Folding Rock #5
170 x 245 mm, 146 pages
Barry, Wales
Triannual
Editors-in-chief: Kathryn Tann and Robert Harries
Art director: Matt Needle
Cover design: Louise Hagger
‘New writing from Wales and beyond’
‘England, Scotland and Ireland have Granta, Gutter and The Stinging Fly... Wales now has Folding Rock.’ So editors Kathryn Tann and Robert Harries boldly announced their new literary title, aiming to put contemporary Anglo-Welsh writing firmly on the map through fiction, creative non-fiction and literary criticism.
The ambitious Welsh literary journal returns with its fifth edition—themed ‘Sustenance’—fixing its focus on food in a malevolent manner, as both editors assert: ‘The food that sustains these narratives actively threatens, disorients or destroys the protagonists that consume it.’
Highlights include sinister stories such as ‘Peacemeal [Locules]’ penned by Avery Rabbitt, in which the darkly comedic plight of several characters at the behest of a carnivorous pitcher plant unfolds, Lucy Dawes Durneen hinges the surreal awakening her protagonist in ‘Mujer Peligrosa’ around the catalyst of a half eaten plate of meat, and in ‘Hospitality’ Francesca Reece leads us through the lurid world of a nameless young female waitress at a restaurant in Paris.
On the Journal
Robert Harries sheds light on the name: ‘While ‘Folding Rock’ was initially intended as a reference to Wales’s rich geographical association with, and reliance upon, rocks and minerals, particularly the country’s layered Orcovician formations, I must confess my mind leapt to the oxymoronic unfeasibility—even futility—evoked by the phrase... to attempt to actually fold a rock—or, say, run a literary magazine—would at first appear to be a fool’s errand.’
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