Frank Key

Frank Key
The Hooting Yard 'implausible' emblem
Born	London, United Kingdom
Occupation	Writer, broadcaster
Nationality	British
Genre	short story, satire, humour
Website
hootingyard.org

Frank Key is a British writer, blogger and broadcaster best known for his self-published short-story collections and his long-running radio series Hooting Yard on the Air, which has been broadcast weekly on Resonance FM since April 2004. Key co-founded the Malice Aforethought Press with Max Décharné and published the fiction of Ellis Sharp.

The Guardian's literature columnist Sam Jordison has described Frank Key as one of the most prolific living writers of literary nonsense. The Guardian's David Stubbs wrote that Frank's prose "reminds of Max Ernst engravings gone Bonzo Doo-Dah". The SF critic David Langford wrote "Frank Key's lumbering machinery is like nothing since Ralph 124C 41+ and other pillars of SF's wooden age, only more decrepit. He may even conceivably be writing steampunk.".Edmund Baxter, the director of programming for Resonance FM wrote "Frank Key is one of the most important writers in English today".

Prior to 2006 Key's published work consisted almost entirely of short-run, self-published pamphlets. All of these original printed releases are out of print. Some of these books have become collector's items which have traded at many times their original value. In 2009 Key began re-publishing stories from his small-press releases. The most recent publication, We Were Puny, They Were Vapid, includes the short stories The Phlogiston Variations and The Book of Gnats which were originally published in the Massacre anthology series.

In 1986, inspired by the postpunk DIY ethic, Key founded the Malice Aforethought Press with Max Décharné. Over the next few years they published a large number of short-run pamphlets.

In 2003 Key launched "Hooting Yard", originally intended as an internet archive of his writing. In addition he has released three volumes of stories which originally appeared on his web-site.

Key has broadcast weekly on Resonance FM, since 14 April 2004 when his show Hooting Yard on the Air was first commissioned. The programme is broadcast live from Resonance FM's studios and consists almost entirely of Key narrating his own short stories and observations. Hooting Yard is the longest continuously running series on Resonance FM, with only the ClearSpot Show (which is technically not a series) having existed on the schedules for longer.