Maybe the Birds

A collection of 14 speculative and realist short stories exploring female lives and experiences.

After the apocalypse destroys most life on Earth, a woman makes artificial bird voiceboxes to try and keep birdsong alive. A young female vampire uses her knowledge of mirrors to save her village from the creature who turned her. A woman haunted by her past feels that the robins she has always loved are no longer her friends. These fourteen stories, largely speculative in nature, consider what happens when the world is no longer as it used to be—whether it be the postapocalyptic future, the paleolithic past, or the dark north of the present.

A. J. Ashworth’s second collection features "Leather" from Best British Short Stories and explores themes of love and loss, family and foe, as well as moments of disconnection and connection with those closest to us. All are interested in what it means to be alive in very difficult times.

• Maybe the Birds
• Leather
• Piano
• One Small Thing
• Out of Body
• Small Feathers Falling
• Birthday
• Mirrors
• Harbour Lights
• The Guide
• Table for One
• Mariposa
• Little Arrows
• The Monolith
• Afterword: "No time to mourn": Female characters and their preapocalyptic activities in the postapocalyptic short story
• Acknowledgements

A. J. Ashworth is the author of the short story collection Somewhere Else, or Even Here, which won Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize, was nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. The TLS said of her work: "A. J. Ashworth’s first collection of short stories displays impressive versatility. She treats each of her characters to their own narrative timbre—and the stories do not progress so much as accrue, collecting incidental detail that enriches the scenarios without pointing towards their resolution." She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, and currently works as a secondary school English teacher.