How I Learned to Swim - (Modern Plays) by Somebody Jones (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Popcorn Writing Award 2024

Grieving is weird and expensive.

Jamie can't swim. Fuelled by guilt and a need to mend her broken family, at 30 years old, she's taking on her biggest fear - the ocean.

With the help of a chipper swim instructor, a shady spiritual guide, and one cathartic crab sandwich, she questions, 'How many lengths does it take to wash away regret?'

Brilliantly witty, deeply heartfelt, this play explores what lies beneath the surface of the Black diasporic relationship to water. Somebody Jones's searing debut How I Learned to Swim is 'funny with fear, liberating with grief' (Fringe Review) and impossible to walk away from unchanged.

This edition was published to coincide with the Prentice Productions show at Summerhall's Roundabout, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2024.

About the Author

Somebody Jones is a Los Angeles native playwright/dramaturg currently living, working, and dreaming in London. Jones's work celebrates and champions Black culture in all of its charms and complexities. The playwright primarily works within the genres of horror, magical realism, verbatim, and recently, Black fantasy. Somebody Jones was Paines Plough's Playwright Fellow in 2024, won the Tony Craze Award in 2023 for her play ALL MY FRIENDS ARE DEAD, and was shortlisted for the George Devine Award in 2023. Formerly, Somebody was a part of Soho Theatre's Writers' Lab (London, 2022), an Artistic Associate with Nouveau Riche (London, 2022), a Creative Associate at Jermyn Street Theatre (London, 2021) and a part of Boston Court's first Playwrights' Group (Los Angeles, 2021).