These pieces were all written on the Comma Press Short Story Course facilitated by S J Bradley at the Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds. The group met once a month for six months. Each session involved some critique from peers and the tutor of their own work, a close look at examples of stories from other writers as well as theory and practice of the craft.

Leeds is a city alive with culture. Art galleries spring up in garages and basements. Poetry is written in its parks and homes. Theatre is produced in sheds and in abandoned aircraft hangars. There's a radio station in a deconsecrated church, and a social club venue in what used to be a pork pie factory. In the cityscape itself, a mire of contradictions. Million pound skyscrapers look out over inner city areas where holiday clubs feed children supermarket food waste.

Leeds is a city of contradictions, a place of grit and verve, a city where anything can happen. In this anthology, it's a place of magic and subversion - a place where you can dance with Death, a place of disappearing, malleable brick walls, a place of surprises. Friendship can be stronger than terminal illness, and work becomes a form of slavery. Husbands develop unpleasant habits, and a young girl, changing school a dozen times or more, finds herself trying to communicate in an unusual way.