How Slowly, How Slow

Mon 20 Oct 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 51 coverHowl slowly, howl! Bring on the dogs of war and let them pull us from our couches, harry us to the printer, drop off a print file. Not quite at that stage, but the next issue of LCRW slowly accumulates. It even has a cover, art by Christa Donner.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 51

Thu 16 Oct 2025 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

December 2025. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732194.

Once upon a time a zine went walking into the woods. The wind was gusting and leaves streamed from the trees like light falling through clouds. They glowed. Reds and scarlets, yellows and oranges, turning and spinning. Then: into the shadows, the colors flat. The world shivered as it turned, the cool of evening dropping. The zine would reach a shelf, a table, but for now the mailbox would be shelter. It would be there soon. Not long now.

Contributors

Claire Hanlon, Andrei Molotiu, Neile Graham, J. F. Gleeson, Nicole Kimberling, Abby Roberts, Catherine Rockwood, and Felix Kent, among others.

Cover

Cover illustration © 2025 Christa Donner. All rights reserved.

Masthead & colophon

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

LCRW is (usually) published in June & November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 | info@smallbeerpress.com | smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. Printed by Paradise Copies. Subscriptions: $28/4 issues (see zine for more options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO.

DRM-free ebooks available from the lovely weightlessbooks.com.

Contents © 2025 the authors. All rights reserved.

Please send fiction and poetry submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks authors, artists, readers.


Light Academia(!)

Wed 15 Oct 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

In Other Lands coverSarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands is tucked comfortably at the end of Jenny Hamilton’s Dark Academia: A Starter Pack (Tart, Awad, Samatar, & more) in the NYTimes answering the subtitled question “Is there such a thing as light academia?”

“In Other Lands” is a hilarious, and moving, sendup of magic school novels where kids learn to fight in an ongoing war against the forces of evil. Its mouthy, obnoxious 13-year-old protagonist, Elliot, resists every step of the way. (“Oh my God,” he says. “We’re child soldiers?”) Elliot’s pacifism never alters, but the world of the book grows deeper and more nuanced as the reader gets further in. Brennan explores gender dynamics, diplomacy in wartime, xenophobia and the ways that deeply damaged people can learn to care for each other — all with a per-page joke rate that puts Douglas Adams to shame.

If you read it and love it, try … the “Giant Days” comic book series, by John Allison, illustrated by Max Sarin and Lissa Treiman; “I Kissed Shara Wheeler,” by Casey McQuiston; or “Year of the Griffin,” by Diana Wynne Jones.


CC

Tue 7 Oct 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’ve been enjoying the Consortium Corner microinterviews with various Consortium people as they celebrate their 40th anniversary. We signed on with them in 2007, latecomers!, after starting with Pathway Book Service for a couple of years and then SCB Distributors. We’d talked to a few distributors and although not everyone at the company really got what we were up to enough people did that we felt comfortable among the other literary and poetry presses. At some point they were subsumed by Ingram (the other 800 lb gorilla) but they’re still based in the Twin Cities and they still have their own identity. Long may they run!

Julie Schaper, the president who brought us over to Consortium, recently announced that she’d be retiring next year and it was fun to read her interview which includes a shout out to a truly indie indie bookstore and a wedding photo (not the only one in these pages!). She and her hubsand (ahem), Steve Horwitz, are  also “both involved with the Minnesota Prison Writers Project and We Are All Criminals.” Good people.

I’d write more but this is longer than some of the interviews. Each interviewee lists a few books they love and the range is beautiful to see. We all contain multiverses!

In one of the interviews Lise Solomon — always one of the first I used to send ARCs of our upcoming books to — includes Carol Emshwiller’s Carmen Dog in her recommendations along with the amazing reason she first read it:

What are 5 Consortium titles you love and why? Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli (Coffee House Press) This short book about Valeria Luiselli’s work translating for immigrant children will make you sob on the BART train. Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller (Small Beer Press) After learning that former rep Bob Harrison named his dog Carmen for this book, I knew it would be a great read. So true! I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (Coffee House Press) Epic, brilliant blend of real and imagined history of SF Chinatown. Blue Marlin by Lee Smith (Blair) I’m not from the South but the family dynamics and life seen through a young teen’s eyes is so perceptive and universal. Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passarello (Sarabande Books) Learned a lot and laughed a ton, damn she is funny.