Ellipsis 1: Comma Modern Shorts

by Sean O'Brien, Tim Cooke, Jean Sprackland

This short story collection features three authors who each contribute half a dozen stories that are linked by their shared setting. Jean Sprackland follows characters clinging to lost dreams and obsessions amid the dunes and fairgrounds of Southport. Set in the derelict rooms and vandalized stairwells of a tower block in south Manchester, Tim Cooke's stories draw intricate spirals around the claustrophobic lives of those who occupy them. Sean O'Brien's voices are also those of lost souls that actively seek their own dereliction, staggering between the vaulted libraries and nocturnal drinking dens of Tyneside.

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic and playwright. Prizes he has won include the Eric Gregory Award (1979), the Somerset Maugham Award (1984), the Cholmondeley Award (1988), the Forward Poetry Prize (1995, 2001 and 2007) and the T. S. Eliot Prize (2007). He is one of only four poets (the others being Ted Hughes, John Burnside and Jason Allen-Paisant) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same collection of poems (The Drowned Book).
Born in London, England, O'Brien grew up in Hull, and was educated at Hymers College and Selwyn College, Cambridge. He has lived since 1990 in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he teaches at the university. He was the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor at St. Anne's College, Oxford, for 2016–17.