Waiting for the Gift: Stories Inspired by Low

by Dima Alzayat, Anne Billson, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Low, David Bowie’s 1977 album, stands as both his creative apex and an album which pushed popular music to its outer limits.

The eleven short stories in Waiting for the Gift, each of which takes a song on the album as its title and inspiration, provide a collective response from some of the best contemporary writers of fiction.

Featuring original work from Dima Alzayat, Anne Billson, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Jen Calleja, Ruby Cowling, Wendy Erskine, Keeley Forsyth, David Hayden, Zoë McLean, Adam Marek, Preti Taneja, Melissa Wan and Hugo Wilcken.

Waiting for the Gift maps out the otherworldly labyrinth that is Low, moving through tales of madness and the abyss, but also of futuristic fantasia and intrepid inner exploration.

Paperback

Published July 28, 2022

About the author

Dima Alzayat was born in Damascus, Syria, and grew up in San Jose, California. Her short story collection, Alligator and Other Stories (2020), was published by Two Dollar Radio (U.S.) and Picador (U.K.), and has been shortlisted for the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for Debut Short Story Collection, the 2021 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, and the 2021 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

She is the winner of the 2019 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, a 2018 Northern Writers’ Award, the 2017 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2015 Bernice Slote Award, runner-up in the 2018 Deborah Rogers Award and the 2018 Zoetrope: All-Story Competition, and was Highly Commended in the 2013 Bridport Prize.

Her stories have appeared in Esquire, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Bristol Short Story Award Anthology, Bridport Prize Anthology, and Enizagam. Her short story ‘In the Land of Kan’an’ was included in artist Jenny Holzer’s 2017 projection For Aarhus and was part of Holzer’s 2017 exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.