Leaves of Absence
Description
In this unique collaboration, Dana MacFarlane and Ruth Thomas use photographs and text to explore the moments of intensity and equivocation that define a relationship. Objects left behind or fallen on pavements in Edinburgh and sidewalks in New York evoke a shifting record of worlds. They figure against an elusive tale told through fragments of dialogue. The book resists any conventions that assume one medium illustrating the other - the elements of the book insert a radical questioning of perspective and emotional affect.
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Persons
Ruth Thomas is a novelist and short story writer and has held posts as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow and as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at St Andrews University. Her first novel, Things to Make and Mend (Faber, 2007) won a Good Housekeeping 'Most Entertaining Read' Award, and her most recent, The Snow and the Works on the Northern Line (Sandstone, 2021) was broadcast as a BBC R4 Book at Bedtime. Ruth's writing has won or been shortlisted for various awards in the UK including the John Llewellyn Rhys Award, the Saltire Society First Book Award and the VS Pritchett Prize and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. Commenting on Ruth's third story collection the novelist Ali Smith wrote: 'It is to some extent a comic universe, to a larger extent an existential one according to Thomas', and comedy, tragicomedy and existentialism remain central preoccupations in her work.