Alternative Stories and Fake Realities is a podcast and spoken word audio production company making original audio drama, poetry and fiction podcasts and radio programmes. We work with writers, actors, musicians and sound designers to bring our stories to life and we have listeners all over the world.
We pride ourselves on the quality of our productions. We aim to offer our listeners broadcast quality sound and high quality content rivalling that of national broadcasters. Our work has been nominated for multiple awards and we were selected to represent the United Kingdom at the 2020 UK International Radio Drama Festival. We have provided content to the BBC and to broadcasters in the United States and Canada. Alternative Stories and Fake Realities is regularly found in the upper reaches of the Apple Podcast Drama and Fiction charts in the United Kingdom, the USA, Ireland, Canada and Australia.
We are proud to work with professional actors and to offer opportunities in audio drama to experienced stage, TV and film actors as well as to new graduates from drama schools. Similarly we work with published and unpublished writers, dramatists and poets.
If you
are a writer, actor, director, soundscape creator, composer, playwright, audio
engineer, poet, musician or audio effects creator (or if you have any other
skill that you think we could use) there
is an active role for you in creating our alternative stories. If you would be interested in participating
in any way please drop us an email or leave us a comment.
If you enjoy stories that will surprise you or challenge your expectations there will be plenty of content here for you to enjoy. You can enjoy our content on all major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Podchaser and many more. Just type alternative stories into your browser and look for our logo. Alternatively find us via our buzzsprout hosting site link below
Hare Spell is an original audio drama written by Fay Hield, Terri Windling, Sarah Hesketh and Sarra Culleno and with original music by Fay Hield and a soundtrack by Inge Thomson. Inspired by songs from the new album Wrackline by folk musician, songwriter and singer Fay Hield and the folk stories of “hare witches” women able to transform themselves to hares, the story follows three women – Molly played by Amy Forrest, Katherine played by Nadia Wyn Abouayen and Ealine played by Stevie Skinner who respond to an invitation from the mysterious Sally Whitehorn (Sarah Golding) to visit her on Dartmoor, Devon to learn more about hares. You can listen to both parts of Hare Spell and our origin story, The Hares of Horsenden Hill by Sarra Culleno via the Spotify links below.
Listen to Part One of Hare Spell here
Listen to part Two of Hare Spell here
Listen to The Hares of Horsenden Hill by Sarra Culleno here. This is the origin story of the character Ealine from Hare Spell.The original poster for Hare Spell
Our podcast this week is an abridged adaptation of Mary J. Oliver’s book “Jim Neat : The Case of a Young Man Down on his Luck available now from Seren Books. “Jim Neat” is part poetry collection, part historical drama, part travelogue and part memoir and is based on the turbulent life of Mary’s father. Traveling the world, most notably living as a hobo in depression era Canada, Jim’s adventures are told through his own and others diaries, through letters and through Mary’s poems which stretch from imagination to memory in the latter parts of the story as she recalls her relationship with her father. You can buy a copy of the book by following the links at the foot of this page.
Jim Neat : The Case of a Young Man Down on his Luck
Mary J. Oliver’s debut is an unusual and striking coalescing of prose, poetry, found documents and photographs. It ranges across the history of 20th century England and Canada as she uncovers the life of her father, Jim Neat (b. 1904). She adopts a legal structure, making ‘the case’ for the worth of Jim’s life.
Jim leaves England at an early age, as a seaman. He travels to South Africa, stows away to Australia and eventually lands in Canada at the time of the Great Depression. He meets his partner Lizbietta at a bookshop in Saskatoon, but is working in Regina when she dies in childbirth. As a result, Jim becomes both ill and destitute, and is admitted to a hospital in Ontario.
His story is told at this point through the hospital’s case-notes, his own therapeutic writing and his doctor’s correspondence with his sister Queenie, in England.
Repatriated to England Jim meets the author’s mother during the war. Theirs is a stormy marriage, and at this point she too contributes to the narration. Although they have children and live together until Jim dies in 1983, Jim’s life is dominated by the loss of Lizbietta and their child, and the book circles back to Canada and the past as the author uncovers the events surrounding that relationship.
Jim Neat is a remarkable evocation of a seemingly fractured life. Although short and drawing on diverse documents Oliver is able to invest an enormous amount of emotion in Jim’s relationships, including that with her. The narrative has a certain exoticism – hobos in Canada, a pet fox, extreme weather and its results – but also a casual brutality in the way it recounts lives at the mercy of indifferent forces. In this it recalls Annie Proulx and Joyce Carol Oates, and doesn’t suffer in comparison.
Brought up in Cornwall, Mary J. Oliver studied Fine Art at Reading and Falmouth Universities. While raising her daughters in Scotland, she was a free-lance artist and art teacher, running creativity workshops in prisons and community mental health centres. Once the girls had left home, she returned to Cornwall to lecture in Fine Art at Falmouth University. She initiated a series of collaborative art projects, involving a wide range of non-artist-trained participants; the resulting text and image installations were exhibited widely across the UK.
In
2008, a dark revelation triggered a desire to investigate her father’s
mysterious past. This caused her to switch from visual art to writing.
This
resulted in, Jim Neat, The Case of a
Young Man Down on His Luck, a memoir that takes the form of a long
narrative poem, accompanied by archival documents and evocative photographs. It
is told in the voices of those who knew the protagonist, and reflects the feminist-collaborative
nature of Oliver’s earlier visual art work.
In
2017 a version of it was awarded 2nd prize by New Welsh Writing in
the Memoir section. Five of the poems have been set to music for piano by the
composer Judith Bailey, and are available as CDs. Her poems have appeared in periodicals and
anthologies in UK, US and Canada. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in
2017. Competitions won include those judged by Paul Muldoon and Ruth Padel.
She
lives in Newlyn with her husband, is a keen table tennis player, boxes
regularly at her local gym, and swims in Mounts Bay. She writes every day and
edits Piccolina, a newsletter
promoting live poetry events in Cornwall.
Cast and Readers
Caroline Mincks, Jackie Jorgenson, Charlie Richards and Tiffany Clare
In our podcast Tiffany Clare is the narrator and reads poems and letters in the voices of Mary, Kate and Queenie, Charlie Richards reads poems and letters in the voice of Jim Neat himself, Jackie Jorgenson reads the diary entries of Lizbietta whilst Caroline Mincks is the voice singing the traditional American folk song, Wayfaring Stranger.
Seren Books
Seren is Wales’ leading independent literary publisher, specialising in English-language writing from Wales. With a list spanning poetry, fiction and non-fiction, many of our books are shortlisted for – and win – major literary prizes across the UK and America.
Our aim is not simply to reflect what is going on in the culture in which we publish, but to drive that culture forward, to engage with the world, and to bring Welsh literature, art and politics before a wider audience.
At the heart of our list is a good story told well or an idea or history presented interestingly or provocatively. We’re international in authorship and readership, though our roots remain here in Wales, where we prove that writers from a small country with an intricate culture have a worldwide relevance.
Since its beginnings in 1981, Seren has developed into one of the most interesting publishing houses in Britain. Based in Bridgend, Seren continues to nurture and publish new talent whose quality is recognised around the world.
We are delighted to be working with Jackie once again, this time in a lead role. In Anglia she plays the part of Rachel Woods, a journalist working for the New York City based radio network, ANN. Jackie is an accomplished actor, writer and podcaster who has won a number of awards for her work. We are hugely excited to learn that Jackie is working on her own podcast Tales from the Aether which she will be putting into production during December and January. You can learn more about her work, upcoming projects and achievements at https://www.facebook.com/SharedManifestEntertainment
Tiffany Clare as Millie Wyatt
Tiffany has appeared in a number of previous roles for Alternative Stories and we are hugely grateful that she agreed to take on the pivotal role of Millie in Anglia. Tiffany is a London based actress and voice professional. She trained in the East 15 Acting School and since graduating has worked in stage, screen, and radio. You can find out more about Tiffany and her voiceover service here http://voicebytiffany.com
Saya Zahawi as Awira
We are delighted to welcome Saya Zahawi to the Alternative Stories acting team. Saya caught our attention with her appearance in the BBC Radio 4 drama “The Bulbul Was Singing” so we snapped her up for the role of Awira, a Kurdish refugee fleeing war and famine in her homeland to try to make a new life in England. Saya was born in the Kurdish province of Iraq, before she had to move to Syria with her family. Due to her parents’ political activism during the civil war, the UN accepted them as political refugees. At the age of 6 they moved to Norway, which is where she started her training in cornet, flute and singing (now to a high standard). Because of this experience, she speaks five languages (three of which fluently). Find out more about Saya here https://www.sayazahawi.com/
Charlie Richards as David Wyatt
Charlie Richards has previously appeared in the audio drama “No Words” (Alternative Stories episode 3) so we are pleased to bring him back to the podcast with a much more substantial role in Anglia. Charlie is a London based actor and a member of Rat Run Productions, a Penge based comedy productions company. https://www.spotlight.com/333912737053
Catharine Daddario as Laura Michaels
Regular listeners to the podcast will recognise the voice of Catharine Daddario from a number of previous episodes including “The Adults in the Room” (Alternative Stories 7) in which she acted alongside Tiffany Clare in a production that saw them both being nominated for awards in the 2019 Audioverse Awards. Catharine is a New York City based actress from a famous acting family (we’ll leave you to work out who her siblings are). Catharine has appeared in a number of films including Lake Artifact, Donna and Alia’s Birth. Read more about Catharine and her work here https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8995650/
Kelli Winkler as Willa Watson
Kelli Winkler plays the part of Willa Watson, the anchor of the fictitious radio news network ANN’s main show. This reflect’s Kelli’s own background as a news journalist and presenter. Regular listeners to the podcast will recognise Kelli as our main presenter and, more recently as a writer and performer in our Farewell Monologue series for the acclaimed episode “Rainbows” (Alternative Stories 12). Kelli has also appeared in a number of other podcasts and as the narrator of several audio books. Find out more about Kelli and her voiceover services here https://www.fiverr.com/kwinkler17
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The story is set ten years from now. I’m assuming a few things about the world in 2029.
Climate change will have moved on. Countries nearer to the equator will be heating up. Water will be becoming scarcer in these areas and their habitability will be compromised because of this. States in these areas may fight wars to preserve their access to water. The link below provides some detail on this. Whether this happens in the timescale I’m describing or not, we do expect it to happen. I didn’t want to set my story too far in the future because I want the world to be mostly familiar to listeners and not too sci fi.
Wars and famines create refugees. We are already seeing people from North
Africa and the Middle East risking their lives to cross Europe and cross the
channel into England. This migration
northwards will increase hugely with climate change and these new wars.
I imagine the current populist governments in the UK and USA
becoming emboldened and both countries moving politically further to the
right. Attitudes to migrants and
refugees will harden. I’ve imagined a
post-Brexit Britain in which levels of unemployment have grown and in which the
poorer regions (the regions where the Brexit vote was strongest) have been most
impacted by this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36613698
I have imagined new and more dangerous routes for would-be
migrants into the UK. In this case, into
East Anglia with small boats being winched from the sides of tankers into the
North Sea where those aboard take their chances with waves and tides and the UK
Coast Guard.
East Anglia is symbolic in this story: It voted strongly for Brexit but also, as the lowest lying land in Britain it will be affected most by climate change as sea levels rise. There is also some interesting “Wicker Man” type folklore going on here which I’ve tried to weave into the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fens
Mostly though, this isn’t a story about politics or
geo-political change but about people and relationships. It is a human story with the fates of three
young women compared and contrasted.
Factors beyond their control govern their fates. Accidents of birthplace and background
dictate their lives more than ability, ambition or what they have to offer to
the world.
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Our farewell monologue series present short, single voice stories from a variety of writers
Saying goodbye
Our Farewell Monologue series originally began as a means of bridging a gap between the availability of our audio dramas. We wanted to produce some shorter episodes of the podcast to keep our listeners interested until our next big audio drama story. Since we started with that humble ambition the series has really taken off and become a means of involving more writers into the podcast writing team. We’ve had so many kind comments from listeners about these stories and they really seem to have touched the hearts of a number of people.
We all have to say goodbye, leave or move on in our lives and these stories explore those moments. They talk about relationships ending, about death, about leaving one place for another and about the end of epoch defining events (in this case Cheyenne Bramwell’s imagined war in her story Fading Fires) and the start of happier times. If you haven’t listened to any of our monologues please read more below and check them out on our various podcast feeds.
If you’d like to write a Farewell Monologue for us there are a few simple rules. The piece should be for a single voice (hence the word monologue!) be in the first person and be between 600 and 900 words in length. The subject must be, loosely, about departure, endings, saying goodbye or loss but you can interpret these however you like. Contact us if you’d like to submit something using office@alternativestories.com
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In this podcast we introduce the work of three of our favourite poets Will Burns, Chelsie Buckner and Julie Stevens. We hope you’ll enjoy listening to their poems on the podcast and seek out more of their work using the links below.
Will was born in London and lives in Buckinghamshire. In 2014 he published his debut pamphlet in the Faber New Poets scheme and has subsequently published two more short works with Clutag Press and Rough Trade Books. In 2019 his collaborative work with the composer Hannah Peel was released as the album Chalk Hill Blue and his first full collection is forthcoming with Offord Road Books in 2020. Will’s writing is concerned with ideas of home and how those ideas are complicated by social, personal and cultural relationships as well as by the nature of physical places themselves.
This is “Change” from the Album Chalk Hill Blue by Will Burns and Hannah Peel Chelsie Bucker “Poemsandpeonies”
Chelsie’s poem “Victim of Medusa” as featured in Alternative Stories episode
Regular listeners to the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities podcast will already know about Chelsie Buckner. Her series of “Goddess Poems” inspired by our season of stories based on classical mythology were loved by our listeners. They took as their themes change, the power balance between men and women and different versions of femininity. The poems Chelsie submitted to the podcast, which you will hear read by Chelsie herself, extend these themes inspired by episodes from Chelsie’s own life and experience. The visceral quality of her writing is epitomised beautifully in the poem “Nothing Compares to You” which kicks off our show.
Here’s Julie Stevens “Jumping Jules” reading her poem “I’m Fine”
As we mention in the podcast we first became aware of Julie Stevens when she asked a question of Nick Cave during one of his series of “Conversations With Nick Cave”concerts in Nottingham. Since then we’ve discovered much more of her poetry and we were really keen to get her to contribute to the podcast. Jules’ work often refers to her physical condition; she suffers with MS, and whilst this cannot be ignored as a motivating factor for her writing, we believe her poetry stands in its own right as accomplished, touching and thought provoking work well worth exploring in more detail.
Jules has received all sort of recognition for her work, not least recently in her winning a National Poetry Day #hiddenverse award for her poem “If I Can’t”
Our theme music is called (rather imaginatively) Soundtrack 3. In a way it inspired the whole podcast. Chris Gregory composed it one afternoon and it seemed like a theme tune in need of a show! Whilst Chris is normally a loud guitarist, fumbling mandolin player and composer of songs in the folk rock genre, this is primarily a piano number. Simple (he’s not a great pianist) but, listeners tell us, invoking a sense of mystery. Listen here.
Soundtrack 3 : Written and performed by Chris Gregory and the theme music for the Alternative Stories and Fake Realities Podcast. Daphne’s Theme : From our Daphne and Apollo Episode. This is also used in other episodes, most notably Circe Goddess of Magic. This is written and performed by Chris Gregory
Naomi’s Theme : From our Daphne and Apollo Episode
The full version of Naomi’s Theme by Chris Gregory
There are a couple of versions of Naomi’s theme used in the podcast. This in the full version which appears over the end credits.
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Video trailer for The Adults in the Room featuring co-stars Catharine Daddario and Tiffany Clare
The Adults in the Room
The Adults in the room is an audio play starring Tiffany Clare as Amber and Catharine Daddario as Veronica. Amber and Veronica are cousins living in London and New York. Inseparable as children and teenagers, circumstances in their adult lives have kept them apart for many years. Taking the opportunity to be reunited following the recent death of Amber’s father, a family secret surfaces causing a rift to develop between them. This episode explores the vagueness of perception and memory whilst reviewing the dynamics of family life. Outstanding performances from Catharine and Tiffany bring this powerful story to life.
Tiffany Clare as Amber Catharine Daddario as Veronica
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Listen to our latest episode here or here https://www.buzzsprout.com/411730/1591153-medusa
In our latest podcast episode we featured audio drama and poetry based on the story of Medusa from classical mythology. In any depiction of a story from mythology there is far more than we can cover in one podcast but we felt that in the case of Medusa it would be worth offering a little more background on Medusa and her curse. In this short supplementary episode of the podcast Georgie Lauridsen discusses the back story of Medusa the monster and considers her fate and that of those who would try to slay her.
Background to our Medusa episode: The presenter is Georgie Lauridsen. Georgie Lauridsen : presenter of our special episode about the background to the story of Medusa
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I refused my body to any god yet Zeus took me by force
But there has yet to be a day
He has felt remorse
Zeus bathed in his infidelity
Says he has no fear
But I ask have you seen him tremble
When I, his wife, draws near?
When Hercules forgot my power
Yes, I raged a storm at sea!
And oh how the boy did cower
Proving gods are not all they claim to be
So angry Zeus attached anvils to my feet
Hung me from a golden chain
Oh you may tie me to the heavens
but you’ll always know my name!
The mortals have painted me on their clay
Etched me into stone
And for all of eternity
I’ll be carved onto my throne!
Ancient Hera Sculpture. Hera (identified with Juno by the Romans) is the Olympian Goddess of Marriage, protector of family and married women. Hera is the wife of Zeus, the king of Gods.
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