

By Joe Melia  Tuesday Oct 2, 2018

An anthology of stories, poems and essays written by writers recovering from illness, addiction and trauma is being crowdfunded by Unbound, the publisher behind The Good Immigrant, edited by Bristol-based Nikesh Shukla. Writer and editor, Lily Dunn, tells Bristol 24/7 how A Wild and Precious Life: A Recovery Anthology came about, and what she thinks about moving to Bristol.

Divorce with two young children and added pressure to earn an income was perhaps not the best landscape for taking on voluntary work. But there I was, nearly three years ago, setting up a creative writing group at Hackney Recovery Service, through St Mungo’s. Unbeknown to me, going through my own kind of recovery, from grief over my father’s slow suicide to prescription drugs and alcohol. Within the year, I had secured Arts Council funding to continue teaching for another nine months, and a year after that my teaching partner, Zoe Gilbert, and I had a collection of stunning prose and poetry in our hands – a whole anthology’s worth, from our original group (who were a hugely talented bunch) and from a national callout. We had work from award-winning authors, from emerging writers and from complete unknowns – all exploring the theme of recovery.

The stories wander through the back streets where a junkie begs for change, to the corridors of an art gallery and the dark avenues of the mind. We have stories told from inside psychosis and the everyday rip-roaring tragedy of a Scottish family losing it … but still laughing… Both Zoe and I are writers ourselves, and mentors, and were able to choose short stories, memoir or poetry that approached the concept of recovery from an oblique angle, either playing with form, language, or with humour. We were to realise a common ground between our writers: they had come far enough on the road to recovery to be able to stand back and understand what had happened to them, and could record that experience with a detached eye.

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We then had a publisher – Unbound – and we named our anthology A Wild and Precious Life, after a Mary Oliver quote – ‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ I felt the resonance of this, having spent a year with a group of people at the recovery service who were so fragile and yet so brave. Somehow, to make art out of those lost years made a point of it; made a tricky stumble through the wilderness matter. They were no longer in that half space, neither here, nor there, drifting – to coin a Gabor Maté phrase – like hungry ghosts. The creative writing group became an important part of their recovery; they were on the road home.

But A Wild and Precious Life still has a way to go. Unbound has pioneered a new kind of publishing, one that relies on people pledging for the book in advance of them publishing. They have had great success with this in the past with Man Booker longlisted novel, The Wake, by Paul Kingsworth, and The Good Immigrant, edited by Bristol-based Nikesh Shukla, which was crowned Britain’s favourite book in 2016. It is the perfect home for our anthology.

In the midst of all this, my children and I moved to Bristol. I’d spent a lot of time here as a child as my grandparents lived in a beautiful Georgian house that overlooked the suspension bridge and when my brother and I stayed we’d creep into their bed in the morning and watch the lights flicker bright over the city. We’d have breakfast on the terrace as the hot air balloons floated above. My grandparents are no longer alive, but the streets hum with their memory. My grandmother co-owned a shop called Rainbow in the 1970s where she sold her artful colourful knits; I used to sit beside her on a stool, and help her serve her customers. I immediately felt at home here. My children settled into school, and I got a job teaching creative writing at Bath Spa University, and continued writing my memoir about my father’s struggles with various addictions, whose essays are being published by Granta and Litro, among other literary journals. I am looking forward to a few years down the line, when I should have A Wild and Precious Life in one hand and my memoir in the other.

To pledge for a copy of A Wild and Precious Life and for more information, visit https://unbound.com/books/recovery/

Read more: Lunar Poetry Podcasts publish anthology

Main photo – writer and editor Lily Dunn

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