The Ones Who Flew The Nest

Our curated anthology series. Literary fiction to make you keen for flight.

Four stories of feathers, blood and eggs. A girl chases a different future on the back of a Suzuki 250. A sibling seeks her brother, hoping answers will heal. Inside the walls of her speaking house, a ‘kept’ wife tries to learn to be content with her identity. A young woman falls in love with a Goose and grows wings. These are journeys fuelled by love, loss and self-discovery, in which characters must fight or take flight.

Stories by Helen Kennedy, Katie Hale, Louise Finnigan and Jacqueline Ward.

Edited and compiled by Isabelle Kenyon

“An evocative and unflinching story which shines a light on fractured families, love, and regret, all seeped in Manchester’s past, present and uncertain future. Incredibly moving and beautifully written, I loved it.”

- Gaynor Jones on ‘The People’s History Museum is Closed by Helen Kennedy

"Ivy Wife is delicately spare, beautifully written and hauntingly melancholic tale about female identity in the face of a shapeless loss, that will linger long after the last line."

- Lara Williams, Author of Treats, Supper Club and The Odyssey on 'Ivy Wife' by Louise Finnigan

"Helen Kennedy takes us on a journal through a landscape of childhood scars, now healing; her writing reads like a series of red ribbons, some delicate, some more savage, in the style of tender personal documentary but always woven into the lyrical. Frank and pressing, her camera-I asks us to see stark things as we look around at the natural landscape we pass through, a metaphor for deposits of private history."

- Sally Bayley, Oxford University, author of ‘No Boys Play Here’ William Collins 2021 and ‘Girl with Dove’ 2019