Books / Flash Fiction
Award-winning Bristol author Kathryn Aldridge-Morris publishes debut flash fiction collection
Downend-based author Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is also a creative freelancer and workshop leader with over 15 years’ teaching experience and a postgraduate degree in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes.
She offers training support to charities working with people seeking asylum, and in 2024 became a writer in residence for a refugee charity – aided with funding from the West of England Combined Authority (WECA).
In recent years Aldridge-Morris has won a clutch of writing awards for her flash fiction and non-fiction, which has also been featured on BBC Sounds, and her work has been published in over 20 print anthologies.
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With support from an Arts Council England award, she is currently writing a novella. But her primary focus currently is the launch of her debut book of flash fiction, Cold Toast, which is published on June 10 by Dahlia Books – bringing together surprising, devastating and darkly funny, very short stories.
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, Cold Toast – cover art: Tim Mara Portrait of Astrid, 1973; photo: courtesy of the author
In the context of 70s and 80s Britain, she describes the collection through a feminist lens, capturing those moments in time “when girls and women first glimpsed their own power – or lack of it.
“Set against a backdrop of smoky kitchens, playground politics, and flickering TV sets, these stories trace the quiet rebellions and uneasy compromises of lives shaped by expectation and constraint” she says.
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris – photo: courtesy of the author
“Two women swap secrets at the school gates about an unfaithful husband. A father trades his daughter’s first kiss for a fishing trip. A girl becomes convinced the silent calls to her home are from the Yorkshire Ripper.
“By turns tender, raw, and defiant, this collection lays bare the tension between freedom and conformity, love and survival, and what it meant to come of age in a world that wasn’t always ready for you.”
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Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris is available now from local indie bookshops, the publisher, Dahlia Books, or national booksellers. Find out more about the author at www.kamwords.com.
Main photo: cover art for Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris (cropped) by Tim Mara Portrait of Astrid, 1973
Read next:
- Bristol author Sophie Holland launches debut novel: ‘Peachy Wonderful’
- Carolyn Lewis on her debut collection of prize-winning short stories
- Bristol writer Judy Darley launches new short story collection
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