Cosmic Latte

Migrants, immigrants, travellers, and holidaymakers feature in Dylan Thomas Prize-winner Rachel Trezise's second collection of short fiction: in eleven dazzling stories of lives lived on either side of boundaries, and on the fringes of society, is teeming with unforgettable characters whose dreams, yearnings and regrets are at once unique and universal. Orthodox Jewish teenager Levi, having been caught fishing pornography from a waste bin in a Brooklyn Park, is sent to reform school in Israel, his simple pious existence threatened when he meets moon-faced nymphomaniac Tzippy, resident of a nearby psychiatric hospital. Lonely seven-year-old third generation Northern Irish-Italian, Majella, finds solace in her collection of Barbie dolls when her father is murdered by terrorists and her mother is floored by grief, learning to deal with the horrors of the world through child's play. East German opera aficionado, Silke, faces a life-changing decision when she wakes to find her American lover, Michael, stranded on the opposite side of an impenetrable but hastily thrown-up wall. Here, deep tragedy rubs shoulders with sharp comedy as children come of age and adults come to terms.

Rachel Trezise's semi-autobiographical novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was published in 2000, to critical acclaim and a place on the Orange Futures List, is studied in Welsh Universities and at the University of Montreal. Her short story collection Fresh Apples, won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Trezise was writer in residence at the University of Texas in spring 2007. Dial M for Merthyr won the inaugural Max Boyce Prize in 2010. Her radio play Lemon Meringue Pie was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2008. Sixteen Shades of Crazy was published by Blue Door in 2010. Her work has been translated into several languages and published all over the world.