Sun Sets on Trafalgar

Sun 1 Mar 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Because I cannot keep up with time I hadn’t realized March was coming up so quickly and now we are a day away from rights to Amalia Gladhart’s translation of Angélica Gorodischer’s Trafalgar reverting to the estate. I’d meant to make a fuss a few weeks before this so instead: here’s a day or two of the ebook being $2 at Weightless. I don’t even have enough time to get a price change in on all the other ebookstores.

Usually we buy rights to publish a book for the term of copyright and I keep the title in print and try and find new avenues of interest for them. (70+% of the average bookshop sales are backlist titles such as this.) However, translations are often licensed for a limited period of time so for Trafalgar we had seven years from the date of signing the contract (2012-19) and then I renewed the license for another seven years (2019-2026).

As of March 3rd, we’ll have six months to accept returns from bookshops and sell off our remaining stock. Then I’ll offer the author’s estate and the translator copies of the book at cost plus shipping. Any remaining copies can either be recycled, donated, or I can pay the royalty so that I can keep offering the book for sale on our website — which is how we are able to sell off our remaining copies of Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation of Kalpa Imperial and Sue Burke’s translation of Prodigies.

I love that every book of Angélica’s is different. You can see it in the three we published and then expand your experience with Amalia Gladhart’s translation of Jaguar’s Tomb. I’m very happy Amalia’s going to translate more of Angélica’s books. Kalpa Imperial, the first of Angélica’s we published, will be reprinted by Penguin next year.

Trafalgar is full of surprises. There are stories (some available on Reactor, Lightspeed, & Belletrista) that play on familiar history and most play with ideas from and of science fiction. It is more fun, strange, and occasionally uncomfortable than I was expecting. I look forward to seeing who will publish it next and seeing what they do with it.


Neither in Pittsburgh nor Baltimore

Wed 25 Feb 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Being chronically ill gives insight into how the world will go on when one is no longer part of it. We’ve all moved on from social circles, jobs, schools, cities, towns, countries, and we know that life goes on in those places without us.

But to lie on the couch and see annual events — that in the past I would have attended — whoosh by is something else. This post was sparked by the mass of emails and posts on Bluesky about the upcoming AWP Conference and Book Fair*. I unsubscribed from their emails some time ago so I did not even know this year the conference is in Pittsburgh* Baltimore. (Damn! I could visit friends!)

If we were going to AWP, I’d have

  • spent some time last year setting up an event either at a local indie bookstore, or maybe a party with like-minded publishers and friends,
  • booked a hotel room or two as soon as I could last spring and gotten flights for Kelly and I. (As as aside, I was last on a plane in August 2021 and I have no expectation of getting on one any time soon.)
  • found a place to ship books: either to a friend in the city or to a UPS or FedEx store where I could go to in a taxi with my handy hand truck and then hand carry them into the book fair at the convention center.
  • put something silly in as our booth or table name: Small Beer Press Says Abolish Ice, Small Beer Press and Generally Quite Good Bookery, Small Beer Press and the Convention Food Experience, etc., etc.
  • maybe have written something on here about going but hitting that AWP tag above I see I often did not.

Kelly and I would have badges for the book fair and we’d try and table near friends. We’d wander the convention hall trying not to pick up too many books and journals — impossible task. Kelly might do a panel. I might have pitched yet another: “Tiny Presses and The Left Hand of Darkness,” “Publishing in the Anthropocene Idiocracy,” “Weird Shit Is the One True Way,” “Chocolate — or the Treat of Your Choice — with Zines Is a Must,” etc., etc. Would that painful panel be empaneled? Probably not, but it would have been fun to pitch.

10,000 people will descend on Baltimore. The city may not notice except for the huge number of bars which will suddenly have literary events; lunch places within walking/escape distance of the convention center will be happy; and hotels will be wishing that the conference actually brought people with income, not poets who are all crashing with friends.

Many people who once attended AWP won’t this year and many of them won’t miss it. Being in a convention center for 3-4 days is a lot. The organization, the mass of the poetic body politic brought together for a brief moment, never misses the individual.

Having a booth or table gave us a good excuse to go and a good place to rendezvous with friends and meet new people. Book sales would cover some of the rather horrendous travel costs otherwise I don’t think I’d ever have attended. It was a ton of work but we got to catch up with people in different parts of the country. Now my biggest travel is Kelly driving me to Boston for a doctor’s appointment and that usually takes all my energy so I can’t catch up with anyone.

I wrote a little of this each day and as ever with chronic illness, there’s no good ending. I’m here, not there, I miss it. If healthy I’d love to go and I’d wear a goddamn mask and use my nasal spray and I’d have been checking with AWP what the ventilation standards were. Even before I came down with this I had every Covid vaccine offered and masked in public — I thought I was protecting the rest of our family but it turns out I was the (first) unlucky one. Covid is a multisystem infection and we’re going to still be finding out ramifications for years to come.

A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down! (Wear a mask!)

[* Aha! It’s Winter Institute right now in Pittsburgh: 1,500 or so booksellers, writers, publishers, und so weiter! Kelly went a couple of times as an author and I really enjoyed the one I attended in January 2020.]


Jedediah Berry on Travel Light

Fri 23 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

I was looking for something and came across this note on Travel Light that Jed sent me in September 2005 for the Small Beer newsletter:

Travel Light is a book that goes places you never quite expect, even when you’re the one who’s writing it.

No, I didn’t write Travel Light. But when Small Beer Press decided to release Naomi Mitchison’s wondrous novel as part of their Peapod Classics series, it fell to me to rewrite it—retype it, to be more precise—because no electronic version of the text existed. And somewhere between the death of Halla’s adopted dragon/father and her arrival on the mean streets of medieval Constantinople with only Odin’s magic cloak to help her, I realized I had no idea what was going to happen next. And I was giddy about it, all the way through the last chapter: I couldn’t write (read) (type) fast enough.

There is so much that is familiar about this fairy tale novel. There are dragons and heroes, and an exiled princess. There are unicorns, Valkyries, and corrupt priests. But in Mitchison’s world, the princess is better off with the dragons than with the heroes (even the tragic ones), and when the Valkyries offer to recruit her, or when she learns the truth of her lineage, she still must find her own way.

Travel Light is a classic, but only on its own terms, as all true classics must be. It is a surprising tale and a first-rate adventure, and always thoughtful in the telling. As Halla learns and unlearns each step of her journey, Mitchison greets us with the cheering knowledge that the wandering itself is what counts.


Mail Call

Thu 22 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Well, yesterday I checked the mailbox at the Small Beer office and there was a rather large stack of mail — lots of LCRW submissions, a couple of checks, a copy of GQ magazine(?), Rain Taxi, and so on — going back to late October. Darn it. That does explain why submissions seemed to drop off in the last couple of months but it also means I’m further behind than hoped.

At least it will give me a good reason not to read the news all the time. If we escape the fascist takeover, it’s not just the leaders who need to be charged, it’s all the people from there down to those organizing the paperwork and including those who every day are choosing fascism — hello Republican senators — and chose to follow orders and do nothing.


Read the Fire Safety Pamphlet First

Wed 21 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I recently added cooking columnist Nicole Kimberling’s Cook Like a Hobo from the pre-Reckoning LCRW 33 guest edited by Michael J. DeLuca.

You can read more of Nicole’s columns here as well as in the print (or ebook) issues of LCRW. Current issue has her writing on hot water pastry which one of these days I’ll try. I love her columns. If you’re not familiar I recommend the first one on brownies and this one on How to Seduce a Vegetarian, which gave me some tips I still use, so I guess it worked on me.


2 Weeks into Q2 2000

Tue 20 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

In something I was reading the writer mentioned this year started the second quarter of the 21st-century, which gave me one of those I am living in the future frissons. So the new issue of LCRW is the first issue of a new quarter. Maybe a quarter century is the length of time we should look back at, instead of a decade, a year, three months, a fortnight, yesterday. Back to LCRW. We just bought the first story for the next issue. Despite no longer publishing books I’m still not particularly quick at reading submissions. I catch up, look away, and am months behind. Since Northampton is in the middle of a couple of snow storms, maybe I will catch up.

I think I fixed the LCRW subscription page. At some point this year I hope to move off PayPal but as ever it is low on the list, and my lists are being gone through so much slower than they used to be. I am still very amused that it took until last year — thanks to Jenny Z. for asking — for me to add the subscription option with a chapbook but without chocolate. Talk about my own blind spot.


MLK Weekend & Ayize

Sun 18 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Meant to post this earlier and may update with a Monday event but if you are in San Francisco this looks like an event worth attending:

Ayize Jama-Everett (The Liminal People series) is part of a celebration this afternoon at the San Francisco Public Library (100 Larkin Street):

Divine Forces: Exploring the Power of the Orishas
“A transformative in-person event blending the power of Yoruba spirituality with cultural exploration and collective healing. Featuring Hugo and Nebula Award winning author Tomi Adeyemi and panels with renowned writers and scholars like Sakena Young-Scaggs, Ayize Jama-Everett, Kemi Ashing-Giwa and Clarence A. Haynes.”

3:30-4:15 PM “Black Diasporic Religions” Sakena Young-Scaggs in conversation with Ayize Jama-Everett , moderated by Dr. Stanford Carpenter.
“How the worship and understandings of Black Diasporic Religions have evolved across the African diaspora, focusing on cultural continuity, folk ways, popular understandings, media representation and transformation.”

 


Cook Like a Hobo

Fri 16 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Free Stuff to Read, | Posted by: Gavin

This is LCRW Cooking Columnist Nicole Kimberling’s seventh column for LCRW originally published in LCRW 33.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 32 coverI think almost all of us have, at one point or other, attempted to cook with a campfire only to discover that our skills fall far below modern expectations. So, what makes the campfire so difficult? I cooked in a restaurant with a wood-fired oven for over a decade, which means I spent hundreds, perhaps even thousands of hours igniting, tending and using cooking fires.

Here are the main difficulties:

  • Fires are hot. A camp-sized fire can still singe all the hair off your arms from six feet away.
  • Fires are unpredictable. Even if you cook with a wood fire every day for years it is still hard to know how the wood will burn or what sort of bed of coals will develop.
  • Fires are time-consuming. They take ages to mature and require much more fuel that you imagine they will to maintain.
  • Fires are dangerous. They cannot be switched off and can easily extend beyond the boundaries that you, in your human hubris, have blithely decided they will be content to respect.

Read more


LCRW 51

Fri 2 Jan 2026 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Out into the daft, daft world: a zine.


2025 Holiday Shipping

Fri 28 Nov 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Orders are going out every week from either the Consortium warehouse or the fab people of Book Moon.

Media mail shipping on this site is free. However, if you’d like pre-holiday arrival, please choose Priority Mail.

USPS Ground Advantage™ Service Dec. 17
First-Class Mail Dec. 17
Priority Mail Dec. 18
Priority Mail Express Dec. 20

And no matter where you are, Weightless Books is always open and has all our DRM-free ebooks.


Added Back Images

Mon 10 Nov 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

An agent enquired about language rights for Maureen F. McHugh’s first collection, Mothers & Other Monsters, which is — fingers crossed — good news for Maureen.

While looking up information I realized the photos for the limited edition had dropped offline at some point in the intervening years so I added them back, tidied up the pages, and dropped the price to $50 for the rest of this month. It is a very pretty book, has 5 extra poems added, and includes a ribbon to keep your place:


Indiepubs Sale: 25% off these titles

Thu 6 Nov 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

From now until the end of the year with this coupon on Indiepubs:

SBP25

Screenshot of book covers: The Adventurists, Air Logic, And Go Like This, Archivist Wasp, & At the Mouth of the River of Bees.

Screenshot of book covers: Available Dark, Big Dark Hole, Dance on Saturday, Earth Logic, & Emma Tupper's Diary

Screenshot of covers: The Entropy of Bones, Half-Witch, Heroes of an Unknown World, Kindling, & Martha Moody

Screenshot of covers: Never Have I Ever, OKPsyche, Privilege of the Happy Ending, Prophecies, Libels, & Dreams, & Reconstruction

Screenshot of covers: The Silverberg Business, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, Spirits Abroad, A Stranger in Olondria, & Stranger Things Happen

Screenshot of covers: Taboo, Telling the Map, Tender, & Terra Nullius


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. 56 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.

Fiction
Claire Hanlon, The Pied Piper of Cats
Brian, Spring Before You Have to Turn the Fans On
Andrei Molotiu, Alida in Pelarto
J. F. Gleeson, Berries for the Dead
Abby Roberts, A Grumble of Goddesses
Perdita Buchan, The Blue Stallion of the Valley Estates
Brian, They Cut the Language Department at the University of Chicago
Felix Kent, The Summer King of Lucy’s Candy

Nonfiction
Gavin J. Grant, Lifecycle of Books
Nicole Kimberling, Warm & Forgiving: Hot Water Pastry
Hereabouts, Thereabouts 1, 2

Poetry
Catherine Rockwood, Two Poems
Neile Graham, The God of Epiphany

Art
Cover illustration, “Homebody” © 2013 Christa Donner.
Dawn Kimberling, Pie

Masthead & colophon

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

Text: New Caledonia LT Std. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. Every second story printed in white ink.

Any day at all can be the new July fourth or the fifth of November.

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 (more options available). 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.

First issue made with the new version of Affinity—at last I dropped InDesign. I never quite got the hang of the previous iteration of Affinity but my learning curve on the new one has been ok.

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.

Hereabouts, Thereabouts

Brian is from Alabama, lives in Oregon with his Partner, Toddlers, a Cat, and many Plum Trees. Brian teaches people about the bean family of plants at beanyear.com.

Perdita Buchan was born in England and came to America as a child. She has since lived in England, Italy, and, for many years in New England. She has published four novels and a nonfiction work, Utopia New Jersey, a 2008 New Jersey Council for the Humanities Honor Book. Her short fiction and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Ladies’ Home Journal,  Harvard Magazine, House Beautiful, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor, among other publications. Her recent novel, The Carousel Carver, won a 2020 Independent Publishers award. Another novel, Florilla: A Pinelands Romance came out in 2021. She currently lives in coastal New Jersey.

J. F. Gleeson lives in England. His work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Weird Horror, ergot., Cold Signal, Ligeia, Crow & Cross Keys, Lamplit Underground, Sublunary Review, the NoSleep podcast, the Dark Lane anthology series and other places. (deadlostbeaches.blog)

Neile Graham stepped down from writer wrangling for Clarion West Writers Workshop a few years back and is soon to retire from her university day job. She plans to spend her time taking forest and beach walks, writing more poems, and finally completing revisions of the four novels languishing on her computer. (neilegraham.com)

Claire Hanlon spent her formative years moving frequently between the various islands and nations of Oceania; she’s also lived in California, Montana, and now Texas, where she lives with her husband, son, three cats, dog, and a whisker collection. Her most recent work can be found at HAD and X-R-A-Y, and she has essays forthcoming in Passages North and Image Journal. Find her at clairehanlon.com or on Instagram as @loveyclairey, or at home, where she’s probably yelling at an animal.

Felix Kent’s writing has appeared in Defector and The Toast. She lives in Northern California.

Nicole Kimberling cannot help but get egotistical and start recklessly challenging fate and the gods after even the smallest victory. If she’s still alive and has not been struck by lightning at the time you’re reading this, you can find her working as editor of Blind Eye Books or else writing novels where the characters think about food too much.

Andrei Molotiu teaches art history at Indiana University, Bloomington, where his favorite course to offer focuses on the fantasy trope of magically entering a painting and what it can tell us about our fascination with real-life paintings; he’s planning to write a whole book on the subject. He’s also an artist, who helped kickstart the genre of abstract comics with his Eisner-nominated Abstract Comics: The Anthology. His short stories previously appeared in Exquisite Corpse and Ekphrasis Magazine. Other short pieces, from poems to experimental comics, have appeared in Shenandoah, Seedings, Asemic, and other journals, a good number of which no longer exist.

Abby Roberts is an author and essayist living in Northern Virginia, United States, with her dog, Violet. In addition to her writing, she works a day job at an occupational health nonprofit, is an independent Tolkien researcher, and enjoys medieval history. Her work has also appeared in Speculative Insight and Swords & Sorcery Magazine.

Catherine Rockwood (she/they) lives near Boston. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two of Catherine’s poetry chapbooks, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from the Ethel Zine Press. Their third chapbook, Dogwitch, is available from Bottlecap Press. They are wrangling a long full-length poetry manuscript—or perhaps two shorter manuscripts—who knows? Up with mystery!


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.


LCRW + a Chapbook

Fri 29 Aug 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Thank you Jenny Z. for asking if we offered LCRW subscriptions with a chapbook but without chocolate. My answer: Um, no.

For some reason when I made that little list of serious-to-silly offerings some time ago (and even during the many remakings) it never struck me to offer a chapbook with the first issue of the zine.

Ok, so now here it is.

Or: a 4-issue sub with 1, 2, 3, or 4 chapbooks(!).

We have:

  • two Greer Gilman Ben Jonson chapbooks,
  • one by Hal Duncan (illustrated by Eric Schaller),
  • one by Benjamin Rosenbaum (with illustrations from Peter Reiss),
  • and one by Margo Lanagan (illustrated by Kathleen Jennings),

so please don’t forget to say which one(s) you’d like. I’ve just done (most of) the Jan-Jun 2025 royalties and most of these authors get a little payment each time.


Kindling is a World Fantasy Award finalist

Tue 22 Jul 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to all the finalists for the World Fantasy Awards, especially Kathleen Jennings, whose debut collection, Kindling, is one of five finalists for Best Collection.

Kelly, the sole woman, and I — one of six men — are finalists for “Special Award – Non-Professional” for LCRW, and yay for that. However, if you’re voting this year I hope you will choose DeVaun Saunders, for Fiyah, or Steve J. Shaw, for Black Shuck Books, who are both nominated for the first time, and help keep this annual award invigorated and fresh.


Out Went LCRW 50

Mon 21 Jul 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

With world temperatures rising, and soon the seas, we talked about dropping the LCRW+chocolate option but maybe instead I can get it together and publish the two issues in November and February so that no one gets a fabulous and delicious but melted chocolate bar.

In the meantime, earlier this month we mailed out 99% of subscriber copies (I will make things complicated for me & the BKMN crew) and I got to see it pop up a few times on Bluesky and so on. Glad stories are being enjoyed, we enjoyed them, too. This being the 50th issue I might at some past point have imagined we’d throw a party. Next time, next time.

 


Cast Spells Punch Nazis

Thu 5 Jun 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kelly and I have been talking about this one for a while and today, since the new LCRW is at the printer and I am busted because I ran an errand (woo) this morning, I put it up on Bonfire. All monies got to BINC, who do quiet and absolutely necessary work supporting book and comic shop people in times of trouble. Do I personally know people who have applied to BINC? I have no idea. The point is it’s private. I’ve definitely recommended it to people.

Cast Spells Punch Nazis, a Deep Black Allmade Organic Cotton Unisex Tee

 


Edit, Make, Mail

Thu 5 Jun 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 50 is at the printer. How will it be mailed out? Slowly!


Stepping up the Joy

Mon 19 May 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Sharing more joy for Jennifer Hudak as her story “The Witch Trap” from LCRW 48 will be reprinted in this year’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nnedi Okorafor & John Joseph Adams along with 19 stories which originally appeared in Amazon Original Stories, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld (x3), FIYAH (x2), Lightspeed (x3), Nightmare, Reactor (x2), Sunday Morning Transport, Uncanny, along with a number of stories from collections and anthologies. BASF&F will be published in October.


Running Up That Zine

Wed 7 May 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 50, (probably — everything I do is still slower than I expect) coming out next month, is our latest celebration of writers, edited by Kelly and me, to be printed in the near-ish future by our local copy shop (who have a lovely garden and great holiday lights). Every copy comes with a free car*, a pianoforte,* an Oxford comma,** and its own 2 unique typos***.

Since the FDA will soon no longer exist we’re making the cover from a plant-based cheese which is set to melt enticingly during the time it spends in a hot van on its way to you. Open your envelope and devour the contents. Copies bought directly from Book Moon or any other direct sale outlet will be accompanied by a 2 oz (56 g) portion of Miyoko’s “cheese*” for you to replicate this experience. All fictions contained within the zine are better than any here.

* Lie.
** Probably, likely, and so on.
*** At least*v.
*v I am enjoying adding these before and after the period.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 50

Wed 7 May 2025 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

What is time?/June/2025. What are pages? Imagine it will be about 60. Ebook ISBN: What are International Standard Book Numbers? Also, 9781618732187.

LCRW 50: a b&w stapled zine that I’m hoping democracy in the USA will outlast but I am no longer 100% confident it will.

Beginnings and still building. 50 issues in 50 years would be pretty good. But, we blew past that at top speed and accomplished 50 in barely 29 years. Why not 25 years hobgoblinned stuck-in-the-2-issues-per-year mindset ask and I’d just like to point out that there were four years in there that I bet they can’t remember either. Four stories, four poems, it has a symmetry that will be ruined when more are added.

This issue’s cover spotlights the writers whose work appeared in the first 49 issues.

Fiction

S. Woodson, Dog in a Garden
L. H. Adams, The Path to Pembroke
Jessy Randall, Remedial Kissing Class
Guan Un, White Band
Marie Vibbert, The Summer Kids and the Gemini
Shaun Cammack, Graceless Creatures

Notsofiction

Gavin J. Grant, 50 Not Quite Out
Nicole Kimberling, The Limit of Words
Some recent reads
About These Authors
Without Which Support from, &c.

Poetry

Marge Piercy,

Frost on its way south; TV was right for once; The year is new but I am not; One rabbit less
Neile Graham, The Goddess of the Deep Dive; What is Ether and What is Not

Art

Dawn Kimberling, Photo

Cover

Contributors Issues 1–49

Celebrating

Jennifer Hudak’s story from LCRW 48, “The Witch Trap,” is a Nebula Award finalist & will be reprinted in the Best American SF&F; Elwin Cotman (Dance on Saturday) received a Whiting Award; Kij Johnson’s crowdfunder for RiverBank, an RPG, raised more than twice the goal; the UK edition of Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters came out; Kathleen Jennings’ collection Kindling is shortlisted for the Locus & Aurealis Awards.

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 page 36 of this issue for 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.

About Yon Authors

Ms. Adams spent several decades in the environmental consulting world. She lives in North Carolina,
where the many effects of climate change are a constant presence. When not writing she stares at trees, and her work has been published in Neither Fish Nor Foul.

Shaun Cammack is a writer from Western North Carolina.

Neile Graham stepped down from writer wrangling for Clarion West Writers Workshop a few years back and is soon to retire from her university day job. She plans to spend her time taking forest and beach walks, writing more poems, and finally completing revisions of the four novels languishing on her computer. See neilegraham.com for more poems and too much info.

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

Marge Piercy has published 20 poetry collections, most recently, On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light, and seventeen novels including Sex Wars. PM Press reissued Vida, Dance the Eagle to Sleep; and collections The Cost of Lunch, Etc. and My Body, My Life. She has read at over 500 venues here and abroad.

Jessy Randall’s poems and stories have appeared in Asimov’s, LCRW, Nature, and Scientific American. In 2025, MIT will publish her new book, The Path of Most Resistance: Poems on Women in Science. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is bit.ly/JessyRandall.

Guan Un is an Australian-Chinese writer of speculative fiction based in Sydney. His work has been featured in LeVar Burton Reads, Year’s Best Fantasy Vol 2, Strange Horizons, and more. A former theology student and luggage salesman, he lives with his family, a dog named after a tiger, and a non-sentient sourdough starter, and is not currently betrothed to any celestial objects. You can find him at @thisisguan.bsky.social or guanun.com.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author Marie Vibbert’s short fiction has appeared over 90 times in top magazines such as Nature, Analog, and Clarkesworld, and been translated into Czech, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long listed by the British Science Fiction Award and her work has been called “everything science fiction should be” by the Oxford Culture Review. She also writes poetry, comics, and computer games. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio.

S. Woodson lives in Virginia and was previously published in LCRW 38. You can find her older Twine games and other work at citrushistrix.itch.io.


Tell Me Something Good You Have Done

Wed 23 Apr 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I am talking to the President, to the (nominal) political party he belongs to, as well as his cabinet.

Tell me one good thing. Not taking vaccines away, or making food and air and water and work more dangerous; not destroying a legacy of international relations (bloody as they have been); not attempting to destroy one of the world’s largest economy; not taking the rights of those most needing them; not bringing back child labor; not pardoning rapists and those who invaded the US Capitol; not firing thousands of people; not scaring the hell out of everyone on social security, medicare, and medicaid; not abducting, kidnapping, and imprisoning or renditioning immigrants; not refusing due process; not firing immigration judges; not undermining the separation of church and state; not ignoring the parts of the constitution you don’t like; not trying to cut solar and bring back fossil fuels; not put cronyism before the common weal; not hurt public schools by siphoning money to charter schools which do not provide a free appropriate public education; &c., &c. This is only what I came up with here on my couch without research.

Go on: tell me something — anything — good you’ve done for anyone but yourself.


Elwin Cotman Wins a Whiting Award

Thu 17 Apr 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Excellent news: Elwin Cotman is one of ten 2025 Whiting Award Winners. There’s a good story on it in Elwin’s hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Elwin has a novel coming from Scribner, The Age of Ignorance, as well as four collections of stories, including Dance on Saturday.


Kathleen Jennings and Kij Johnson Redux

Wed 16 Apr 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings’s Kindling: Stories has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Award — “Australia’s premier speculative fiction award” — for Best Collection.

The cover for Kathleen’s next novel, Honeyeater, dropped and it is worth clicking on the link.

Also of note, Kathleen did the cover art and half-page pen-and-ink illustrations for Kij Johnson’s forthcoming RiverBank roleplaying game which is being crowdfunded right now on Backerkit and has more than doubled the original goal.


LCRW Costs, They Go Up

Sun 30 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Damn my eyes. I have seen — and ignored for a year or two too many — spreadsheets such as no zinemaker should see. I have calculated numbers no right-thinking person should know. I have stared at the Sum of all Costs and my very soul trembles before them. In the long dark tea time of the zining afternoon when considering the Fiscal Cliff I run out of Excuses and Pure and Simple Reasons and decide This Must Not Go On. The zine? Yes. Shall I go hiking? No. Shall I hike the zine price? Frustratingly enough, yes.

The USPS costs have Increas’d ($2.31 to mail just 1 zine) and even the Very Paper the zine is printed upon is More Costly in 2025 than in 2024. Or 2023. Or in 2022. Or in 2022. Wait, I am stuck. Please imagine I typed “Or in Year-1” until I hit 1996 when paper was free due to the availability of the photocopier at my temp job. We pay writers but thruppence a word, unincreas’d for Some Years. If that is to increase, and if we are to continue to send out a zine once, maybe even twice in a year, then the Price must rise.

Before The Increase, here are links for those who have the energy to order or — for those with faith the USPS will still be here in a couple of years — subscribe.

 

Chocolate $400
Writers $1,200
Printing $950
Candles $3600
Cover art $100
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my zine is dying


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