Introduction

Before my short story collection was published, it was part of a PhD thesis on ‘postfeminist feeling in contemporary women’s short stories’. In my PhD, I mainly looked at short stories about girls, a word which I use in a deliberately ambiguous way to refer to anyone who feels or has ever felt themselves to be part of girl culture. The stories I have selected for my personal anthology all have something to say about girlhood. As such, themes such as danger, sex, love, friendship and family recur across my selection. But perhaps, even more than those things, each of these stories is preoccupied with the fantasy of other possible lives – lives that could have been lived, those that might yet be lived. This capacity for imagining oneself anew, for changing, for grasping for something bigger, is something I associate with the liminal period of girlhood – but it is also something I associate with the short story. It is a thrilling form, both to read and write, dense with feeling and with possibility. I hope at least one of my chosen stories will speak to you and draw you into its world.