Hannah Stevens, "On the Bodies of Strangers"

Congratulations to UoL PhD Creative Writing graduate Hannah Stevens, whose new short story collection, On the Bodies of Strangers, has just been published!

 

Hannah Stevens is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. In Their Absence, her debut collection of stories was published by the Stretto imprint of Roman Books and was translated into Bulgarian by Ana Pipeva for Altera Press.

Her writing has featured in numerous anthologies including The Fairlight Book of Short Stories, High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories and Unthology 10: Fight or Flight. She is widely published in literary journals and magazines globally including Archer Magazine (Australia), Loose Lips (Canada), Necessary Fiction (USA), Litro Magazine, Idle Ink, Losslit, Fictive Dream and TSS Publishing (all UK).

She is currently working on her third collection of stories inspired by her time living and working in Taiwan. She has undertaken writing residencies in Yangon, Myanmar, The Literature and Translation House in Sofia, Bulgaria and the Taiwan Literature Base, Taipei.

Hannah is also an editor and creative events producer and has worked around the world on projects using writing and storytelling as tools for positive social change, partnering with the BBC, the British Embassy, Greenpeace and many others. Her website is here. 

About On the Bodies of Strangers, by Hannah Stevens

Shortlisted for the W&A Working Class Writers’ Prize 2022. A collection of short stories linked by the theme of tattoos.

Our lives, our experiences and the people we encounter leave behind indelible marks. On the Bodies of Strangers explores marked lives and marked flesh. The stories in this collection are linked by a single thread: the tattoos of their protagonists, traces of experiences and meaning etched onto their skin.  

 

These are stories about the chaos of ordinary lives, about people who are flawed, complicated, but always deeply human. From domestic abuse to unexpected friendship, mixing horror and hope, intimacies and lies, On the Bodies of Strangers explores the many ways we mark each other and ourselves as we deal with the complexities of human behaviour.  

You can read more about On the Bodies of Strangers on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the stories.  

From On the Bodies of Strangers

Extract from Stick and Poke

The sun is higher now and the air is hazy with dust. The factory is in full sun, and so they’ve had to move for some shade. They sit beneath a tree across the wasteland close by.

Angel opens her bag and pulls out an old towel. She lays it carefully onto the floor, smoothing out the rucks as best she can on the uneven ground. Alma watches, nods her head in approval.

"It’s getting real now," she says. Angel doesn’t speak, takes out a plastic pouch filled with a handful of sewing needles. Next she brings out a pencil, a spool of thread, and then a tiny pot of blank ink. 

"This is everything," says Angel, sitting up and straightening her back. 

"So, how does it work, then?" Alma asks. She shifts slightly, trying to get comfortable on the hard ground. 

"Well," says Angel. "You dip the needle into ink and then poke it into the skin. Like, over and over again."

 

"Yeah, even I got that," says Alma. "So the tattoo is made out of dots, not lines?"

"Yes," says Angel. "I’ll be poking dots, not drawing lines, and I’ll have to go over it a few times. It’s going to hurt." She stops talking and looks at Alma.

"It’s fine," says Alma. "I can handle it." She sniffs, avoids looking directly back at Angel. 

"What design do you want?" Angel asks. 

Alma doesn’t want to say, somehow. "I thought you were supposed to be the artist," she shrugs.

"I wouldn’t say that," says Angel. "Anyway, you should choose. It’s your body." 

A woman with two kids appears on the canal towpath. She is carrying shopping bags in each hand. They look heavy, and her shoulders sag. Alma can see the woman’s face is red, set hard against the distance she’s got to walk home. The two boys trail behind her, struggling in the lunchtime heat. Alma wonders who they are, who they’ll become, if they’d disappear eventually too. Just like her dad. 

"Maybe a moon," says Alma finally. She remembers that time when her dad was home. Just for a short while. How he showed her the moon from her bedroom window, said that whenever she saw it, she should think of him, how he loved her. It was the only time she’d heard him say that he loved anyone. She remembers the moon’s white glow, the curl of it against the dark, empty sky.

"Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese and Gaelic," ed. Will Buckingham and Hannah Stevens (Wind&Bones)

About Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese and Gaelic 
Four writers, four stories, and four languages, Tâigael is a first-of-its-kind collaborative writing and translation project, bringing together the cultures of Scotland and Taiwan to find new and surprising connections. From elderly prophets on the Taipei subway to sheep tangled in brambles by the roadside in rural Scotland, and from a goddess of saliva who disappears without trace to an unexpected guest at a Hogmanay party, these stories cross between languages and cultures to reimagine the past, present and future. For the project, Wind&Bones worked with writers Elissa Hunter-Dorans (Scotland), Kiú-kiong 玖芎 (Taiwan), Lisa MacDonald (Scotland) and Naomi Sím (Taiwan) to write and collaboratively translate between Taiwanese (Tâi-gí) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), via Mandarin and English. These are stories that weave together myth, dream and everyday life, as they reveal unexpected parallels between these two languages, their historical marginalisation, and their revival.

Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese and Gaelic will be published by Wind&Bones Books on 15th June 2025. You can pre-order the book here. If you pre-order by 1st May, 2025, your name will be listed in the final edition, in appreciation of your support.

About Wind&Bones
Wind&Bones Books is a small, non-profit indie press founded by University of Leicester PhD graduate Dr Hannah Stevens, and former De Montfort University Reader in Writing and Creativity, Dr Will Buckingham. Wind&Bones also run projects exploring writing, storytelling and philosophy for social change. Hannah and Will currently split their time between Scotland, Taiwan and sometimes Leicester. You can head to their website to find out more here.   

Invitation to a Joint Book Launch!

You are cordially invited to the book launch on Tuesday 11 May 2021, 7-8pm, for Hannah Stevens and Alexandros Plasatis. The event is free and open to all.

Hannah Stevens took her PhD in Creative Writing at Leicester University, and also taught undergraduates at the university. She will be launching her book of short stories, In Their Absence (Roman Books, 2021). The book includes stories first written during her PhD, and is published by Roman Books as part of their series Stretto Fiction, edited by Jonathan Taylor. You can see more details about Hannah's work and In Their Absence on Creative Writing at Leicester here, and you can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here. 

Alexandros Plasatis worked in the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester. He will be launching his novel-in-stories, Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), which was also first drafted during his PhD in Creative Writing, at De Montfort University. You can read more about Alex's work and Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness on Creative Writing at Leicester here, and you can read a review of the book on Everybody's Reviewing here.

The book launch will take place via Zoom and hosted by Jonathan Taylor. Further details and tickets are available here. We look forward to seeing you there!

Hannah Stevens, "In Their Absence"

Hannah Stevens is a writer from the UK. She writes short stories, flash fiction and creative non-fiction and has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She has stories featured in The Fairlight Book of Short Stories Volume 1, High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories and Unthology 10: Fight or Flight. She's also published by Archer Magazine, Loose Lips, Litro Magazine, Idle Ink, Losslit, Necessary Fiction, TSS Publishing and others. She is a director of Wind & Bones, an organisation dedicated to Writing, Creativity and Social Change. Her short story collection, In Their Absence, is published by Roman Books, as part of their Stretto Fiction Series, in 2021. You can read more about the collection below. Hannah's website is here. 

 

About In Their Absence 

In their Absence is a powerful dissection of what it means to go missing. This compelling debut explores the human complexities behind the headlines and statistics to reveal unsettling truths about what it is to live in the shadow of absence. These stories lay bare the agony of unknowing for those left behind. And they show us just how easily a human life can disappear. 

 

From In Their Absence 

Drought  

I’ve been missing for months: here, nobody knows who I am.  

We’re in the middle of a drought: everything is drying up and burning down.  

At the party I catch a man’s green eyes and eat from his paper plate. He has black hair and doesn’t remind me of home. I follow him outside and we kiss on the step.  

Later, the last bits of light fade away and, in the tangle of sheets, I try to show him what it means to touch me. I love his weight on my bones, his breath on my neck. I wonder how long he will stay for.  

In the morning he asks for water. He takes the glass and drinks to the bottom.  

I follow him to the door and he doesn’t look back as he leaves.  

 

Saboteur Award and Arnold Bennett Prize

By Jonathan Taylor

High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories has won the Saboteur Award for Best Anthology 2019. The anthology of contemporary short stories is published by Valley Press and co-edited by myself and Karen Stevens. It includes contributions by two University of Leicester PhD Creative Writing students: Laurie Cusack and Hannah Stevens, who graduated two years ago. The awards ceremony took place on Saturday 18th May in Fazeley Studios, Birmingham. Many thanks to everyone who voted for the anthology. For further details, see here.  

My poetry collection, Cassandra Complex (Shoestring Press), has also just been shortlisted for the Arnold Bennett Prize 2019. The shortlist of four books was announced on Monday 20th May. The Arnold Bennett Prize is awarded to the best book by an author from Stoke-on-Trent each year. This year's winner will be announced at the annual Arnold Bennett Conference in mid-June. For further details, see here. 

Cathedral Stories, by Hannah Stevens

On Friday 3rd March Leicester Cathedral became a gateway to an alternate universe, a place where hidden treasure was discovered, where angels fell to earth, where wooden carvings began to talk.

As part of the BBC Storytelling Festival over 100 children from local schools joined lecturers, tutors and writers from the University of Leicester’s School of Arts for a Flash Fiction workshop. Using objects and artefacts all around the cathedral as inspiration, the young people wrote their own flash fiction (or very short stories) and shared their work to applause from the rest of the crowd.

Here is a story inspired by the Ypres Cross in the Cathedral:


The Ypres Cross


I visit the cathedral every week. I come to see the Ypres cross, to touch the glass that covers it, keeps it safe.


The broken beads wound around the crucifix remind me of the beads my grandmother used to wear.  She wore them for special occasions: for nights she wanted to feel beautiful. She looped the string around her throat and they looked pale against the dark blue of her blouse.


Next she added colour to her cheeks, lipstick to her mouth. She knew her own face well and did this with precision. Later, she slipped a shawl over her shoulders, stepped out to dance with her friends.


My grandmother doesn’t wear her beads anymore. She cannot walk, doesn’t have the strength to lift her legs. She spends her days in bed now, dying slowly from something they cannot cure.


Sometimes she asks me to put powder across her cheeks, to fetch a mirror so she can see. She tells me how she loves to dance and she asks me for her beads.


When I tell her that the beads are broken, that she cannot dance tonight, she begins to cry.

I wipe her tears with my hand, say I love her, but she looks confused. My grandmother doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t remember me. But she remembers her beads. How they felt cool on her neck and how they moved against the dark blue of her blouse as she danced.

Hannah Stevens

"Caterpillars" by Hannah Stevens

Here is a piece of flash fiction by Hannah Stevens, which was first published in The New Luciad - the literary magazine hosted by the Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester. The New Luciad will be open for submissions again soon.

Hannah Stevens is from Leicester and is a PhD student in Creative Writing at Leicester University. She has published a short story collection called Without Makeup and Other Stories (Crystal Clear Creators, 2012) and has had stories published in Crystal Voices (2015), The New Luciad (2015) and others.

Caterpillars

They’re laughing. They think it’s all a joke. The youngest one is collecting them from the low leaves of trees. She screams when they move in her hand. The older one holds them beneath the water in the bucket with a stick. 

They are my children and they’re drowning caterpillars. I wonder if they know that these crawling things would’ve become butterflies. 

Soon, the childminder will be here. Maybe she will tell them. Maybe they will cry. 

My bags are already in the car. I have written a note that I will leave by the kettle when I go.