Ox-Tales refers to four anthologies of short stories written by 38 of the UK's best-known authors. All donated their stories to Oxfam. The books and stories are loosely based on the four elements: Earth, Fire, Air and Water.
The Ox-Tales books were published in partnership with Green Profile [1] [2] to raise revenue for Oxfam projects tackling poverty around the world. [3] Oxfam receives a percentage of the cover price of each book sold (£3.50 per book if bought directly from an Oxfam shop or Oxfam's website [4] and 50p if the books are purchased through other retailers).
The themes of the collections are intended to represent four aspects of Oxfam's work:
Each book contains a poem by Vikram Seth and an afterword written by Oxfam, detailing their work in that area.
38 British and Irish based authors contributed to this project.
Ox-Tales were published by Green Profile [2] (a section of Profile Books [9] ) on 2 July 2009. They were originally published to mark the start of Oxfam's first annual book festival - "Bookfest" [10] (4–18 July 2009).
In Autumn 2009, the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) recommended Ox-Tales to its readers as "enjoyable, thought-provoking reading for you and also for older students — well worth a place in the secondary school stock cupboard for KS4 of KS5." [11]
NATE reprinted Marina Lewycka's story "The Importance of Having Warm Feet" from the Ox-Tales: Earth collection in the October 2009 edition of their magazine, Classroom. [11] [12]
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Vikram Seth is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Akademi Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crossword Book Award. Seth's collections of poetry such as Mappings and Beastly Tales are notable contributions to the Indian English language poetry canon.
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