Local Paper Goodness

Fri 20 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I was reading our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, at first breakfast with our kid (me: tea; toast: marmite; toast: peanut butter & banana) this morning & was delighted to see a review of Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending — which Kij launches on Tuesday at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, and then next week, 10/26-29, she’ll be a Guest of Honor at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Kansas City, MO. I don’t know how Steve Pfarrer keeps up, he also wrote today’s above-the-fold story on Smith College Museum of Art’s new show, Sum of its Parts.

I was even more delighted when I followed the jump to read the rest of the review and found he had also reviewed Anya Johanna DeNiro’s “dreamlike, speculative novel” OKPsyche. I hope wherever you’re reading you have a decent local paper. If not, I highly recommend our paper which I finished reading when I went back for second breakfast with Kelly (porridge with miso and fresh tomato).

Review in the local paper! Titled "Fantasy fiction from Small Beer Press: The Privilege of the Happy Ending By Kij Johnson Small Beer Press Fantasy writer Kij Johnson has a long list of awards and award nominations to her name, from Nebula and Hugo Awards — two of the premiere prizes for fantasy and science fiction writing — to World Fantasy Awards. She and her publisher also have a good sense of humor: Her newest collection of work, “The Privilege of the Happy Ending,” includes the subtitle “Small, Medium & Large Stories.” (Many of the pieces have previously been published separately.) Published by Small Beer Press of Easthampton, “Privilege” indeed offers work of varying length, from vignettes of just a few pages to a novella-length tale, “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” which won a World Fantasy Award; NPR voted it one of the best books of 2016.

Review of OKPsyche in our local paper, yay! The unnamed narrator of “OKPsyche,” a dreamlike, speculative novel by Anya Johanna DeNiro, lives in or around Minneapolis in a not-too-distant future in which climate change and economic inequality have brought increasing ugliness and violence to the country. “The street is mostly empty except for surplus-green tents in the greenway and armed guards in front of the luxury towers. The creative class needs tactical teams to protect them from people who are not them.” But the heart of this short novel, published by Small Beer Press, is about the narrator’s journey as a trans woman, someone who’s trying to come to terms with the pain of her closeted past even as she struggles to find her way in a fragile, uncertain present. Part of that present is the fallout from the narrator’s transition: Her ex-wife and 11-year-old son, Aaron, now live in another Midwestern state, and the narrator is desperate to reconnect with Aaron...


H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop

Tue 17 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Subterranean sent me a note the other day that my copy of their new Howard Waldrop collection, H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop, is about to ship. If you ever read “The Ugly Chickens” and thought, I have to read more like that! this might be the book for you.

George R.R. Martin, Waldrop’s early penpal and lifelong friend, has been working on adapting some of Waldrop’s stories into film. Pick up this book and see where it all started.

And a lovely note from Sub Press about the book:

In order to properly celebrate the writer we all know as “Mr. National Treasure,” the editors, book designer, and publisher have produced H’ard Starts as a true labor of love—and all proceeds from the sale of the book (minus shipping and credit card/PayPal fees) will go directly to the author, the one and only Howard Waldrop. So join us in our adventure in the Wayback Machine, and grab your own copy of H’ard Starts: The Early Waldrop.  Supplies are limited, so act now, or regret it forever.


Who Will Tell This Story?

Mon 16 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

An early story celebrating Kij Johnson’s new collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, went up recently on the University of Kansas’s website: Fantastic fiction writer Kij Johnson can go home again, accompanied by a good photo of Kij on a scooter. If you want to keep up with Kij she is quite an active blogger and she also has a Patreon.

Here’s a snippet:

“Until the last three or four years, I would have said I don’t want to ever write about Iowa because it was boring. And yet here I am starting to write about Iowa. I can’t help it,” said the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning author and University of Kansas professor of English, who will be a guest of honor at the World Fantasy Convention Oct. 26-29 in Kansas City, Missouri.

Read more here.


Twin Cities Book Fest

Thu 12 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

This weekend in Minnesota the Twin Cities are celebrating everything bookish with Rain Taxi’s annual Book Fest and you can catch both Anya Johanna DeNiro, author of OKPsyche, and Kij Johnson, author of The Privilege of the Happy Ending on a panel there on Saturday morning at 11 a.m.

Kij launches her book in 10 days time at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, KS, but Magers & Quinn should have some early copies tomorrow and both she and Anya will be available to sign their new books.


Callum Angus reads “Red Work”

Mon 2 Oct 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Last night Callum Angus streamed a live reading of his quilt-inspired story “Red Work” — “Come for the lesbian roller derby inside a volcano, dragons, and quilts!” — which was just published in the new issue of LCRW. Cal reads the whole story which begins at about 14:05 on the video below. Enjoy!


A Treat for Readers

Mon 25 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Kindling cover - click to view full sizeOur first book of 2024 has received a good early review in Kirkus Reviews — there’s a hilarious tag line at the end — but this will give you a good idea of why we’re publishing it and how enjoyable it is:

Old tales and new turning points converge in a dozen fantasy-rich stories.
Here’s a treat for readers who wish each fable launched by the words “Once upon a time” would segue into a cautionary tale punctuated with mythical motifs and genuine danger. In the opener, “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a songwriter and a songbird in a mythical land bring forth one final song. “Skull and Hyssop” taps into the swashbuckling spirit of old Errol Flynn movies with its tale of a reluctant pirate and a low-powered enchantress at odds with a government flunky. Meanwhile, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses” is steeped in medieval lore; we meet a masterless knight on the run, carrying only “news of the murder of a King, a sword wrapped in a cape and tied to my saddle, and a secret so close to my own heart that even I did not then suspect it.” A child walks through fire in “Ella and the Flame,” two lovers of death find each other in “Not To Be Taken,” and a stowaway boggart causes a bit of chaos in “On Pepper Creek.” Even when the book veers past familiar fantasy into the boundlessly imaginative, it’s still beautifully composed, as in “The Present Only Toucheth Thee,” in which a storybook offers its own postmortem in the form of poetry, and “The Tangled Streets,” which features an enchantress helping a troubled young man find his true form. More often, it’s luridly imaginative—see the helpful amateur cryptozoologist in “Undine Love”—and genuinely exciting, like the ending of the title story: “No, I can’t stay any longer. I’ve been tangled in this story for too long. I have tigers to hunt, dragons to slay. An old friend to find.”
Women with guts and men of good fortune in search of their personal treasures.


Literary, Trans, and Science Fictional Spaces

Fri 22 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Anya's picture of the book from BlueskyAs Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche moves out into the world I’m delighted to have seen a couple of reviews pop up — we’re publishing four books this year so getting review space against those behemoths who publish 12 or 15 books a year/month/day in September is an enjoyable achievement and it will be fun to see what other kind of literary, trans, and science fictional spaces this transtastic little novel will be written up in.

Nina MacLaughlin wrote about the book for the Boston Globe:

“An exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. . . . In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.”

and E.C. Barrett has reviewed it in Strange Horizons and it is a treat to see the book read so closely.

“. . . the second-person telling lets the reader in on a conversation this character is having with herself as she creates within herself the understanding that she needs: a sort of literary camera obscura that offers glimpses of how she pieces her historically disparate selves together.”


OKPsyche

Tue 12 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 160 pages · $15 · 9781618732088 | ebook · 9781618732095

Subjective Chaos Kind of Award Winner

In this playful and aching short novel, an unnamed trans woman is on an epic journey to find the place where she belongs. As she navigates her many realities, she must wrestle with anxieties and fears about the world. Her son and her ex live in another state. Environmental disasters are being outsourced to the Midwest. She can’t decide whether or not to unbox the companion automaton under her bed. And some of her friends may not just be ghosting her, they might not even be real.

OKPsyche is a fever-pitched odyssey through the joys, fears, and weirdness of trans adulthood, parenthood, and selfhood in the contemporary world.

Interview: Anya joins Mary Anne Mohanraj and Benjamin Rosenbaum on Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans

Lit Hub: 17 Best Covers of September

Read

Read a short excerpt, “Take Pills and Wait for Hips,” on Catapult / Listen on WNYC’s Selected Shorts read by Pooya Mohseni.

Q&A with Zhenya Loughney for The Daily Iowan.

A recommendation on Poets & Writers.

Reviews

“An incredible novel about trans motherhood. told in a world that is very realistically *now,* the narrator is closely, intimately real and viscerally true to life. one of the most beautifully wrought trans motherhood stories or books i’ve read.” — Jordan Kurella

“So perfect-weird and heart full and gorgeously written.” — Chloe N. Clark

“Gorgeous, raw, sharp, and tender, all at once, this book made me cry several times while I read it. Told with piercing emotional power fused with a surreal dream-logic all its own, reading this book felt like reading someone’s heart.” — Maria Haskins

“This novel tore my heart up—in the very best way. Our narrator is a semi-recently-out trans woman in her forties, she is an ex-wife, a mother separated from her son, and largely between stable work (a former writer, whose metafictions pepper the text). Friendships real and imagined provide a mirror of reflection in which our narrator turns the mundane into profound. This is a portrait of a woman who has so much love in her heart, and slowly learns to afford herself some of that love.” — Charlie, Room of One’s Own

“I was completely unprepared for how powerful Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is. Told in second person by a carefully unnamed narrator, the novel blends fantasy, science fiction, and absurdism; it’s also a very grounded and personal work. The narrator, a trans woman trying to reconnect with her young son, trying to find friendship and love in a hostile world, is aided by magical figures and contraptions, but it’s her voice that stands out. This is absolutely brilliant writing: raw and unflinching in how it portrays transphobia and self-doubt, sweeping and dynamic in its use of language and imagery.”
— Jake Casella Brookins, Locus

“Ultimately, though, it’s still a story that leaves me at a loss. For so small a volume, it looms too large to be captured in 1,000 words and change. It craves hand gestures, tone of voice, all the little things that tell the story when we can’t tell the story. So please, picture me waving my hands, leaning forward, emphasising that this book is something special. Because it is. And if you read it, hopefully you’ll be left speechless too.”
— Roseanna Pendlebury, Nerds of a Feather

“A dreamlike, speculative novel. . . . the heart of this short novel . . . is about the narrator’s journey as a trans woman, someone who’s trying to come to terms with the pain of her closeted past even as she struggles to find her way in a fragile, uncertain present.”
— Daily Hampshire Gazette

“In Anya Johanna DeNiro’s slim and shining new novel, ‘OKPsyche,’ published by Small Beer Press, based in Western Mass and run by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, is an exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. Old snow takes on the look of “the coat of a cocker spaniel who needs a bath.” And “time compresses into apple seeds.” DeNiro, a trans author based in Minnesota, writes with vulnerability and force, looking at fear and shame, other people’s and the narrator’s own, looking at courage, at trans parenthood and love-finding, at the way reality and the people in it shift and bend, moving forward and backward at once. “Venus is clearly cis (myrtle, rose, apple, poppy). Venus is vengeful, unknowable (dove, sparrow, swan, hare, goat, ram) . . . Venus is able to make it up as she goes along.” In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.”
— Nina MacLaughlin, Boston Globe

“. . . the second-person telling lets the reader in on a conversation this character is having with herself as she creates within herself the understanding that she needs: a sort of literary camera obscura that offers glimpses of how she pieces her historically disparate selves together.”
— E.C. Barrett,  Strange Horizons

“This story contains and covers multitudes. It ties its character to the sticking place, and we are bound as well, by a trans woman’s hopes, desires, losses, and visceral fears of the danger she faces every single day. Those dangers are indeed more real than imagined for a woman who doesn’t pass society’s purity test.”
— The Novel Approach

“DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story about what it means to try and find a place for yourself in the midst of a hurricane of climate disaster, violence, and fear. It’s a story told through weird, ghostly, haunting fantasy. Fans of enigmatic speculative fiction like Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (2022), will enjoy this tale of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“An unnamed trans woman is at an uneasy stage in her metamorphosis. She has finally cast off the male persona that never fit her, but she has yet to become the woman she dreams of being. Part of her discomfort is physical—she does not have the body she wants—but much of it is social and emotional. She knows that most strangers do not see her for what she is. Her ex-wife is still adjusting to what is, for her, a surprising new reality. Her mother deadnames her. And, most importantly, her young son is shutting her out. DeNiro’s significant achievement here is making palpable the excruciating, inescapable self-consciousness of her main character. Her decision to narrate in the second person is a bold one; this move will help some readers immerse themselves in the story, but it will just as likely alienate others.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Beguiling. . . . a fascinating and often lovely weird fiction character study.”
— Publishers Weekly

Early Reader Reactions

“OKPsyche is a spectacular novel, like a shard of stained glass in brilliant reds and greens and purples. DeNiro shows us the impossible and the possible with equal honesty. The book is a chronicle of hope and hurt and freedom, suffused with anxiety and grace, and told in prose that just won’t quit. It’s major. You’ll remember where you were when you read it.”
— Isaac Fellman, author of Dead Collections

“Tense and funny, heartfelt and uncanny, Anya Johanna DeNiro takes us on an hallucinogenic tour through the mind of a woman on the edge. Guided by strange angels or losing touch with reality — either way, it’s happening to you!”
— Morgan M. Page, screenwriter of Framing Agnes

“DeNiro has done something beautiful here, weaving a luminous lament for a ruined world with the simmering pain of a woman finally coming to life. Delicate, lovely, and ultimately full of the impossible hope that shines forth in trans lives.”
— Maya Deane, author of Wrath Goddess Sing

“An allegorical and lyrical short novel about a transgender woman struggling to belong in a near future populated by emotional support robots and a ceaseless slew of environmental disasters. DeNiro writes with a complexity that reflects the internal emotional struggles of her unnamed protagonist as she fights for happiness and a better relationship with her young son. A uniquely told and refreshingly weird story of self-realization and the courage it takes to love.”
— Sam Edge, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews, Chapel Hill, NC

“DeNiro (City of a Thousand Feelings) offers a beguiling if somewhat opaque glimpse into a trans woman’s journey to find safety, acceptance, and love in a near-future Minnesota. . . . this is a fascinating and often lovely weird fiction character study.”
— Publishers Weekly

Reviews of Anya DeNiro’s books:

“That trust in emotional urgency over conventional logic to guide a story is, for me, a critical part of a queer aesthetic. Coming out is about obeying an interior, often inarticulable emotional push over majority logics. . . . DeNiro’s gorgeous and emotionally flawless navigation . . . is masterful, cerebral but full of complex feeling, and nothing short of word-magic.”
— Theodore McCombs, Fiction Unbound

“Surreal and lyrical.”
— Publishers Weekly

“What makes the story even more compelling, is that DeNiro gives you all this, allegory and action, without ever losing sight of the heart of the story: the fundamental bond and evolving relationship between two characters who choose different ways to survive, and yet find a greater power, and maybe even a new kind of salvation, when they come together.”
— Maria Haskins

“Strange, menacing worlds whose contours only gradually become clear (or, perhaps, more complexly mysterious).”
—Dylan Hicks, Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Minnesotan DeNiro gives us large hunks of riveting weirdness.”
—Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Wildness, fierceness, and anarchic imagination are traits, then, to be prized in this book, above beauty, order, and sense—or, in classical terms, the Dionysian over the Apollonian—and process.”
— Strange Horizons

“Each story feels new, unique, and important.”
—Leah Schnelbach, Tor.com

“There’s no other writer like DeNiro working today.” — Tim Pratt, Locus

Earlier

May 2: MIBA Spring Tour, Des Moines, IA
Sept. 14, 6 p.m. Moon Palace Books, 3032 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55406 (FB)
Oct. 14, 11 a.m., Twin Cities Book Fest, Fine Arts Stage, Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 27, 7 p.m. Prairie Lights, Iowa City, IA
3/25, A Room of One’s Own, 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, WI
5/8, KGB Bar, New York, NY, with John Wiswell
5/9, Astoria Bookshop, Queens, NY, with Nino Cipri

Cover Art

“Psyche Asleep in a Landscape,” Karl Joseph Aloys Agricola, 1837, metmuseum.org.

About the Author

Anya Johanna DeNiro is a trans woman and a speculative fiction writer living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of City of a Thousand Feelings, which was on the Honor Roll for the Otherwise Award. [website | twitter]


Elegant, Lyrically Descriptive Prose

Mon 11 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Kindling coverI was writing a newsletter to go out tomorrow in celebration of Anya’s novel coming out and I realized I’d never posted that the first trade review for Kathleen Jennings’s Kindling had come in from Lucy Lockley in Booklist:

“Following her debut, Flyaway (2020), Jennings here compiles a collection of 12 of her previously published short stories. Samplings of her elegant fantasies include “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a beautifully detailed tale of a lonely songwriter who sends anonymous compositions to a recently arrived virtuoso, which unfortunately brings her presence to the attention of their dissipated ruler. In ‘Ella and the Flame,’ three sisters and a child spin wondrous tales while awaiting their cruel neighbors’ unjustified vengeance, and in ‘Not to Be Taken,’ the survivor of a murdered family returns home after decades away intent on finding a place for her burgeoning collection of poison bottles. As a riff on ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘A Hedge of Yellow Roses’ has a fully-awake but abandoned lady faire hoping for rescue by the unwitting knight who stumbled into her thorn- encrusted compound. The title story, ‘Kindling,’ links six customer scenarios to a clumsy but intuitive barmaid and her lovelorn admirer. Offer to fans of lyrically descriptive prose.”


Love to Open Up a Newsletter/Newspaper

Fri 8 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

. . . and see OKPsyche. First this morning in the Boston Globe Nina MacLaughlin included a lovely write up of Anya’s novel and then in this week’s Consortium Communiqué newsletter, there was Sam Edge’s lovely write up!

1) Boston Globe:
In Anya Johanna DeNiro’s slim and shining new novel, “OKPsyche,” published by Small Beer Press, based in Western Mass and run by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, is an exploration of ensoulment and embodiment, and the search for both, told by a trans woman in lush sink-into-it prose. Old snow takes on the look of “the coat of a cocker spaniel who needs a bath.” And “time compresses into apple seeds.” DeNiro, a trans author based in Minnesota, writes with vulnerability and force, looking at fear and shame, other people’s and the narrator’s own, looking at courage, at trans parenthood and love-finding, at the way reality and the people in it shift and bend, moving forward and backward at once. “Venus is clearly cis (myrtle, rose, apple, poppy). Venus is vengeful, unknowable (dove, sparrow, swan, hare, goat, ram) . . . Venus is able to make it up as she goes along.” In our world of violence and fires and floods, of hatred born of fear, of the regular messy tasks of living, DeNiro writes of what it is to locate, again and again, the deepest part inside oneself, with bravery, humility, and grace.

2) Consortium Communiqué, Sam Edge, Epilogue Books of Chapel Hill, NC:
“An allegorical and lyrical short novel about a transgender woman struggling to belong in a near future populated by emotional support robots and a ceaseless slew of environmental disasters.”


One Week to OKPsyche

Thu 7 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Come out Twin Cities — or, order your signed/personalized copy from Moon Palace:

One week tonight: Anya Johanna DeNiro launches her new novel, OKPsyche

9/14/23 6 p.m.

Moon Palace Books (FB)
3032 Minnehaha Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55406


Old House of Fear

Wed 6 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Yesterday was a wash. After I put together breakfast for me and the kid, I had a health crash. It wasn’t hospital level, happily, rather one where, lying on the couch as per usual, I wanted needed to lie down. I was lying down but I need to lie down more. I had the smallest pillow under my head and it was a too much to bear.

In the morning my ambitions for the day had included a little light laptop work, making lunch, maybe even dinner, playing a video game, doing some dishes, skimming Bluesky, taking the dog for a short night walk. So all of those things fell to Kelly as I felt the squeeze of the air above me crush me down further. ~15 lbs of air above me was too heavy but there was nowhere to go.

The day improved slowly. I did as close to nothing as I could. That was easy during the first part where staring at the ceiling took everything I had. As time went by and I slowly (metaphorically) crawled back to my new norm, I realized I’d achieved the zen state of no thoughts. Zen-like, this made me neither happy nor unhappy.

Today I’m again on the couch, no different from the last eighteen months and my plans today are on the simpler end.

I’m attributing yesterday’s crash to Post-Exertional Malaise, a term I did not know before December 2021. On Sunday and Monday we had friends visit. They all tested — for which I am very grateful — and I did very little. While I was never a great host, now I am quite terrible. Someone else — Kelly — has to take care of welcomes and drinks and snacks and comfort and conversation and so on. Instead I sat half-slumped trying to be as near horizontal as was polite (ha, silly me, just give up and lie down) and to use as little energy as possible even as I was still delighted to see people (and dogs!). I did very little and removed myself from company after a little while and apparently it was all still too much.

So: no events, no conferences, no parties, no book fairs, no nothing that is just even the littlest bit interesting for a while yet more for me.

Hilariously I’d been meant to see my doctor last week. They cancelled it. I got a new last minute appointment for this Friday. Yesterday they called: and cancelled it. Maybe they’ll call me to re-arrange. I don’t have the energy.

———

List of 3 Russell Kirk booksWhat I’d wanted to write about this past weekend — instead of about this mushy piece of flesh attempting to pass itself off as a body — was a book I’d been reading: Russell Kirk’s Old House of Fear.

My mother died two years ago and in the run up to her anniversary I decided to read one of the books she’d included in a late-in-life reading journal. My mother loved books as much as anyone I know, although our tastes did not particularly align. However the books she recommended to me, siblings, extended friends, and family, were quite often a good fit. I also loved that she did not care one whit about condition or edition. A rare, signed first edition hardcover was the same book to her as an ex-library charity shop find. The story mattered, the particular book did not.

I’ve read and enjoyed all the books she’d recommended to me over the years and what fascinated me about these Russell Kirk books was their uncanny nature. She’d told me she loved Dennis Wheatley when she was young but her recent favorites included Dorothy Dunnett and Anthony Trollope — she was delighted to have found and read every book Trollope published. Kirk sounds like someone my mother would have argued with — she was religious but still a humanist. Now that I’ve read Old House of Fear, however, I can see why she had listed it. Or, without being able to ask, I think I can.

Old House of FearThe novel is set and was written in 1960 and published in 1961 and begins along the same lines as the film Local Hero: an American employee of a large firm is sent to Scotland to try and buy some land, here an island off the north coast. The novel quickly moves into John Buchan territory, with no one quite as they seem and strange events and behaviors, and then there are the stories within the story. Fair warning to readers, it is a novel of its time and while it doesn’t have some of the worst markers of the time the attitudes are sometimes rank.

If you read this edition, I definitely recommend leaving the introduction until you’ve finished the book — the writer says there are some great covers on the pulp editions. And if possible, read the book late at night. Even better if the wind is high and there are branches scraping at the window and you’re not quite sure there are any branches near enough the window to make that noise.

So that’s more writing than I meant to do and I’m stopping here before writing more about the book. Do tell me if you’ve read it or recommend more Kirk. I haven’t looked for the other 2 on my mother’s list.

Now it’s time for me to put my computer aside and take a break. We have a book out next week, so maybe I can do some last minute work on that. Maybe not. I am definitely not able to do as much work, Small Beer or otherwise, as in the past. So any help spreading the word about these new books is always appreciated.


New Flier

Fri 1 Sep 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Admin for me: added our new flier to the catalogs page where anyone who ever wants can download more Small Beer fliers than anyone would ever need.


Give it a look!

Wed 30 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

I was enjoying an author interview in Shelf Awareness this rainy morning when I was brought up short to see SL Huang is an evangelist for Kalpa Imperial. Now that is a way to wake up!

Shelf Awareness: Book you’re an evangelist for:

SL Huang: Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire that Never Was is one of the books I’m constantly hyping that I feel like so much of SFF has slept on! It’s by Argentinian author Angélica Gorodischer, and the translation from Spanish was done by Ursula K. Le Guin. And it is stunning.

It also exemplifies a lot of unusual things, craft-wise, that are highly unusual elsewhere: a fantasy world with no magic, a book made up of interconnected short stories, a book that takes place over many generations and many thousands of years. Give it a look!


Second Starred Review

Mon 28 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeKij Johnson just put a line through an item on her bucket list: The Privilege of the Happy Ending has received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews — great news, especially following the first starred review the book received from Publishers Weekly.

After the great popularity of At the Mouth of the River of Bees, we’re changing things up a bit and splitting the run on this book so that we will have some hardcovers available.

Here’s an excerpt from the review or read the whole thing on Kirkus’s site.

★ “While the entries are uniformly excellent in pacing and prose, the standouts may be the collection’s opener and closer. ‘Tool-Using Mimics’ spins out a half-dozen explanations for a vintage photo of a young girl with tentacles that lead to piercing questions about how much we can know about the past, other species, and each other. The titular novella, which also won a World Fantasy Award, is a compelling fairy tale about a little orphan girl and her talking hen that poignantly interrogates the ways we determine which stories take center stage. A strange and glimmering jewel for any genre fiction collection.”


Anya, Prairie Lights, 10/27

Fri 25 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeWe’ve just confirmed another event for Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche this one in October at the justifiably famed and lovely Prairie Lights in Iowa City.

How great is the reading series? Tonight’s reading is kind of a stunner: National Book Award finalist Jamel Brinkley reading from his new short story collection, Witness, and then in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado. Check out the rest here.

More details to come as we get closer but for now set your landyacht’s autodrive calendar to Iowa City for 7 p.m., October 27th, and plan on arriving in time to browse those shelves.


SBP on Audio

Mon 21 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

I had fun finding Small Beer audiobooks for this new list I put together for Book Moon on LibroFM — get 2 audiobook credits for US$15 with your first month of membership . . .

There are a few audiobooks only available on Am*zon as I sold half a dozen books to them 10 years ago. One of them has earned out, so it was a good deal for the authors!, but meh to the limited availability.

 


Slowly, Slowly

Thu 17 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Not even a cover yet, but I’m moving LCRW 47 slowly along the road to publication. Phew.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 47

Tue 15 Aug 2023 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

September 2023. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN 9781618732156.

Working toward a table of contents for the 47th time. This one slowed in spring, then summer, then autumn, but eventually harvested, gathered and brought together into one short burst of fiction sent out between firey paper covers.

Listen/watch: Callum Angus livestreamed a reading of his story, Red Work.

Reviews: Alex Brown, Tor.com, on Maya Beck’s “Black Girl Liminal”: “A thought-provoking story perfect for Millennials who miss Sailor Moon.”

“Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #47 is also outstanding. The only things its eight pieces of fiction have in common are that each is well-executed and uniquely quirky.” — Paula Guran, Locus

Fictions

Serafina Bersonsage, Radoret
Callum Angus, Red Work
Jennie Evenson, Those Who Struggle the Most
Meg Toth, The Reckoning
Randall Van Nostrand, The Fledgling
Maya Beck, Black Girl Liminal
Brandon Clippinger, New
Lena Valencia, Blood Pool

Nonfictions

Nicole Kimberling, So Personal
About These Authors

Celebrating

A UK edition of Zen Cho’s collection, Spirits Abroad. A World Fantasy nomination for the press. Redemption in Indigo being bought by Random House so that Karen Lord can have all her books under one roof. Starred reviews for new books from Anya DeNiro (OKPsyche) and Kij Johnson (The Privilege of the Happy Ending). Reprinting Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial and Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands.

Update

As in my LCRW 46 note, I (Gavin) am chronically ill and limited compared to the previous times. I’m still planning (hoping? how zine-esque of me) on two issues of this zine this year. But we have two books coming, Anya’s and Kij’s—two writers from the Twin Cities, how unexpected—which is enough to keep me busy and then Kathleen Jennings’s January collection, Kindling. Then next February Random House is publishing Kelly’s huge immersive, amazing novel, The Book of Love. Can’t wait to see it out in the world.

Excerpts from LCRW 47:

“Radoret”
Serafina Bersonsage

The trouble was that I could not remember just what my great-great-grandfather had done.
He was not one of my more illustrious ancestors. I could not guess, and my captor did not seem at all inclined to say. It had taken me most of the morning to get him to divulge the name. I had managed it at last, phrasing the question in River, as my mother had taught me. ‘Excuse me, but would you tell me whose despicable crime has occasioned my not unreasonable abduction?’ It sounded less stilted in my kintongue—but, if I had been able to put the question in my kintongue, then I would not have needed it at all.

“Red Work”
Callum Angus

In the summer of 1959 we were awash in monster parts. Tails, specifically. The rain had come early and then not again for months, which saw a flourishing of the berries that make up the bulk of the Snake River monster’s diet: lizards the length of your forearm, with markings on the back of their heads like a man’s face gazing dead-eyed at the sky; when frightened, they skittered their arms and legs so furiously that the plump lizard men appeared to be dancing in clouds of dust. That was the summer my brother Tibb got Pup. She’d lose her mind chasing the monsters sunning themselves on the porch. Their fleeing was fun to watch, and more often than not they escaped Pup’s puppy jaws by losing their tails in her mouth; the tailless monsters scurried to their burrows before Pup realized that what she had was only the toughest, rangiest part of her quarry and she spat it out in disappointment. For most of that summer her nose was red from the blood, and the sacrifices piled up as Pup learned her limits.

“Those Who Struggle the Most”
Jennie Evenson

I couldn’t wait to die. All my friends had done it—I was the only one left in our year who hadn’t, and it was humiliating.
Cleo loved every moment of my pain and she had me cornered. Her two best friends, Khensa and Ray, posed darkly next to her like a two-headed bird of prey. They were the kind of girls who enjoyed teasing kids until they cried, and Cleo was their leader.
Eucalyptus steam hazed the limestone bathhouse, illuminated by star-shaped skylights. Their glass concentrated the sun’s radiance, transforming the ceiling into a glittering planetarium.

“So Personal”
Nicole Kimberling

Why is it that we mostly cook eggs for our close companions at the quiet times of the day? Late night after the party’s over or else early morning when we’re not quite awake? Times when our consciousness is compromised by revelry or sleepiness? Sure, occasionally an egg will make a dressed up appearance at an afternoon barbecue, sitting alongside its deviled companions on a party platter but that’s a premeditated party trick of a food, not an gesture of one to one care.
I’ve cooked thousands and thousands of eggs, but you know what? I’ve never cooked an egg for a stranger. The recipient has always been at least a coworker. After cooking professionally for a long time, it’s strange to think that when I’ve cracked a couple of shells open it’s mostly been for a person who I love—sometimes love deeply—sometimes just love right that moment when possessed by joie de vivre.

“The Reckoning”
Meg Toth

By 1891, Edith Irvine knows about ghosts, but it isn’t until 1892, three days before her seventeenth birthday, that she believes she can kill them.
She sits in a near-empty car on the Wabash Special observing her breath. Sister Mary at the St. Louis Orphans’ Asylum, where all the orphaned children who’d survived the cholera outbreak were sent, said that the bothers come when her soul needs air. Believing her soul lies in her chest, Edith inhales deeply. But the bothers clamber in like wicked children and block her throat.
If the snow delays us. If I miss the connection in Albany. If I don’t arrive in time.

“The Fledgling”
Randall Van Nostrand

No one calls me coward. I climb to the hayloft, toes itchy on wood, and step to the edge. The fields are parched ribbons of brown and gold. My feet tingle from the height. Barn swallows swoop so close I can almost touch them. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wings.
“Fraidy cat,” my older brother says as if I hadn’t heard him the first time. He’s nine and thinks he knows everything.
“Bettina, don’t listen to him.” Cara sounds like Mum. She’s six, two years younger than me, and already old.
Orange seams the horizon. A thin lip of moon hangs in the dusky sky. The day is paused between light and dark. In dreams I catch the wind’s currents and soar with the swallows. In dreams I’m free.
I take a breath and jump. Cara screams. The ground pulls me down and crushes my foot. I cannot get away.

Black Girl Liminal
Maya Beck

Miriam almost didn’t see the rabbit god hunched there in the shadows. It was just so small, no match for the whirling thoughts inside her: goddamn buses and their random routes and stupid hours . . . Should’ve called a rideshare. Too late now, but next time . . . Could’ve asked someone to pick me up, but who? Shawn? Ew. Laura? Nah. A partner, ideally, hopefully soon. Damnit! No crying. We’re almost home. Use the Gift of Fear. Next time, I’ll have my car, next time I’ll call a taxi, this time we’re almost there. This time walk straight, don’t slow, don’t get distracted. You’re all alone now, kid. Own it.
Miriam was alone on the curving suburban streets of her neighborhood, dragging behind her a rose-print wheeled suitcase that grumbled down sidewalks. It was one in the morning, and she regretted every decision that brought here, the budget redeye flight most of all.

“New”
Brandon Clippinger

4.

By the time I refill my customer’s iced tea, I firmly suspect he is an OFW. He is different from the other tourists. He eats alone, slowly chewing each bite of his grilled cheese sandwich with his eyes closed. His skin has a subtle sheen; from certain angles he is nearly luminescent. When a breeze blows, he pauses and lets the sea air run through his hair like water through the gills of a fish.
Upon receiving the check, he hands me his card to pay for his meal. The reflective OFW emblem flashes in the sun, confirming my suspicions. I’ve never met an OFW in person before.

“Blood Pool”
Lena Valencia

Mrs. Windchime floats outside my bedroom window. She’s finally found me. I knew she would. I’ve known ever since we left her for dead in the playa. It’s dark out, desert black, but she’s lit yellow by some demonic light. She’s dressed in her usual outfit: scuffed brown leather work boots, those convertible hiking pants that unzip at the knee, flannel shirt over faded Greenpeace tee. She looks like a kindly grunge grandmother, with the exception of the gasmask. This she wears for effect, I know. As long as she has the ring on, she doesn’t have to worry about what she breathes, because as long as she has the ring on, she’s only half alive. Or maybe she’s twice as alive as she was before. Either way, she’s there, watching me through the glass.
She bobs there a few times. Probably wants to make sure I’ve seen her, to give me a chance to run. She seems like the type of predator who likes to chase. I wonder if she’s been to Gio’s house, or Junior’s, or Esther’s, whizzing through the neighborhood like a massive deranged hummingbird. The houses in Floriciente, the planned community where we live, all look alike. I don’t know how she tells them apart. Her new form leads to more questions than answers.

Masthead & colophon

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 47, September 2023. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732156. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 | info@smallbeerpress.com | smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. Printed at Paradise Copies.
Subscriptions: $24/4 issues. Please make checks to Small Beer Press.
Library & institutional subscriptions available through EBSCO.
LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c.
Contents © 2023 the authors. All rights reserved.
Cover illustration “Leo Moon” © Holly Link.
Please send submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.
Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.

About these authors

Callum Angus is the author of the story collection A Natural History of Transition (Metonymy Press). He lives in Portland, Oregon where he teaches trans writing workshops, edits the journal smoke and mold, and is at work on a novel with/about lichen.

Maya Beck is a broke blipster, lapsed Muslim, animanga oldhead, demipan demigirl, pastelcore bunnymom, socially-anxious social justice bard, and speculative fiction writer currently wrapping up a middle grade novel about marronage as part of the UCSD Literature MFA. Their work has been published by venues including Strange Horizons, PANK, Mizna, and NAT BRUT and they have participated in writing programs including the Clarion Workshop, Tin House, Kimbilio, and the VONA. Born on Kumeyaay land with a Motor City mom/Windy City dad Black lineage, Maya is a blended descendant of displaced Bantu, Hausa, and Fulani peoples. They can be found lurking under minimin@raru.re on Mastodon, a.Maybeing on Instagram, and their website mayabeck.com.

Serafina Bersonsage received a PhD in English from the University of Rochester, where she wrote several fantasy novels while avoiding her dissertation. Her first poetry collection (A Witch’s Education) is available from EMP Books.

Brandon Clippinger grew up in South Florida and now lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he practices law. His fiction also appears in Shenandoah and the Carolina Quarterly.

Jennie Evenson has received support from Bread Loaf and Tin House and has work published in Ninth Letter, Brevity, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. She lives in California with her loved ones and a rescue Cairn terrier who looks like Toto. Her website can be found at jennieevenson.com.

Nicole Kimberling has cooked so much food in her lifetime that she’s developed a philosophy around nearly every aspect of it. When she’s not putting hot meals on the table she can be found either running Blind Eye Books or procrastinating until the last possible second to finish her most recent novel. You find her on IG @the_nicole_kimberling

Holly Link, based in Philadelphia, has been experimenting with collage art for several decades, drawing on texture and color to create dreamscapes from old photographs, and piles of National Geographic, mail order, and other magazines.

Meg Toth is a professor of film studies and literature at Manhattan College. While she is an emerging fiction writer, her non-fiction essays on cinema and literature have appeared in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Adaptation, and the Journal of Narrative Theory. She is currently revising To Be Real, a speculative satire set in near-future Hollywood. Toth has lived in New York for over a decade, but she was born and raised in Cleveland, and Ohio—and the Midwest more generally—appears frequently in her short fiction.

Lena Valencia’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Epiphany, Electric Literature, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from the New School. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit.

Randall Van Nostrand’s stories have appeared in the Rappahannock Review, 96th of October, and East of the Web. She lives on the side of a mountain north of San Francisco with a naughty dog named Baxter.


Starred Booklist Review

Mon 14 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover - click to view full sizeAnya Johanna DeNiro’s forthcoming OKPsyche is a short but powerful novel that just garnered a starred review from Booklist:

“DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story about what it means to try and find a place for yourself in the midst of a hurricane of climate disaster, violence, and fear. It’s a story told through weird, ghostly, haunting fantasy. Fans of enigmatic speculative fiction like Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield (2022), will enjoy this tale of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.”

Booklist Review of the Day button


A Butner, A Wexler, 2 LCRWs

Mon 14 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

I should have noted Kelly and I are on the World Fantasy Award ballot under “special award – professional.” Since this is for 2022, it can be taken that the jurors very much enjoyed Richard Butner’s collection The Adventurists and Robert Freeman Wexler’s novel The Silverberg Business, and maybe also the paperback reprint of John Crowley’s And Go Like This and perhaps, too, LCRW 45 & 46. For the curious, you can read an excerpt from The Silverberg Business on Lithub and Butner’s nearish title story “Adventure” on The Deadlands. Congratulations to all the finalists!

Sorry to say we won’t be at the convention, especially irritating to me as Kij Johnson is one of the guests of honor — along with Jonathan Strahan and Tananarive Due, ach — and her new collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, will be coming out that week. Oh well! I’ll send along books for the book bag and try my best to ensure there will be copies there.

 


Boundary-Pushing Wow

Fri 4 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeWe just got the proofs from the printer for Kij Johnson’s forthcoming second collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories. We’re going to do a short hardcover run along with the regular trade paper edition, so it was fun to design a jacket extending out from Sophia Uceda’s lovely cover art. Proofs are always a two-edged sword though as I hope not to find any errors as that would slow up production even as at the same time I hope I do find any remaining errors as it would be better to find them now rather than opening up the finished book and finding them. So, fingers crossed: no errors!

And, good news came in from Publishers Weekly — which I immediately shared with our distributor and international rights agents — the first trade review has come in and it’s a star:

The devastating title tale follows another young girl and her cherished talking hen as they barely escape a swarm of monsters who devour anything with flesh. Johnson’s keen eye for the mysteries of human nature shines as her characters experience love, loss, growth, and betrayal, all made delightfully strange. These boundary-pushing, magic-infused tales are sure to wow.

Read the whole review here.


Privilege Hardcover

Tue 25 Jul 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeWhile working on Kij Johnson’s The Privilege of the Happy Ending we bought a collection of vintage sf&f for Book Moon — here are a few, there are more pictures up there, too. We don’t buy much in the way of used books there anymore, which is a shame as I love them, but Easthampton really wanted a new bookshop which is a different kind of fun.

Anyway, while cleaning and pricing some of the old hardcovers I realized it would be fun to do a short hardcover run of Kij’s book along with the trade paperback so we are adding a small hardcover edition and we got to design a new jacket for the hardcover. When I took it to our distributor they liked the idea but pushed for a higher price for the hardcover to differentiate the books so the hardcover will be $34 and the trade paper $18. I am still always surprised by how expensive it is to make a Smyth sewn hardcover using 30% recycled paper so that is reflected in the price. The interiors of the hardcover, paperback, and ebooks are the same so the hardcovers are going to be for those who read their books very hard and need a hardcover to stand up to the force of that. Or maybe libraries and those who like a pretty hardcover. The paperback is 5.5″ x 8.5″ as many — or maybe most? — of our books are as I find that size very readable.

The hardcover should be out at the same time as the paperback, October 24, and Kij will be at World Fantasy and some more places when it comes out.

 


Readercon 2023

Mon 10 Jul 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Readercon is back in Quincy again this year and while we’re not going the lovely Steve Berman of Lethe Press will have a few Small Beer titles available at his table so that when you hear Jeffrey Ford, Greer Gilman, Elizabeth Hand, Sarah Pinsker, or Susan Stinson read you can dash over and pick up one of their books.

Steve will also have 1 or 2 other SBP titles — and maybe a couple of copies of Kelly’s White Cat Black Dog?  — but he only has one table, so there won’t be the whole cit and kaboodle, he spoonered. These books will be there — email me ahead of time if there are any others you’d like to pick up there:

Liz Hand books


More Other Lands

Mon 26 Jun 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

In Other Lands cover - click to view full sizeThanks to tens of thousands of enthusiastic readers, it’s time to send Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands back to the printer for another printing.

I’d say something like this little book has legs but there’s a mermaid on the cover — no legs — and there’s nothing little about it: the cover price is increasing to $19 because with the story that started it all, “Wings in the Morning,” included, it’s almost 500 pages of goodness. New copies should be going out to store in early August.


OKPsyche Launch: 9/14

Thu 22 Jun 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Delighted to say we’ve set up a launch reading for Anya Johanna DeNiro and her short novel OKPsyche at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, MN on Thursday, September 14, at 7 p.m.

OKPsyche cover - click to view full size


New York Review of Science Fiction Readings: Sarah Pinsker

Tue 13 Jun 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Catch up with Sarah Pinsker’s new book, Lost Places, with this recent NYRSF reading hosted by Barbara Krasnoff. Sarah reads excerpts from her original novelette “Science Facts!” — I still think Science Facts! Stories would have been a great title for the book and then Barbara interviews Sarah:


Pride Ebook Bundle

Fri 2 Jun 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’m proud, no kidding, to say we have 2 novels in this month’s Storybundle 2023 Pride ebook deal.

Get all 17 ebooks — including the first book in Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series, Fire Logic, and Susan Stinson’s sexy and surprising Martha Moody — and support Rainbow Railroad whose mission is to help LGBT people escape persecution and violence here.


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