Raw Material (Storycuts)

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Summary

A downtrodden creative writing teacher despairs at the efforts of his students, at turns nakedly autobiographical or fanciful beyond reason. When an elderly lady begins submitting work in accordance with his 'write what you know' directive, his enthusiasm for the craft re-emerges. However some sources are best left unexplored.

Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was originally published in the collection Little Black Book of Stories.

About the author

A. S. Byatt

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

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