Beyond the Walls 2023

Twelfth edition of the annual anthology of new writing from York St John University.

“The theme of this edition of Beyond the Walls is ‘ageing’. The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2030, 1 in 6 people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. By 2050, almost half a billion people will have celebrated an 80th birthday, triple the number of octogenarians alive in 2020. With an older global population, the challenges of care will become increasingly acute. The wider consequences of demographic change are difficult to predict. Will the world witness a great influx of wisdom, perhaps? A groundswell of nostalgia? An unprecedented flood of soup?

Reading the brilliant pieces carefully selected for this volume by the dedicated student editorial teams at York Centre for Writing, York St John University, I am led, to my delight, down more unexpected paths through the subject. I am encouraged to reimagine ageing itself […] On the cusp of its teenage years, Beyond the Walls remains as lively and timely as ever.”

— Caleb Klaces, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature