Caryl Phillips is one of the most respected writers of his generation. An award-winning author best known for his fiction, essays and stage plays, he is also the author of radio plays, nine of which were broadcast by the BBC between 1984 and 2016. Previously locked away in Phillips's archives, housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, these hidden gems are now published in Caryl Phillips's Radio Plays, the first collection of these important works of drama. Despite being previously overlooked, these radio plays are fully creative works and constitute an integral part of Caryl Phillips's literary universe. Not only do these dramatic texts display the author's hallmark mix of formal elegance and sharp social criticism, but they also offer compelling points of comparison with the rest of his wider writing. From the experience on an eighteenth-century slave ship and the life of a migrant family in 1980s England, to an account of James Baldwin's time in Paris and Marvin Gaye's stay in Belgium, these plays grapple with expansive themes in creative and dramatic ways. Contextualized by a scholarly introduction by Bénédicte Ledent, this volume introduces these works in the published form for the first time, allowing readers a better grasp of Phillips's narrative techniques, offering fascinating vistas into his imaginary world, which ranges from the history of the African diaspora to the predicament of displaced individuals the world over.

This volume presents 11 radio scripts written and produced by Louis MacNeice over the span of his career at the BBC. This selection, all but one of which is published for the first time, illustrates the various ways that MacNeice re-worked ancient Greek and Roman history and literature for radio broadcast.

A compendium of the author’s stage and radio plays: "Slighted Souls" is a poignant love story set in rural Telangana, beset with feudal exploitation of the downtrodden dalits. Besides forcing the dalits to toil in the fields as bonded labor without impunity, the land owning doras had no qualms in reducing the womenfolk of this ilk as sex slaves in the gadis, which leads to an armed rebellion. "Men at work on Women at work" is a tragic-comic episode depicting the fallout of sexual harassment at the workplace in the Indian urban setting with its traditional cultural underpinnings. "Castle of Despair", built on the slippery ground of man's innate urge for one-upmanship, portrays its facade of falsity on the grand stage of human tragedy. The radio play, "Love on Hold", lends voice to the felt anxieties of a man and a woman as their old flame gets rekindled and the dilemmas of possession faced by the couple in a conservative cultural background.

Fourteen stimulating literary works that shine a new light on Singapore’s first foreign minister and one of its most eloquent and farsighted leaders—the late S. Rajaratnam. Celebrated as one of Singapore’s founding fathers, very little has been said of his literary prowess. The seven short stories, which he wrote in London in the 1940s, were previously published in various collections alongside some of the most distinguished writers in the world. Impressed by his talent, George Orwell, who at the time worked for the BBC Eastern Service, recruited Rajaratnam to contribute scripts for the network.Upon his return from London, Rajaratnam stopped writing fiction and took to journalism. Excelling in political commentary and satire, he also wrote a number of politically-charged radio scripts. This anthology collects a six-part series titled “A Nation in the Making” and another titled “Looking Forward”. All seven scripts were broadcast on Radio Malaya in 1957.

This new edition brings together all of Beckett's dramatic writings for radio, television and film, offering works which range from eloquent comic naturalism to an eviscerated and pared-down symbolism. Above all, Beckett found his unique uses for the radio-play, a medium 'for voices not bodies', compacted of speech, sound and silence - and the plays in this volume intently explore the resources and limits of the sound-stage.My father, back from the dead, to be with me. (Pause.) As if he hadn't died. (Pause.) No, simply back from the dead, to be with me, in this strange place. (Pause.) Can he hear me? (Pause.) Yes, he must hear me. (Pause.) To answer me? (Pause.) No, he doesn't answer me. (Pause.) Just be with me. (Pause.) That sound you hear is the sea. (Pause. Louder.) I say that sound you hear is the sea, we are sitting on the strand. (Pause.) I mention it because the sound is so strange, so unlike the sound of the sea, that if you didn't see what it was you wouldn't know what it was. (Pause.). Hooves!Contents: All That Fall, Embers, Words and Music, Eh Joe, Quad, Film, ...but the clouds..., Ghost Trio, Nacht und Träume, Rough for Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Cascando, The Old TunePreface and Notes by Everett Frost

W.O. Mitchell's "Jake & The Kid" captivated radio audiences in the days before television and enjoyed ratings that rivalled those for the radio broadcasts of the CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." These homespun tales about the hired hand, Jake Trumper and his sidekick, The Kid, explored very human stories about life on the often cruel Prairies of Saskatchewan in a humorous vein that made a household name for the series across the breadth of Canada. Although he wrote many novels, most notably " Who Has Seen the Wind," featured during the ceremonies at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Mitchell was as well known for these folksy plays. They enabled him to hone his writing craft in a mass medium, when few other outlets were available; to tackle social issues of the day with a light hand, and to develop many of the themes he would explore in his later novels. This study analyzes these popular radio plays, their Prairie and literary roots, the production process and their contribution and critical reception.

For the first time in print, Spencer's radio plays "Amazing Struggles, Astonishing Failures, and Disappointing Success", together with the follow-up four-part audio drama "Cult Stories", tell the tales of disillusioned science fiction writers over the course of the mid-20th century. AMAZING STRUGGLES! In the Golden Age of science fiction, a group of aspiring young authors, the Fabulists, is ready to wow the world with tales of interplanetary heroism and technological supremacy. ASTONISHING FAILURES! Unfortunately, their dreams of fame and fortune are consistently dashed by the dastardly rejections of the compulsively conservative and out-of-touch editor of Tremendous Stories of Super Science. DISAPPOINTING SUCCESS (PARTS I & II)! While some of the Fabulists see middling success as teachers and television writers, another becomes a science fiction mega-star whose writing (and the author's own pathology) spawns a cult religion with wild ideas that may be a bit less bogus than his short stories. CULT STORIES! And like an artistic pandemic, some forms of science fiction can get very ugly. Only extreme measures will save us. "Virtually every line is written to amuse and amaze, yet it’s bang on accurate in its overall account of the actuality of the decade. A lot of thought went into noting the humour inherent in the activities and pretensions of First Fandom." - Amazing Stories "A delightfully cracked and deeply savvy romp through the history of science fiction, and perforce our world, all told through two quartets of scripts for radio plays! You’ll meet real people, thinly veiled characters, and even fully dressed folk you never heard of in this mind’s ear theater that could have appeared in Mad Magazine. What, me worry? No, but I’d love to hear these scripts enacted in a podcast." - Paul Levinson, author of It’s Real Life, award-winning alternate history radio play

Dramatizations for radio of children's books and stories; an outgrowth of "Once upon a time," a radio program sponsored by the Children's Department of the Denver Public Library.