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100 Words of Solitude captures and records human responses to enforced or self-imposed isolation.

As Covid-19 (Coronavirus) sweeps across the world more and more people in every country, through choice or necessity, are withdrawing from traditional social and community interactions. We retreat to our homes, shield ourselves from physical human contact and the shared experiences that make up so much of our personalities. We are obliged to renegotiate our relationships with ourselves, our homes and the communal spaces we are now avoiding but which normally make up so much of our daily lives.

100 Words of Solitude records creative literary responses to this situation. It seeks to capture the emotional, cultural and social impact of the developing situation, giving voice to writers across the world to explore the nature of solitude, of small group (family) isolation, of connecting to others across the void, or working and helping in spaces now dynamically changed by lockdowns.

This site showcased 100 of these responses, each exactly 100 words long, which are now published as a print collection, 100 Words of Solitude: Global Voices in Lockdown 2020, by Rare Swan Press, with all profits going to humanitarian charities.

In addition it is has now published another 25 responses, chronologically describing life under lockdown, titled Life in the Time of Corona.

The latest project, The Practice of Solitude, fuses 25 words from four different authors to form new 100-word pieces exploring the actions, objects and places of special significance during the latest lockdowns.

When faced with extended periods of contemplative time, this brevity will focus creative responses onto what really matters to the individual, whether this is global, personal, social, familial or political.

These are moments of subjective truth amid media overload.

The pieces published on this site, and in the book which will follow, provide readers with a microcosmic insight into a shared experience that is infinitesimally varied. We might be isolated, but we are not alone!

This is a not for profit activity, interested only in uniting writers and readers across the world in these strange and difficult times. 

Thank you!