Adam Marek was born in 1974, and has been writing fiction since his teens. After leaving film school he worked in the music video industry for a few years, but is now part of the Editorial Team at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In 2003, his short story 'The 40-litre Monkey' was a supplementary winner in the Bridport Prize. In 2004, his story 'Bobby and Sun-Li' was a runner up in the Douglas Coupland Award. He read 'Bobby and Sun-Li' at the Poetry Café in London, and the story was then published by Pulp.net. In 2005, he won second place in the Bridport Prize with his story 'Robot Wasps'. He has recently completed a collection of short stories Instruction manual For Breathing (Comma Press, October 2007) and is working on a novel. Adam lives in Bedfordshire with his wife and sons.

'Adam Marek writes tales of the fantastic, the grotesque, and the impossible – all set in familiar, even mundane worlds. The effect may be unnerving or moving or hilarious, but always there is the gripping sense of an idea gestating to a point just short of revelation. Underpinning Marek's fantasies there is a nagging psychological realism. In this debut collection, the English short story receives an injection of something new and compelling and spooky.'
– Alex Linklater, founder of the National Short Story Prize
 
'Marek's fabulously meaty, funny writing makes the short story look really exciting again, pulling you, frame by frame, into a bright, strange future.'
– Maggie Gee

Titles by Adam Marek

Instruction Manual For Swallowing

Robotic insects, in-growing cutlery, flesh-serving waiters in a zombie cafe… Welcome to the surreal, misshapen universe of Adam Marek’s first collection; a beastiary of hybrids from the techno-crazed future and mythical past; a users’ guide to the seemingly obvious (and world of illogic implicit within it). Whether fantastical or everyday in setting, Marek's stories lead us down to the engine room that throbs just beneath modern consciousness, a place of both atavism and familiarity, where the body is fluid, the spirit mechanised, and beasts often tell us more about our humanity than anything we can teach ourselves.
 

Adam Marek writes tales of the fantastic, the grotesque, and the impossible – all set in familiar, even mundane worlds. The effect may be unnerving or moving or hilarious, but always there is the gripping sense of an idea gestating to a point just short of revelation. Underpinning Marek's fantasies there is a nagging psychological realism. In this debut collection, the English short story receives an injection of something new and compelling and spooky.
– Alex Linklater, founder of the National Short Story Prize
 
Marek's fabulously meaty, funny writing makes the short story look really exciting again, pulling you, frame by frame, into a bright, strange future.
– Maggie Gee

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Details

• ISBN 978 190558304
• Publisher Comma Press
• Genre Short Fiction
• Extent 216pp