Openings

'One of the finest short-storywriters at work today. These stories are honest, finely nuanced and indelible in their impact.' WENDY ERSKINE 'One of our best short story writers.' THE TIMES 'You'll lose yourself in this collection and, most likely, find yourself too. Each story is a masterclass in attentiveness.' JAN CARSON The much-anticipated new collection from the BBC National Short Story Award-winning author of Multitudes and Intimacies. I still sometimes wonder if one could draw a window in the wall, or in the air, and step through it together. To somewhere else, entirely new. From a passionate affair in Blitz-era London, to a highly charged Christmas party in Belfast, to a trip to Marrakech which could form a new family, the thirteen striking stories of Openings pulse with possibility and illuminate those fleeting but recognisable moments of heartbreak and hope that can change the course of a life. 'It takes a writer as subtle, compassionate and clear-eyed as Caldwell to track the hidden forces that work upon us, to illuminate our secret selves. This is prose that liberates.' CLAIRE KILROY 'Caldwell has a glorious skill for creating narratives in which every element works in perfect tandem.' SUNDAY TIMES

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and two collections of short stories: Multitudes and Intimacies. She won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2021 for 'All the People Were Mean and Bad'. Other awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018 and in 2019 she was the editor of Being Various - New Irish Short Stories.