Elizabeth Baines

BALANCING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
A collection of short stories by Elizabeth Baines (Salt Modern Fiction)

Where is the Edge of the World? It's a back alley in Chinatown, or the dark suburban street where muggers jump you, it's a mountain camp in the dusk for an estranged father and son. It's the endless dunes where you lose your way, it's a seat in a pram at the top of a hill. It's the place where an erotic encounter can lead you. It's the unacknowledged scientific view, or the intuitive insight which conventional medicine ignores. It's the powerlessness resulting from lost language and suppressed history, it's the moment with the rough kids in the woods when you understand you're no better than them. It's the place where you can wrest back power - rebel against a violent father, expose a conman, discover you have magic powers.

It's between these covers. You can go there by clicking here

'Quite swept me off my feet ... Nothing would have induced me to interrupt
Balancing on the Edge of the World by Elizabeth Baines until I'd read them all' -Dovegreyreader. Read a review by Dovegreyreader here.

MORE COMMENTS AND REVIEWS

AUDIO CLIPS OF ELIZABETH READING EXTRACTS:

From 'The Shooting Script'

From 'Star Things'

SALT WEBSITE PAGE FOR BALANCING ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, WITH PDF SAMPLE

ARTICLES BY ELIZABETH AND INTERVIEWS WITH HER ABOUT THE BOOK:

Contribution to a series on creating a text on John Baker's blog, focusing on the story, 'Compass and Torch'.

The Short Review interview

The Book Addict's Guide interview

Dovegreyreader Asks

Film: Salt Podcast: Elizabeth talks about her short stories

A virtual book tour.
Elizabeth visited blogs to answer questions about Balancing on the Edge of the World, her writing process and her writing life. Find out all about it here.
(Stop 4 on the tour took place on a blog which has now been deleted and replaced, but the questions posed and Elizabeth's answers can be read here.)

An anthology of stories from Carve Magazine, includes Elizabeth's story 'Used to Be',
third prizewinner in the Raymond Carver competition 2008.
As a woman is driven too dangerously fast along a motorway, her life flashes before her...
Reviewing the story on the Carve blog, Rio Lang called it 'a self-reflexive treat whose enigmatic holding pattern makes beautiful sense by story’s end'.

Anthology available here

'Used to Be' is one of a series of stories on which Elizabeth is working.
Other stories in the series 'Possibility', 'The Choice Chamber'
and 'What Do You do If' appeared in Horizon Review.
Another, 'Falling', was shortlisted and highly commended in the 2010 Sean O'Faolain competition.
Another, 'The Relentless Pull of Gravity', appears in the latest issue of Stand Magazine

STORIES BY ELIZABETH
AVAILABLE ON THE WEB:

Used to Be (Carve Magzine)

A Glossary of Bread (East of the Web)

Compass and Torch (East of the Web)

Italian translation of A Glossary of Bread (Buran)

PRIZES

Elizabeth has won awards for stories in the following competitions: The Raymond Carver Competition, for Radio 3, the Listowel Festival, Writers' Inc, and twice in the Moondance International Film Festival short story competition.
She was longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize 2010, and shortlisted and Highly Commended in the Sean O'Faolain Short Story Competition 2010

EARLIER WORK

Elizabeth's stories have previously been broadcast on Radio 3, appeared in numerous print magazines such as Stand and London Magazine, and in anthologies including Bitch Lit (Crocus), Power (Honno) and Best Short Stories from Stand Magazine (Methuen).

She was a founder co-editor (with Ailsa Cox) and publisher (with Ailsa Cox and John Ashbrook) of the acclaimed short story magazine Metropolitan.