Alternative Stories and Fake Realities

Alternative Stories and Fake Realities is a literary spoken-word anthology shaped around performance, writing, and the imaginative lives of writers. Its centre of gravity is audio drama, poetry, and fiction, but the feed is not confined to finished pieces. It also spends time with process. The show moves from produced dramas to short-story readings, from poet interviews to conversations about script writing, theatre history, games, workshops, and the discipline of making work for the ear. It has a calm, craft-conscious register. The episodes are varied, but they share an interest in how language changes when it is spoken, scored, edited, or performed. Jane Walker’s Theatre Workshop episode uses radio-play energy to revisit Joan Littlewood, Ewan McCall, Theatre Workshop, Salford, Manchester, folk song, politics, and theatre. Christopher Meredith’s The Cavalry shifts the pace completely, offering a seasonal South Wales story read by the writer himself. Other episodes bring writers into conversation. Madeleine White talks about The Horse and the Girl, Maiden Mother Crone, Mother of Floods, nature, poetry, horses, and spiritual imagination. Emily Inkpen appears as a novelist, short story writer, audio drama writer, director, voice actor, one of the co-hosts of the Writer’s Gym podcast, author of The Dex Legacy, and creative director. The Writer’s Gym crossover turns script writing into a practical discussion about dialogue, resistance, creative confidence, and regular practice. The Out-Of-Towners Club episode looks at how an audio drama became a New York Script Club production, including changes in casting, character relationships, and stage performance. A working-class writers episode, guest edited by Amber Hall, considers representation, expectation, complexity, and the limits of familiar literary stereotypes. Poetry episodes connect the main feed to the Seren Poetry Podcast and recordings by poets from recent collections. Across the catalogue, the show feels like a small repertory space for contemporary writing. It is intimate, production-minded, and unusually open about the paths between page, microphone, rehearsal room, and audience.