This year at Womad festival, I was privileged to chair a panel of authors from Comma Press’s collection, The Cuckoo Cage.
Courttia Newland, Bidisha and Irfan Master read from their short stories about contemporary protest drawn from historical “proto-heroes”: Captain Pouch and the Midlands Revolt of 1607, the Jack-a-Lent riots in Bristol in 1749, and the Captain Swing riots in southern England in the early 1830s.
We discussed the process of working with a historian, the events of 2020 and whether change is possible, and the connections between local protest, place and global movements.
Buy the book, edited by Ra Page, here: https://commapress.field-test.co.uk/books/the-cuckoo-cage
