Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Evoking childhood memories and lifelong relationships with humour, poignancy, and preternatural clarity, What Possessed Me also explores the natural world and landscapes in various parts of England, Wales, France, and Greece. Another theme is the work of teaching and other professions seen from the vantage points of provider, recipient, and witness. There are salutes to writers like Edward Thomas, Dannie Abse and Jack Gilbert who, we are told, 'put his life into poetry.' Separate sequences celebrate years of occasional visits to Llandaff Cathedral and its surrounding landscape, and the delights and political revelations of a stay in Athens. This is a book diverse in its moods and subjects but unified by an infectious openness to the moment and to life's joys and sorrows, and an unfolding sense of accumulating experience and insight. It is illuminated by a recurrent sense of inspiration, of 'what possessed me.'

Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia provides a fresh examination of utopia and education. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on literature and the visual arts as well as traditional non-fiction sources, the authors explore utopia not as a model of social perfection but as the active, imaginative building of better worlds. Utopian questions, they argue, lie at the heart of education, and addressing such questions demands attention not just to matters of theoretical principle but to the particulars of everyday life and experience. Taking utopia seriously in educational thought also involves a consideration of that which is dystopian. Utopia, this book suggests, is not something that is fixed, final, or ever fully realized; instead, it must be constantly recreated, and education, as an ongoing process of reflection, action, and transformation, has a central role to play in this process.

Contemporary theatre is going through a period of unparalleled excitement and challenge. Terms like 'postmodern' and 'postdramatic' have their own contested and defended histories, while notions of truth in verbatim theatre are open to serious critical challenge. Theatre writing can result in no words being spoken and nothing appearing on the page, and productions are stretching the boundaries of space, place and context like never before. This revised and significantly expanded edition of New Performance/New Writing explores immersive and solo theatre, autoethnography, applied drama, performance writing, plot, story, narrative and devising. It presents an invaluable response to questions that arise from new theatre, prompting active reading that enhances classroom and workshop learning, and improves productivity in rehearsal. Each chapter explores a key aspect of theatre study, while an extensive timeline of theatre events gives a broad overview of its evolution. Case studies on practitioners as diverse as Kneehigh, Punchdrunk, Mark Ravenhill and Forced Entertainment are scattered throughout the book, along with detailed suggestions for workshops, which encourage readers to test some of the book's ideas in practice.

When research is so connected to personal interest, experience, and familiarity that objectivity becomes a moveable feast, the line between documentation and invention blurs to near-invisibility. John Freeman asks what it means to locate oneself into research findings and narrative reports, and what happens when one's self goes further and becomes the research. Subjecting received truths to a series of hard questions, readers are taken on a journey through self-performance; traumatic memoir; the lure of weasel words; emotional evocation; the vagaries of memory; creative nonfiction; cultural appropriation; illusion masquerading as truth and the complex ethics of university research. Case studies from international autoethnographers run through the book and appendices provide invaluable advice to university researchers and supervisors. The result is a work that sheds new light on forms of narrative research that connect writers' personal stories to the participatory cultures under investigation.

Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia provides a fresh examination of utopia and education. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on literature and the visual arts as well as traditional non-fiction sources, the authors explore utopia not as a model of social perfection but as the active, imaginative building of better worlds. Utopian questions, they argue, lie at the heart of education, and addressing such questions demands attention not just to matters of theoretical principle but to the particulars of everyday life and experience. Taking utopia seriously in educational thought also involves a consideration of that which is dystopian. Utopia, this book suggests, is not something that is fixed, final, or ever fully realized; instead, it must be constantly recreated, and education, as an ongoing process of reflection, action, and transformation, has a central role to play in this process.

Thirty-six major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided America-including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Russo, Eula Bliss, Karen Russell, and many more America is broken. You don't need a fistful of statistics to know this. Visit any city, and evidence of our shattered social compact will present itself. From Appalachia to the Rust Belt and down to rural Texas, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest stretches to unimaginable chasms. Whether the cause of this inequality is systemic injustice, the entrenchment of racism in our culture, the long war on drugs, or immigration policies, it endangers not only the American Dream but our very lives. In Tales of Two Americas, some of the literary world's most exciting writers look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.

Over the course of ten years, Freeman's has introduced the English-speaking world to countless writers of international import and acclaim, from Olga Tokarczuk to Valeria Luiselli, while also spotlighting brilliant writers working in English, from Tommy Orange to Tess Gunty. Now, in its last issue, this unique literary project ponders all the ways of reaching a fitting conclusion. For Sayaka Murata, keeping up with the comings and goings of fashion and its changing emotional landscapes can mean being left behind, and in her poem 'Amenorrhea' Julia Alverez experiences the end of the line as menopause takes hold. Yet sometimes an end is merely a beginning, as Barry Lopez meditates while walking through the snowy Oregonian landscapes. While Chinelo Okparanta's story 'Fatu' confronts the end of a relationship under the spectre of new life, other writers look towards aging as an opportunity for rebirth, such as Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who takes on the role of being her own elder, comforting herself in the ways that her grandmother used to. Finally, in his comic story 'Everyone at Dinner Has a Max Von Sydow Story,' Dave Eggers suggests that sometimes stories don't have neat or clean endings - that sometimes the middle is enough. With new writing from Sandra Cisneros, Colum McCann, Omar El Akkad and Mieko Kawakami, Freeman's: Conclusions is a testament to the startling power of literature to conclude in a state of beauty, fear and promise.

Over a century ago, Rilke went to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where he watched a pair of flamingos. A flock of other birds screeched by, and, as he describes in a poem, the great red-pink birds sauntered on, unphased, then 'stretched amazed and singly march into the imaginary.' This encounter - so strange, so typical of flamingos with their fabulous posture - is also still typical of how we interact with animals. Even as our actions threaten their very survival, they are still symbolic, captivating and captive, caught in a drama of our framing. This issue of Freeman's tells the story of that interaction, its costs, its tendernesses, the mythological flex of it. From lovers in a Chiara Barzini story, falling apart as a group of wild boars roams in their Roman neighbourhood, to the soppen emergency birth of a cow on a Wales farm, stunningly described by Cynan Jones, no one has the moral high ground here. Nor is this a piece of mourning. There's wonder, humour, rage and relief, too. Featuring pigeons, calves, stray dogs, mascots, stolen cats, and bears, to the captive, tortured animals who make up our food supply, powerfully described in Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk's essay, this wide-ranging issue of Freeman's will stimulate discussion and dreams alike.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced many of us to reimagine our homes, work, relationships and adapt to a new way of life - one with far fewer possibilities for interaction. And yet, in this period of intense isolation, we've faced dilemmas which are nearly universal. How to love, to care for aging parents, to find a home, attend to a planet in flux, fight for justice. This vast range of experiences is captured by our greatest storytellers, essayists and poets in Freeman's: Change. Some pieces explore the small moments that serve as new routines in a life lived at home, as in Joshua Bennett's essay, where a Coltrane playlist sets the stage for early morning dances with his newborn son. Sometimes, it's the absence of change that drives us to the edge. In Lina Mounzer's 'The Gamble,' a father's incessant hope for a better life festers and sinks the whole family after they leave Lebanon during the Civil War. And in 'Final Days,' Sayaka Murata imagines a future without aging, where people must choose how and when they want to die, consulting guidebooks like Let's Die Naturally! Super Deaths for Adults & The Best Spots. With new writing from Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros, Zahia Rahman, Yoko Ogawa, Yasmine El Rashidi, Lina Meruane and Aleksandar Hemon, and featuring work from never-before-published writers like Elizabeth Ayre, Freeman's: Change opens a window into the many-sided ways we adapt.

This insightful and practically-focused collection brings together different approaches to actor training from professionals based at universities and conservatoires in the UK, the US and Australia. Exploring the cultural and institutional differences which affect actor training, and analysing developments in the field today, it addresses a range of different approaches, from Stanislavski's System to contemporary immersive theatre. With hands-on focus from some of the world's leading programmes, and attention paid to ethical control, consent and safe practice, this book sees expert tutors exploring pathways to sustainable 21st century careers. Designed for tutors, students and practitioners, Approaches to Actor Training examines what it means to train as an actor, what actors-in-training can expect from their programmes of study and how the road to professional accomplishment is mapped and travelled.

The sixth volume in the series that has been hailed by NPR, O Magazine and Vogue, Freeman's: California features stunning new work from a broad selection of writers, revealing everything that is important and fascinating about America's most populous state. In Freeman's: California, Lauren Markham describes how four generations of her family have lived in and tried to manipulate the water in one of the driest parts of the state and how water and land means everything. Rabih Alameddine recounts becoming a bartender in the mid-1980s as his friends began to die of AIDS. Rachel Kushner reminisces on all the amazing cars she's owned and their peculiar, vivid personalities. Natalie Diaz narrates the process of making her body into a professional basketball player, and how that assembly stalled some of the internal vulnerabilities she'd felt as a gay native woman growing up in California. And Elaine Castillo visits her brother in prison. Amid the raging the forest fires plaguing California, William T. Vollmann drives to the Carr fire and sees how fire has become the new state of normality for California. And Jaime Cortez riffs on pulling over at a rest-stop and smelling the fires of Paradise burning. Meanwhile home is in transition as Karen Tei Yamashita recalls a Japanese-American who goes to Japan after the dropping of the bomb, writing back and forth. Reyna Grande explores how her mother fell out of society and became a woman who collects recycling, while she and her siblings have become model immigrants. Also featuring a haunting ghost story from Oscar Villalon, bold new fiction from Tommy Orange, and stunning poems from Mai Der Vang, Juan Felipe Herrera, Maggie Millner and more, Freeman's: California assembles a diverse list of brilliant writers.

From the voices of protesters to the encroachment of a new fascism, everywhere we look power is revealed. Spouse to spouse, soldier to citizen, looker to gazed upon, power is never static: it is either demonstrated or deployed. Its hoarding is itself a demonstration. This thought-provoking issue of the acclaimed literary annual Freeman's explores who gets to say what matters in a time of social upheaval. Many of the writers are women. Margaret Atwood posits it is time to update the gender of werewolf narratives. Aminatta Forna shatters the silences which supposedly ensured her safety as a woman of colour walking in public space. Power must often be seized. The narrator of Lan Samantha Chang's short story finally wrenches control of the family's finances from her husband only to make a fatal mistake. Meanwhile the hero of Tahmima Anam's story achieves freedom by selling bull semen. Australian novelist Josephine Rowe recalls a gallery attendee trying to take what was not offered when she worked as a life-drawing model. Violence often results from power imbalances - Booker Prize winner Ben Okri watches power stripped from the residents of Grenfell Tower by ferocious neglect. But not all power must wreak damage. Barry Lopez remembers fourteen glimpses of power, from the moment he hitched a ride on a cargo plan in Korea to the glare he received from a bear traveling with her cubs in the woods, asking - do you plan me harm? Featuring work from brand new writers Nicole Im, Jaime Cortez and Nimmi Gowrinathan, as well as from some of the world's best storytellers, including US poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, Franco-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani, and Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, Freeman's: Power escapes from the headlines of today and burrows into the heart of the issue.

'The oldest is 70. The youngest, 26. In between, the best list of this kind I have ever seen.' Marlon James In three issues, the literary anthology from leading editor and literary critic John Freeman has gained an international following and wide acclaim: 'fresh, provocative, engrossing' (BBC.com), 'impressively diverse' (O Magazine), 'bold, searching' (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Freeman's: The Future of New Writing departs from the series' progression of themes. This special fourth installment instead introduces a list - to be announced just before publication - of thirty poets, essayists, novelists and short story writers from around the world who are shaping the literary conversation right now and will continue to impact it in years to come. Drawing on recommendations from book editors, critics, translators and authors from across the globe, Freeman's: The Future of New Writing includes pieces from a select list of writers aged 25 to 70, from over a dozen countries and writing in almost as many languages. This will be a new kind of list, and an aesthetic manifesto for our times. Against a climate of nationalism and silo'd thinking, writers remain influenced by work from outside their region, genre and especially age group. Serious readers, this special issue celebrates, have always read this way too - and Freeman's: The Future of New Writing brings them an exciting view of where writing is going next.

Freeman's: Family is the second literary anthology in the series reviewers are calling 'illuminating' (National Public Radio) and 'sure to become a classic in years to come' (San Francisco Chronicle). Following a debut issue on the theme arrival, Freeman circles a new topic that affects us all: family. Often family is a conduit into the past. In an essay called 'Crossroads,' Aminatta Forna muses on the legacy of slavery and her childhood in Sierra Leone as she settles her family in Washington, DC, where she is constantly accused of cutting in line whenever she stands next to her white husband. Families are hardly stable entities, so many writers discover. Award-winning novelist Claire Vaye Watkins delivers a stunning portrait of a woman in the throes of postpartum depression. Booker Prize winner Marlon James takes the focus off absent fathers to write about his mother, who calls to sing him happy birthday every year. Even in the darkest moments, humour abounds. In Claire Messud's home there are two four-legged tyrants; Sandra Cisneros writes about her extended family of past lovers; and Aleksandar Hemon tells the story of his uncle's desperate attempt to remain a communist despite decades in the Soviet gulag. With fiction, nonfiction and poetry from literary heavyweights and up-and-coming writers alike, Freeman's: Family collects the most amusing, heartbreaking and probing stories about family life emerging today.

A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John Freeman In the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of styles have brought this unique genre a thrilling burst of energy. The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story celebrates this avalanche of talent. This rich anthology begins in 1970 and brings together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including-for the first time in a collection of this scale-science fiction, horror, and fantasy, placing writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, and Stephen King next to some beloved greats of the literary form: Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Denis Johnson. Culling widely, John Freeman, the former editor of Granta and now editor of his own literary annual, brings forward some astonishing work to be regarded in a new light. Often overlooked tales by Dorothy Allison, Percival Everett, and Charles Johnson will recast the shape and texture of today's enlarging atmosphere of literary dialogue. Stories by Lauren Groff and Ted Chiang raise the specter of engagement in ecocidal times. Short tales by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and Lydia Davis rub shoulders with near novellas by Susan Sontag and Andrew Holleran. This book will be a treasure trove for readers, writers, and teachers alike.

Day by day, tweet by tweet, it often feels like our world is run on hate. Invective. Cruelty and sadism. But is it possible the greatest and most powerful force is love? In the newest issue of this acclaimed series, Freeman's Love asks this question, bringing together literary heavyweights like Richard Russo, Anne Carson, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, Haruki Murakami, Tommy Orange and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk alongside emerging writers such as Andres Felipe Solano and Semezdin Mehmedinovic. Together, the pieces comprise a stunning exploration of the complexities of love, tracing it from its earliest stirrings, to the forbidden places where it emerges against reason, to loss so deep it changes the color of perception. In a time of contentiousness and flagrant abuse, this issue promises what only love can bring: a balm of complexity and warmth.

The third literary anthology in the series that has been called 'ambitious' (O Magazine) and 'strikingly international' (Boston Globe), Freeman's: Home, continues to push boundaries in diversity and scope, with stunning new pieces from emerging writers and literary luminaries alike. As the refugee crisis continues to convulse whole swathes of the world and there are daily updates about the rise of homelessness in different parts of America, the idea and meaning of home is at the forefront of many people's minds. Viet Thanh Nguyen harks to an earlier age of displacement with a haunting piece of fiction about the middle passage made by those fleeing Vietnam after the war. Rabih Alameddine brings us back to the present, as he leaves his mother's Beirut apartment to connect with Syrian refugees who are building a semblance of normalcy, and even beauty, in the face of so much loss. Home can be a complicated place to claim, because of race - the everyday reality of which Danez Smith explores in a poem about a chance encounter at a bus stop - or because of other types of fraught history. In 'Vacationland,' Kerri Arsenault returns to her birthplace of Mexico, Maine, a paper mill boomtown turned ghost town, while Xiaolu Guo reflects on her childhood in a remote Chinese fishing village with grandparents who married across a cultural divide. Many readers and writers turn to literature to find a home: Leila Aboulela tells a story of obsession with a favourite author. Also including Thom Jones, Emily Raboteau, Rawi Hage, Barry Lopez, Herta Muller, Amira Hass, and more - writers from around the world lend their voices to the theme and what it means to build, leave, return to, lose, and love a home.