Edition 1: Liverpool

If I offered you the chance to tell me a story about yourself, what would you say? If I reassured you that what you said would remain anonymous, would you sit in the solitary spotlight of my attention and speak? And what if I asked you to tell me two stories, one that was true and one that was not, what then?

The people involved in this project did exactly as I asked. Sitting before me in a dusty basement in Liverpool, they each told me their two tales. As they spoke, each storyteller had their photograph taken, but in such a way as to conceal their identity. And I promised them nothing in return: I told the participants that I might reproduce their stories wholesale, or not at all. I might use one or both or none. Or that I might take the raw material of their memories and lies and from it fabricate something entirely new.

I never asked which of the stories was real. It doesn’t really matter. We all have stories to tell, and we spin different versions to please or to fool, to get us closer to the person we want to be, or to pretend to be someone we are not. And if it’s easy to add an embellishment here, an exaggeration there, with the listener none the wiser, what harm can it do? The line between fact and fiction was, after all, never so sharp.

So the stories you read here may or may not be true. And if it matters to you, remember this: my storytellers didn’t promise not to lie, and neither did I.

Coming soon: The girl without a voice; a self-reliant child; the boy who would be adored; the Moscow observer, and the man who lost his memory.