Read Liyana on Lithub

Mon 16 Aug 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Spirits Abroad cover - click to view full sizeLithub just dropped an excerpt from Zen Cho’s story “Liyana” — read it in the book or check it out here.

Recent notes about the book can be found in the infinite pages of Bustle

“A must-read book for any sci-fi or fantasy fan.”

and Buzzfeed:

“These 19 science fiction and fantasy short stories infused with Malaysian folklore are absolutely gorgeous. Originally published in 2014, before Zen Cho’s debut fantasy, Sorcerer to the Crown, it is now being published by Small Beer Press with nine additional stories. In her Hugo Award–winning novelette ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,’ an imugi who wishes to ascend to full dragonhood has its plan thwarted by a human girl taking a selfie. In ‘The House of Aunts,’ a teenage pontianak (sorta like a vampire) lives with her overbearing female relatives and attends school, where she tries to hide her food choices from her crush. Just as with her novels, Cho merges humor and relatable characters with delightful prose and engaging storylines.”


Here, There, and Everywhere

Tue 10 Aug 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Spirits Abroad cover - click to view full sizeI’ve been looking forward to this day for a while as it’s the publication day for our expanded edition of Zen Cho’s collection Spirits Abroad. The book was originally published a few years ago and was a co-winner of the Crawford Award. I hadn’t read it until more recently when it came across my desk with nine additional stories including the Hugo Award winner — and such a good story! — “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again.”

We were a bit late with getting the cover finalized but when it came in from Wesley Allsbrook we were over the moon, what a cracker! The book is about as much fun as can be with the whole gamut of stories, running from here, there, to everywhere.

The book is available everywhere in print, audio, and ebook. Dive in!


Spirits Abroad

Tue 10 Aug 2021 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 352 pages · $17 · 9781618731869 | ebook · 9781618731876
2nd printing: December 2022

LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize winner
Locus Award finalist

A new expanded edition of Zen Cho’s award-winning debut collection.

Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with twelve added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again.” A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Read an interview on Electric Lit: On Writing Fantasy Inspired by Malaysian Chinese Folklore

Read a story: 七星鼓 (Seven Star Drum)

Reviews & Praise

“A must-read book for any sci-fi or fantasy fan.”
— Bustle

“These 19 science fiction and fantasy short stories infused with Malaysian folklore are absolutely gorgeous. Originally published in 2014, before Zen Cho’s debut fantasy, Sorcerer to the Crown, it is now being published by Small Beer Press with nine additional stories. In her Hugo Award–winning novelette ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,’ an imugi who wishes to ascend to full dragonhood has its plan thwarted by a human girl taking a selfie. In ‘The House of Aunts,’ a teenage pontianak (sorta like a vampire) lives with her overbearing female relatives and attends school, where she tries to hide her food choices from her crush. Just as with her novels, Cho merges humor and relatable characters with delightful prose and engaging storylines.”
—Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed

“The first iteration of Zen Cho’s Spirits Abroad came out a few years ago, but this new collection is bigger and bolder, including the delightful ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,’ which won a Hugo Award.”
— Washington Post

“The most stylistically adventurous, even ex­perimental stories are included in the final sec­tion, ‘Elsewhere’, in which supernatural figures may be the main characters – a minor earth spirit narrates ‘The Earth Spirit’s Favorite Anecdote’, while a tricksterish Monkey King confronts a quite traditional Faerie Queen in ‘Monkey King, Faerie Queen’. My favorite story here is also the only one in the book which hints at science fiction. In ‘The Four Generations of Chang E’, the title character escapes a nightmarish, dying Earth by winning a lottery to migrate to a moon colony, where she learns to live with moon rabbits and eventually has herself surgically altered into a Moonite with ‘long, ovoid eyes.’ She never escapes family responsibilities, though, and, after her mother dies, returns to Earth with the ashes. There she gains an insight that seems to haunt several of Cho’s stories, including perhaps Black Water Sister: ‘Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were from, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew.’ The tension on that thread of narrative, which adds subtle meaning to the title Spirits Abroad, is what gives Cho’s short fiction, even at its wittiest, a kind of haunting – and haunted – sensibility.”
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

“Highly recommended for those interested in well-written fantasy fiction outside of the post-Tolkien mold.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“Powerful but subtle magic woven into the fabric of intricate worlds make Cho a sure favorite for readers of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado.”
— Publishers Weekly

“A collection of speculative stories that play on Malaysian folklore and fantasy tropes with humor and compassion. . . . The stories are told with the precise and almost sparse voice of fairy tales. . . . the collection’s most moving stories harness seamless worldbuilding, intriguing character development, and thematic complexity. A swath of delightful and intricate stories from a wildly inventive storyteller.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Sorcerer to the Crown author Zen Cho writes stories that slide easily between genres, and characters who hop nimbly between our world of banal bustle and a supernatural world that often seems just as annoying. This collection of ten stories, originally published in 2014 by Buku Fixi and the joint winner of 2015’s IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, is now being re-issued by Small Beer Press, and gives us new takes on ancient lore—especially the tales of Malaysia.
“A vampiric teen pontianak finds it hard to keep up with her schoolwork and her constant need to feed upon people. The moon goddess Chang E heads further into outer space—but is it in a spirit of adventure or to get away from Earth? An elderly Datin looks back at her failed love affair with an orang bunian, a type of spirit who would normally favor a deep forest or mountain home to avoid humans. Cho’s stories look at the intersection of those mundane and uncanny worlds—and the ways life among the humans can drive the spirit to distraction.”
— Leah Schnelbach, BookMarks, The Most Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of 2021

“Zen Cho’s stories manage the rare and precious feat of being smart, witty, wise, horrific, and comforting all at once.” — Kate Elliott author of Unconquerable Sun

“An excellent collection.” — Abigail Nussbaum, Strange Horizons

Table of Contents

Here

The First Witch of Damansara
The Guest
The Fish Bowl
First National Forum on the Position of Minorities in Malaysia
Odette
The House of Aunts
Balik Kampung

There

One-Day Travelcard for Fairyland
起狮, 行礼 (Rising Lion—The Lion Bows)
七星鼓 (Seven Star Drum)
The Mystery of the Suet Swain
Prudence and the Dragon
The Perseverance of Angela’s Past Life
If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again

Elsewhere

The Earth Spirit’s Favorite Anecdote
Monkey King, Faerie Queen
Liyana
The Terra-cotta Bride
The Four Generations of Chang E

Praise for Zen Cho’s Books:

“An enchanting cross between Georgette Heyer and Susannah Clarke, full of delights and surprises. Zen Cho unpins the edges of the canvas and throws them wide.” — Naomi Novik, New York Times bestselling author of A Deadly Education

“A warm, funny debut novel by a brilliant new talent.” — Charles Stross, award-winning author of the Laundry Files and Merchant Princes series

“Fabulous! If you like Austen or Patrick O’Brian, or magic and humor like Susanna Clarke, or simply a very fun read, you will really, really, enjoy this!” — Ann Leckie, Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award winning author of Ancillary Justice

“Zen Cho’s SORCERER TO THE CROWN is inventive, dangerous, brilliant, unsettling, and adorable, all at the same time. It shatters as many rules as its characters do. Historical Britain will never be the same again, and I can’t wait for the next book.” — Courtney Milan, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author

“A deliciously true tale of politics and power in a charming, cruel world — it demands and deserves to be read again and again. Cho has humor and flair to match Pratchett and Heyer plus her own marvelous style.” — Karen Lord, award-winning author of The Best of All Possible Worlds

“A delightful and enchanting novel that uses sly wit and assured style to subvert expectations while it always, unfailingly, entertains. I loved it!” — Kate Elliott, author of the Spiritwalker series

“Magic, manners and dragons in Regency England — this alone would be awesome, but Zen Cho adds a veneer of comment on English colonial politics …. Like a mix of Jane Austen, PG Wodehouse, and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and all its own thing. Glorious.” — Aliette de Bodard, award-winning author of Obsidian and Blood and The House of Shattered Wings

“A sheer delight from beginning to end. Cho perfectly conjures the opulence, absurdity and conflict of the period.” — Samantha Shannon, author of The Bone Season

“A delightful follow-up to Sorcerer to the Crown! Cho applies her characteristic wit and charm to a tale of cursed sisters — a story I found as enchanting as her Faerie Court.” — S.A. Chakraborty, author of City of Brass

“Cho continues to confront class and gender roles in an alternate Regency England while showcasing entertaining prose and characters. A delightful historical-fantasy novel that will capture readers in its layered story line.”—Booklist

“Reading the clever deployment of weaponized manners never gets old; in Cho’s charming prose, The True Queen weaves a very pleasant spell indeed.” — NPR

“A winning combination of magic and thrill set in an alternative version of Regency England.” — Washington Post

“A captivating debut that, aside from examining both gender and racial prejudice, tells an entertaining story with wit and consummate skill.” — The Guardian (UK)

“Fans of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell will flock to this historical fantasy debut for its shared setting and be rewarded with an exciting story and nuanced, diverse characters who make this novel soar on its own merits.” — Library Journal (starred review; debut of the month)

“Combines magic and the Regency period in the manner of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but adds an Austenian piquancy . . . Cho’s debut has much to recommend it, particularly its implicit critique of colonialism and its frothy good humour.”— Financial Times

“A classic, gently barbed upper-crust comedy mixed with magical thrills, modern social consciousness, and a hint of political intrigue. A decidedly promising start.”— Kirkus Reviews

“Zacharias brings to mind another orphaned young wizard whose combination of grit and melancholy captured readers’ hearts, and ingenious, gutsy Prunella simply shines.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Sorcerer to the Crown exceeds expectations. It’s a very entertaining and deeply enjoyable novel—and if this is what Cho gives us for her debut, I’m really looking forward to seeing what she does next.” — Locus

About the book

“The original print edition of Spirits Abroad was published by Fixi Novo in 2014. It was also released as an ebook containing extra stories and author’s notes. The Small Beer Press edition is an expanded edition published in August 2021, containing nine added stories including Hugo Award winner ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again’.”

Zen Cho is the author of Black Water Sister, the Sorcerer to the Crown novels and a novella, The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, as well as the short story collection Spirits Abroad. She is a Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Award winner, and a finalist for the Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.

Cover by Wesley Allsbrook.


And now we ship

Tue 13 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Don’t expect to hear too much from us as we try and organize hundreds of orders from that sale. Phew. Thank you! With luck the monthly warehouse charges will have been significantly reduced. If not, check back here.


Warehouse Clearance Sale — last day

Mon 12 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

It has been — it is — nuts, so: thank you! Today, July 12th, is the last day of our Warehouse Clearance Sale — maybe we’ll do another next year and I’ll be better prepared for the madnesses. We’ve processed on third or so of the orders and some are shipping out. Many are being assembled. Books are moving from one warehouse to the other, being shipped from our office to the warehouse, adding a T-shirt, or another Angélica Gorodischer title.

Anyway, last day of the sale is here.


Celebrating Jeffrey Ford’s new book Big Dark Hole with a Warehouse Clearance Sale!

Tue 6 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

July 6th, 2021: We are celebrating a new book, Jeffrey Ford’s Big Dark Hole, and 20 years (. . .) of Small Beer Press books with a Warehouse Clearance Sale!

It’s been 20 years since we started publishing books as Small Beer Press and we are going to celebrate in a couple of different ways beginning now and continuing later this summer — mostly by making books or sending even more books out into the world, ha!

First Thing

We are delighted to celebrate 20 years of really rather good books by publishing Jeffrey Ford’s new collection Big Dark Hole. It’s a stoater!

This is Jeff’s sixth collection — seventh, really, as there was a Best of from PS last year — and every one of them is a cracker. We’re already planning our next collection with him — who wouldn’t when you look at this list I grabbed from his site:

The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, 2002, Golden Gryphon Press

The Empire of Ice Cream, 2005, Golden Gryphon Press

The Drowned Life, 2008, Harper Collins

Crackpot Palace, 2012, Harper Collins

A Natural History of Hell, 2016, Small Beer Press

Big Dark Hole, 2021, Small Beer Press, natch, comes out today, July the 6th, 2021, and it is a short, sharp shock of fantastic fiction.

There are a three new stories first published here in this book, “Monkey In the Woods,” “Inn of the Dreaming Dog,” and “The Match.” That third one there will have you stopping what you’re doing and making sure you read the rest of the story before someone interrupts.

You can read one of the stories, “Not Without Mercy,” online, but, really the book is shiny in surprising places and feels good in the hand. Sign up now for Readercon — online in August — where Jeffrey Ford and Ursula Vernon will be the guests of honor.

Second Thing

We’re putting on our first warehouse sale in many years. Long time readers will recognize the screenshot below from our pre-WordPress website — and now 10+ years later we’re basically doing the same thing.

The sale is going to run on the Book Moon website and will have a few rules and limitations:

  • alphabetical buying encouraged but quite difficult given the price-ordered list, but it’ll be fun, honest.
  • no buying over 5,000 books unless you really want to build something interesting out of them.
  • On second thoughts if you want to buy over 5,000 copies, you do you.
  • Discounts range from 0-94% off retail prices.
  • Order some full-price titles (such as the first one on this page,Travel Light, or Big Dark Hole) and we’ll throw free titles from the sale list.
  • Orders on this Easthampton, Massachusetts-based bookshop website will be shipped as fast as we can put them through from the Tennessee warehouse of our fabulous Minneapolis-based distributor, Consortium.
  • Gosh we love these books. We loved publishing every single one of them and right now we’re lining up some surprises and new books for the couple of years. It is true that I am an enthusiast, still, about all this and our warehouse people will tell you that, yes, I am very enthusiastic when I put the print orders in. More joy all round, says I.
  • There are a few books in the sale that are rarer and we will ship them from Book Moon.
  • This Decennial Warehouse Clearance Sale will run for one (1) week, July 6th-12th with the possibility of being extended for one (1) more week.
  • We only ship within the US & Canada.

I imagine if we keep publishing for another 10 or 20 years, we’ll have more clearance sales. Imagine that: 2030. 2040. What funny looking numbers. 2030 looks more like a time than a year. 8:30 already?

Who knows. Maybe by 2040 we’ll all be ordering small pills from Bookland that download the latest story virus into our chips. If you trust Bookland and your shipper, of course.

Anyway, please pass the word around and stock up: it’ll be Jolabokaflod before you know it.

Right, here’s that all important Warehouse Clearance Event link.

Thanks for reading, spreading the word, buying books, and keeping this Small Beer contraption on the road!


Big Dark Hole

Tue 6 Jul 2021 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 320 pages · $17 · 9781618731845 | ebook · 9781618731852

A new collection from the award winning author of A Natural History of Hell.

World Fantasy Award finalist
Locus Award finalist

A Jeffrey Ford story may start out in the innocuous and routine world of college teaching or evenings on a porch with your wife. But inevitably the weird comes crashing in. Maybe it’s an unexpected light in a dark and uninhabited house, maybe it’s a drainage tunnel that some poor kid is suddenly compelled to explore. Maybe there’s a monkey in the woods or an angel that you’ll need to fight if you want to gain tenure. Big Dark Hole is about those big, dark holes that we find ourselves once in a while and maybe, too, the big dark holes that exist inside of us.

“Nobody else can quite make the short story form frolic the way Ford can. Equally at home exploring a slightly eerie Midwest or the out-and-out odd, his writing is often deeply weird, never arbitrary, and always profoundly satisfying. Whether he’s writing about a hive mind of fleas, the local monster, bookshelf fairies, an odd mountain hotel, or a professor named Jeff who has to wrestle an angel if he’s to keep his job, Big Dark Hole offers Ford at his outlandish best.”
— Brian Evenson, Song for the Unraveling of the World

Read: an excerpt of “Five-Pointed Spell” on Lithub

Reviews

“While it might be gentler and more personal, it’s still weird, beautiful, gothic, and strange, all of it definitively Jeffrey Ford.” — Nightfire, The Best Horror Short Story Collections and Anthologies of 2021

“Each and every story in Big Dark Hole stands distinct in my memory. . . . Ford employs the tools of fantastic fiction to explore the strangeness of twenty-first-century American life.” — Matthew Keeley, Tor.com

“Big Dark Hole is quintessential Jeffrey Ford, everything avid readers love about him in a concentrated burst set to knock them off their seats. It’s grounded and accessible, yet hallucinatory and surreal. It’s heartfelt and melancholy, but also hilarious and terrifying. It’s all these things in one two hundred page package, and contains some of Ford’s best work to date. Those into weirder, more surreal works of horror should find this essential reading, and for those who aren’t, well, maybe a little weirdness might do you some good. Either way, do yourself a favor and seek this one out. ”
— Sam Reader, Nightfire

“One can encounter a myriad of strange and otherworldly things in a big dark hole; sometimes, we discover these holes in the most unexpected places. This new short story collection explores the extraordinary that lurks just behind everyday life. Some of its subjects are truly otherworldly, like tiny fairies who risk their lives in a daring rescue (‘The Bookcase Expedition’), an angel whom one must wrestle to secure a professorship (‘The Match’), or spirits trapped in a never-ending circle of violence who suck others in with them (‘The Jeweled Wren’). Others are about weird events or beings that mark our lives, like a monkey in the woods (‘Monkey in the Woods’), or a drainage system that a young boy is compelled to explore (‘Big Dark Hole’).
VERDICT In this collection, Ford (‘The Well-Built City’ trilogy) serves up a variety of staples from the sci-fi/horror buffet: monsters, ghosts, fairies, and even a creepy carnival. Exacting language and well-drawn characters give these stories enough depth to satisfy both sci-fi/fantasy fans and literary fiction readers. Seamlessly blending the surreal with the mundane, Ford gives readers an innocuous ride to places they never knew they wanted to go. Recommended for fans of Neil Gaiman and Ursula Le Guin.”—Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola
— Library Journal

“‘Fifteen tales of horror, suspense, and macabre encounters that recount moments when the fantastic finds a crack in our everyday world.
Ford is a prolific writer with a shelf of well-deserved rewards for his novels, but short stories are his sweet spot. Armed with the paranoia of Poe, the psychological terror of Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King’s empathy for everyday people, this latest collection is both subtle and nightmare-inducing, depending on the story. The opener, “The Thousand Eyes,” is a noir-tinged period piece about a mysterious bar, an obsessed painter, and a frightening singer with a “voice of death.” Many of the stories are subdued creature features: “Hibbler’s Minions” is about a flea circus gone awry while “From the Balcony of the Idawolf Arms” features a werewolflike shape-shifter. Finding the minor magic in the everyday world is another thread, but the shifts in style between stories are impressive, from gothic horror in “Inn of the Dreaming Dog” to mythology in “Sisyphus in Elysium” to the long-suppressed grief in the title story. Several of the stories—some of the most experimental and intriguing—find the author narrating his own experiences through fantastical events. In “The Match,” sporadic writing teacher Ford is informed that in order to keep his job, he must fight an angel, as one typically does in academia. Elsewhere, in ‘Monster Eight,’ the author’s fictional counterpart has a run-in with the local monster just doing his “monster thing,” and in ‘The Bookcase Expedition,’ he witnesses a minor war between fairies and spiders. In ‘Five-Pointed Spell,’ the final story and one of the longest, Ford deftly spins a tale that starts with shades of Duel or Mad Max and turns into something that more closely resembles The Blair Witch Project.
A collection of wonderfully creepy gems in which each story goes its own way, to frightening effect.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“Employing wide-ranging supernatural conceits—Dust Bowl demons, Amish hexes, figures from Greek legend—these 15 dark tales of evil, loss, and greed from Ford (Out of Body) are sure to send shivers up readers’ spines. Ford’s subtle stories peel away suburbia’s mask of mundanity to reveal sinister undertones—and most of his hapless characters are oblivious to the darkness around them until it’s too late. The title story sees inept cops and apathetic townsfolk abandon their search for an abused boy who crawled into a sewer pipe. In ‘The Thousand Eyes,’ an artist works to capture the grotesque lounge singer he saw perform at a bar, but comes to believe that when he finishes the painting, he will disappear. A bored writer witnesses a tribe of tiny fairies scaling his bookshelves in ‘The Bookcase Expedition.’ In 1933, the manager of a rundown carnival accepts a demon’s help in ‘Hibbler’s Minions.’ And after Sisyphus’s boulder is destroyed in the melancholy yet redemptive ‘Sisyphus in Elysium,’ the tormented and regretful Greek king searches the afterlife for the spirit of his wife. Readers will enjoy these creepy, thoughtful stories—but should be warned not to read them in the dark.“ — Publishers Weekly

“The disquieting title story ‘Big Dark Hole’ describes the (voluntary) disappearance of a young man inside the complex sewer system of a small town, from which he will never resurface. . . . In short, an interesting, entertaining collection apt to satisfy any speculative fiction lover.” — SF Revu

“Ford’s story ‘Word Doll’ from his collection A Brief History of Hell is one of my favorite stories of all time. Ford specializes in having the mundane meet the creepy and inevitably weird, leaving the reader often unsettled and in awe. Having heard Ford read one of the stories included in this collection at a public reading pre-pandemic, I can’t wait to gobble up the rest.”
— Lyndsie Manusos, Book Riot, 10 Speculative Short Story Collections to Enjoy in 2021

Table of Contents

The Thousand Eyes
Hibbler’s Minions
Monster Eight
Inn of the Dreaming Dog
Monkey in the Woods
The Match
From the Balcony of the Idawolf Arms
Sisyphus in Elysium
The Jeweled Wren
Not Without Mercy [Conjunctions]
The Bookcase Expedition
The Winter Wraith
Big Dark Hole
Thanksgiving
Five-Pointed Spell

Cover illustration: “Vanitas Still Life” by Herman Henstenburgh, Creative Commons Universal, CC0 1.0, the Met Museum.

Praise for A Natural History of Hell:

“Ford specializes in employing vivid and precise language to portray the inexplicable, often with great intensity or deadpan humor. In his odd but compelling stories, strange things happen for reasons that are never made completely clear but that demand attention even as they grow ever more disturbing. A Natural History of Hell is an excellent sampler of Ford’s singular brand of storytelling, a baker’s dozen of diverse and diverting literary treats.”
— Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle

“Formally Ford’s stories are object lessons in how to stage a narrative.”
— James Sallis, F&SF

“In this collection of 13 stories, Ford showcases his award-winning talent for crafting creepy tales that bend the world as we know it in unexpected ways. Although the stories are not linked, they do share a common theme: wickedness lurking just beneath the surface of everyday life. And while each uses different degrees of the supernatural to get there, all employ a dark and uneasy atmosphere, quirky characters, and thought-provoking endings, with delightfully unsettling results. . . . This collection is a good choice for fans of short stories by Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, or Kevin Brockmeier.”
— Booklist Online (starred review)

Publishers Weekly Best Books of Summer:
“Celebrated short-form fantasist Ford blends subtle psychological horror with a mix of literary history, folklore, and SF in this collection of 13 short stories, all focused on the struggles, sorrows, and terrors of daily life. Each tale gently twists perceptions, diving down into the ordinary and coming back out with a thoughtful nugget of the extraordinary. Readers will be alarmed by how easily they relate to the well-meaning but inevitably destructive characters.”

“Seamlessly blends subtle psychological horror with a mix of literary history, folklore, and SF in this collection of 13 short stories, all focused on the struggles, sorrows, and terrors of daily life.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“13 tales that revel in the dark and strange, exhibiting ardent and pliable storytelling that ranges from suburban exorcisms to ghosts in bucolic 1915 Ohio. Each story in this collection displays Ford’s vigorous invention and witty idiosyncrasy in explorations of the wicked and violent corners of the imagination, but the variety of subject, setting, and tone ensures that the book never slips into an authorial haze. . . . The entire collection has a zeal for imagination and an unabashed pleasure in both entertainment and graceful writing that is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s short fiction. Ford has a knack for choosing the precise words that evoke an image and leave enough room for it to bloom. “Later, the rain started in again. The sound and smell of spring came through the screen of their bedroom window while he dreamt in the language the angels dream in, and she, of the land without worry.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“What distinguishes this collection of tales by New York fantasy writer Jeffrey Ford is its mix of eerie, sometimes violent subject matter and droll narrative voice; the juxtaposition of modern, ordinary settings and dialogue with the strange and the supernatural makes for memorable reading.”
— Daily Hampshire Gazette

“‘The Blameless’ is . . . a perfect example of Ford’s eerie subversion of mundane life. In it, suburban parents have begun throwing their children exorcisms as rites of passage, and the premise delivers plenty of black humor and bone-dry social satire.”
— Jason Heller, NPR

“A series of hits that linger long after you’ve finished reading. The mundane seems fantastical when penned by Ford, and the fantastical dreadfully human. Stories range from surreal daily life, to epic fantasy, to Gothic Americana and far, far beyond. It’s hard to pick a favorite, so I recommend you read them all.”
— RT Book Reviews ****

“An excellent collection of stories.”
— Weird Fiction Review

“A truly outstanding writer.”
— Locus

“Throughout his bounteous career, Jeffrey Ford has fully figured out which experiments work, and in what direction; the miracle is that he has also figured out how to rewrite the rulebook with his own brand of magic.”
— Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, IGMS

“Delightful, terrifying, thoughtful and incredibly well written. Jeffrey Ford’s style is eloquent and accessible, literary and engaging. His stories have an engrossing, almost mythological feel to them, strengthened by well-placed descriptions, impeccable pacing and Ford’s rare talent for delivering a satisfying ending.” — Catherine Grant, Huffington Post

“No one writes more beautifully about American nightmares and dreams. Every story is great but my favorites are ‘Word Doll,’ ‘Rocket Ship to Hell,’ ‘The Last Triangle,’ and — especially — ‘The Prelate’s Commission.’ Ford takes ideas that most writers would cling to and milk for three or four or five hundred pages and tosses them off left and right like they were nothing on his way to new worlds he seems to create out of thin air. If these stories weren’t so god damn enjoyable they’d make me jealous as hell.” — Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

“Jeffrey Ford is a beautifully disorienting writer, a poet in an unclassifiable genre—his own.”—Joyce Carol Oates

“Jeffrey Ford is a true heir to his teacher, John Gardner—not only in his ability to inhabit an astonishing range of styles and different worlds with jaw-dropping verisimilitude, but also in the great-hearted compassion and depth that he brings to his characters. I have long admired and learned from his work, and I’m grateful to have these beautiful stories to contemplate.”—Dan Chaon

“Combining legend and suspense, terror and darkly comic social commentary, Jeffrey Ford brings our greatest fears to life in this terrific collection. A Natural History of Hell is jammed with stories I wish I had written.”—Kit Reed

Praise for Jeffrey Ford’s award-winning books:

“Outstanding. . . . Ford uses . . . incongruously lyrical phrases to infuse the everyday with a nebulous magic.”—Publishers Weekly, Best Books of the Year (Starred Review)

“For lovers of the weird and fantastic and lovers of great writing, this is a treasure trove of disturbing visions, new worlds and fully realized craft.”—Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

“Properly creepy, but from time to time deliciously funny and heart-breakingly poignant, too.”—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“Surreal, unsettling, and more than a little weird. Ford has a rare gift for evoking mood with just a few well-chosen words and for creating living, breathing characters with only a few lines of dialogue.” —Booklist

“Children are the original magic realists. The effects that novelists of a postmodern bent must strive for come naturally to the young, a truth given inventive realization in this wonderful quasi-mystery tale by Jeffrey Ford.” — Boston Globe on The Shadow Year

“Jeffrey Ford s latest triumph, The Shadow Year, is as haunting as it is humorous readers will recognize real talent in Ford s vivid, unerring voice.” —Louisville Courier Journal on The Shadow Year

“Spooky and hypnotic…Recommended for all public libraries.” — Library Journal

“[Ford’s] writing is both powerful and disturbing in the best possible way.” — io9.com

“The 16 stories in this collection are a perfect introduction to Ford’s work and illustrate the vast range of his imagination . . . If you haven’t discovered Ford, it’s time you did. His carefully crafted novels and short stories are all top-notch. Grade: A.” — Rocky Mountain News

Jeffrey Ford was born on Long Island in New York State in 1955 and grew up in the town of West Islip. He studied fiction writing with John Gardner at S.U.N.Y Binghamton. He’s been a college English teacher of writing and literature for thirty years. He is the author of nine novels including The Girl in the Glass and five short story collections, including A Natural History of Hell. He has received multiple World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards as well as the Nebula and Edgar awards among others. He lives with his wife Lynn in a century old farm house in a land of slow clouds and endless fields.

 


Ben Rosenbaum event Wednesday night!

Mon 28 Jun 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Join us Wednesday night for the last Book Moon zoom of the month with 2 fabulous authors. We published Ben Rosenbaum’s absolutely fabulous collection The Ant King and Other Stories a few years ago and this novel is a leap from there. I used to read Annalee Newitz on io9.com and now I enjoy her monthly column in New Scientist. Her latest book is Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age which I’ve started and recommend. They are both lovely, smart people and I’m looking forward to listening to them (and seeing them!) build the future we want to see in conversation:

Wednesday, June 30th @ 7:00 pm ET

Join authors Benjamin Rosenbaum (The Ant King and Other Stories) and Annalee Newitz (Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, The Future of Another Timeline) at Book Moon for a reading and discussion of Rosenbaum’s amazing first novel, The Unraveling, published this month by Erewhon.

**Register here**

Hope to see you there!


Sneaky

Tue 22 Jun 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Out goes a new zine into the world. 43rd of its line.

Most are mailed out, at least. What’s it got? A Night Farmers’ Museum, Half a Papatya, Shiny Green Floors, Mysteries, Wires, Gutter-Princes, Acting Tips, Three Favours, Poems, King Moon’s Tithe to Hell, and a Time Travel Self-Care System.

All of which can be yourn.


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 43

Tue 22 Jun 2021 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

June 22, 2021. Phew. 64 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731968

Four score and three issues ago this zine did not exist. Two score and three issues ago LCRW popped into being just like the big bang — but with less burning hot plasma and fewer planets forming.

The Table of Contents in the print edition lists Ayşe Papatya Bucak’s “Half-Papatya” on page 9 instead of page 14. Our apologies.

Reviews

“Imagine walking through an exhibit in a museum, pausing to read each plaque at every stop along the way. That’s how Alisa Alering structured her fantasy story about a place where night grows from seeds and powers the world. We move from panels on the ‘Evolution of Cultivation Practices’ to ‘Urban Growth & The Thousand Furnaces Era,’ from stories about the town that nearly collapsed in a fit of anti-night hysteria to the Indigenous Lok-Myo people’s multi-generational struggle to remain on and later return to their ancestral caves. I always get a kick out of unconventional narrative structures, and this one hit the spot.”
— Alex Brown, Tor.com

“My favorites were three very different fantasies. Quinn Ramsay’s ‘The House of the Gutter-Prince’…. Colorful and fun. A story could hardly be as different, then, as ‘Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown’ by Jim Marino … makes a familiar trope new again. Finally, Kathleen Jennings’ ‘Gisla and the Three Favors’ is in the traditional form of a fairy tale…. This is at once a wholly traditional fairy tale in its shape, told beautifully and resolved matter of factly and honestly. Lovely.”
Recommended Reading:
‘‘Gisla and the Three Favors’’, Kathleen Jennings
‘‘Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown’’,  Jim Marino
— Rich Horton, Locus

fiction

Alisa Alering, “The Night Farmers’ Museum”
Erica Clashe, “The Shine of Green Floors”
Leah Bobet, “The Mysteries”
Joanne Rixon, “Wires from the Same Spool”
Quinn Ramsay, “The House of the Gutter-Prince”
Jim Marino, “Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown”
Zack Moss, “If You Had Been Me Then What Would I Have Been?”
Kathleen Jennings, “Gisla and the Three Favours”
Gillian Daniels, “King Moon’s Tithe to Hell”

poetry

Anne Sheldon, “Three Poems”
Jessy Randall, “Four Poems”

nonfiction

Ayşe Papatya Bucak, “Half-Papatya”
Nicole Kimberling, “Time Travel Self-Care System”
About the Authors

cover

Catherine Byun, Cover & Interior Monkeys

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 43, June 2021. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731968. 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 · smallbeerpress@gmail.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $24/4 issues. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2021 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration “Black-and-White Monkey” © 2021 by Catherine Byun (catherinebyun.com). Thank you authors, artists, and readers. In reasons to celebrate Elwin Cotman’s collection Dance on Saturday was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.

About the Authors

Alisa Alering lives in Indiana where she reports on innovations in science and technology. Her rather unscientific fiction has appeared in Podcastle, Clockwork Phoenix IV, and Flash Fiction Online, among others and has been recognized by the Italo Calvino Prize. She is currently at work on a novel about two sisters prepping for the apocalypse in 1980s Appalachia.

Leah Bobet is a novelist, editor, and critic whose novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder, and Aurora Awards, been selected for the Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets program, and shortlisted for the Cybils and the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and been transformed into choral work, and is taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia, and the US. She is guest poetry editor for Reckoning: creative writing on environmental justice‘s 2021 issue. She lives in Toronto, where she makes jam, builds civic engagement spaces, and plants both tomatoes and trees. Visit her at leahbobet.com.

Ayşe Papatya Bucak is the author of The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories which was awarded the 2019 Spotlight Award by the Story Prize. Her writing has been published in a variety of journals including One Story, Bomb, The Iowa Review, Guernica, and Witness. She is an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University.

Erica Clashe lives in Minneapolis with her cat, Ommie. She’s a professional gay auntie. This is her first published work. Find her at ericaclashe.com.

Gillian Daniels writes, works, and haunts the streets of the Boston area in Massachusetts. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and left shortly after attending the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Since then, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among more than twenty-five other publications. She serves as custodian to one (1) ginger cat who likes to chew the corners of her books when she doesn’t feed him breakfast right away.

Kathleen Jennings is a writer and illustrator based in Brisbane, Australia. Her Australian Gothic debut Flyaway (Tor.com/Picador) and her poetry debut Travelogues: Vignettes from Trains in Motion (Brain Jar Press) were published in 2020. She has won two Ditmars for her short stories and been shortlisted for the Eugie Foster Memorial Awards. As an illustrator (this story began as a series of pictures exhibited at Light Grey Art Lab, Minneapolis), she has been shortlisted four times for the World Fantasy Awards, as well as once for the Hugos and the Locus Awards, and has won several Ditmars.

Jim Marino’s stories are published or forthcoming in Apex Magazine and the Alaska Quarterly Review, and his short humor has appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. He makes his living teaching Shakespeare.

Zack Moss is a writer of weird fiction with an MFA from Western Washington University. His stories have appeared in Alimentum: the Literature of Food, The Crambo, and Zymbol, among a few others.

Quinn Ramsay is a graduate of the University of Glasgow. His prose and poetry have been published in Paragraphiti, From Glasgow to Saturn, Santa Clara Review, The Magnolia Review, and Gemini, among others. He has been a recipient of the Amy M. Young Award in Creative Writing, and a co-editor and designer for Williwaw: an Anthology of the Marvellous.

Jessy Randall’s poems, stories, and other things have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. Her most recent book is How to Tell If You Are Human: Diagram Poems. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.

Joanne Rixon lives in the shadow of an active volcano with a rescue chihuahua named after a dinosaur, and is an organizer with the North Seattle Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup. Her poetry has appeared in GlitterShip, her book reviews in the Seattle Times and the Cascadia Subduction Zone Literary Quarterly, and her short speculative fiction in venues including Terraform, Fireside, and Liminal Stories. You can find her yelling about poetry and politics on twitter @JoanneRixon.

Anne Sheldon is a librarian and storyteller in Silver Spring, MD. Her work has appeared in Cascadia Subduction Zone, The Lyric, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and other magazines. Aqueduct Press has published two books of her verse, The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor and The Bone Spindle.


New Interview Series

Fri 21 May 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Today we’re celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month as well as short story month by kicking off our Small Beer Press Author Interview series with Franchesca Viaud’s interview with Isabel Yap which has just been posted on the Book Moon website.

Isabel’s first collection, Never Have I Ever: Stories, was published in February 2021 — we have a limited number of signed bookplates to go with it. A number of Isabel’s stories can be read online: Milagroso, Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?, & How to Swallow the Moon.

If you missed it, you can also catch up with Isabel’s Strange Light Reading Series event with Rebecca Roanhorse here.

As with all things Small Beer this series is imagined as an occasional event that will meander along in its own sweet time for many years to come. Francesca has been working at Book Moon for a while now splitting her time there between working outside on the fine weather days and working behind the scenes on the not-so-fine weather days. Her interview with Isabel is a conversational delight — as is the Strange Light event above; the common factor being Isabel, so perhaps she is just a conversational star as well as being a great writer! Read the interview here.

Author photo by Meg Whittenberger.


More Hands, More Hands

Mon 17 May 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Being among the more cautious, I have no idea if travel will seem like a good idea or not this summer or autumn. I know millions of people are traveling right now but I’m not there yet so for travel, it’s all just books for me.

Come September, those who are armchair traveling will have 2 dark, propulsive options to carry them to Scandinavia and the south of England and the the darkest secrets at the heart of humanity. In other words, Cass Neary is coming back.

I’ve added 2 new September 2021 books to this site: Elizabeth Hand’s novels Available Dark and Hard Light, the second and third books in her can’t-look-away series of Cass Neary novels that began with Generation Loss. In the coming weeks I’ll post them on Edelweiss for reviewers and booksellers and post excerpts here to give readers a taste — here’s the the first chapter of Generation Loss.


Elle, Zen, Saving Animals on the Moon

Wed 12 May 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Alison Bechdel spotlighted the first line of Susan Stinson’s novel Martha Moody in an interview with Elle:

This “speculative western” first came out in 1995 but was just reissued. The first sentence is magnificent in the way it’s a microcosm of the whole book, as well as a glimpse at the way Stinson writes so beautifully about fat bodies: “I was crouched next to the creek baiting my hook with a hunk of fat when I heard a rustling on the bank upstream.”

This Saturday June 15th Book Moon will be part of a Cottage Street Sidewalk Sale, We’ll have books on the sidewalk. Should be interesting.

And at 3 p.m. ET/8p.m. UK on Sat. the 15th Zen Cho (England) and Kelly Link (Massachusetts) will do an online event celebrating Zen’s new novel Black Water Sister which came out this Tuesday. Register here.

Book Moon has some excellent events coming hitting up a couple of different parts of the old cerebellum:

June 1st,  6 p.m. ET: Strange Light Reading Series features Rivers Solomon (Sorrowland) and Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone). UMass zoom link goes live 2 weeks before the event so will post it again then.

June 2nd , 7 p.m. ET: Join local author Elan Abrell (Saving Animals) and Alex Blanchette (Porkopolis) online for celebration of the publication of Saving Animals and an interesting conversation on same.

June 15th, 7 p.m. ET: Join NYT bestselling authors Gayle Forman (Just One Day, If I stay) and Holly Black (The Cruel Prince, Tithe) at Book Moon for a reading and discussion of Gayle Forman’s new book, We Are Inevitable, which will be published in June by Viking Books for Young Readers. Register here.


Not Without Mercy

Tue 4 May 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Some days are just better if you go read a scary story: here’s Jeffrey Ford’s Not Without Mercy on Conjunctions — soon to be collected in Big Dark Hole.


Craft Capsules

Wed 14 Apr 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

In recent weeks Susan Stinson has been writing short Craft Capsules for Poets & Writers. They’ve inspired conversation, reflection, and — no doubt — writing!

Body in the Mirror

When I was an undergraduate, I saw a call for writing about fatness for the anthology Shadow on a Tightrope: Writing by Women on Fat Oppression (Aunt Lute Books, 1983), which became a feminist classic, still in print decades later. I was a young writer who very much wanted to be published. I had been fat all my life. I knew that the shape of my body had been central in defining the shape of my life, but I had no language for how to write or even think about that. The cultural tropes for fat women were virulently dismissive. I knew that they did not represent who I was. The hate language that was regularly shouted at me on the street didn’t either, but I didn’t know how to start to say anything else.

In Praise of Italics

I love italics. They make me feel as if the author is whispering tremulous secrets to me. The words need to be worth leaning closer to take them in. That’s all I ask.

An idiosyncratic, opinionated, passionate reader who is dear to me skips passages in italics. Reading next to her was the first time I learned that some people don’t read them. It breaks my heart.

Freedom

In 1985 I was part of a fat radio program on an International Women’s Day broadcast in Boston. Cat Pausé, a fat studies scholar who is writing about the history of fat radio and podcasts, recently told me that the show and its predecessor in 1984 were likely the first ever fat-positive radio programs. During the show I read my poem “Lifting Belly Again,” which includes excerpts from Gertrude Stein’s astonishing erotic lesbian poem “Lifting Belly.”

Writing with Limitations

About a year ago I bumped my head on a low ceiling in the dark. There are few certainties in this story, but I likely got a concussion. Ever since I have endured what might be called post-concussion syndrome and/or benign paroxysmal positional vertigo and/or—the diagnosis that has proven most useful to me—vestibular migraines.

On April 20th day, Susan is giving a reading at Dickinson College in conversation with students from Fat Studies; Writing, Identity, and Queer Studies; and LGBTQ+ Literature and History. Here’s a poster. Email us if you’d like to attend.


Join Rebecca Roanhorse & Isabel Yap tonight on le Zoom

Tue 13 Apr 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Join co-hosts Alexandra Manglis, Yvette Ndlovu & Nadia Saleh of the Strange Light Reading Series (originally planned to take place at Book Moon) at tonight’s event featuring Isabel Yap (Never Have I Ever) and Rebecca Roanhorse (Black Sun).

Rebecca Roanhorse is a meteor these days. Her recent novel Black Sun is a Nebula Award finalist. She’s also published a Star Wars novel (Star Wars: Resistance Reborn), a middle-grade novel in the very succesful Rick Riordan imprint (Race to the Sun), two novels in her Sixth Worldseries, and has  found the time to write for Marvel Comics, for TV, and has had projects optioned by Netflix, Paramount TV, among others. Rebecca (@RoanhorseBex) will be coming to us from Northern New Mexico.

This February Isabel Yap (@visyap) published her first short fiction collection, Never Have I Ever.Isabel started publishing short stories in 2009. Since then she has published stories in many magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and the Philippines. She wrote two new stories for the book, “A Canticle for Lost Girls” and “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” while completing her MBA — here’s her essay on her postgrad choices: MFA vs MBA. She works in the tech industry and drinks tea and will be coming to us from California.

Our events are fun. Hope to see you tonight: Tuesday, April 13 @ 8 p.m. EDT.

**Register here**


Some drawings of chickens

Wed 31 Mar 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Since last summer when Kelly got her half-dozen pandemic chickens I’ve been trying to draw them — with the expected level of success. Most of the drawings were recycled but a few (see the middle one below) I liked and kept. This last weekend, after maundering around for months of not doing it I got Ursula (below left) and Kelly (below right) to draw some chickens and at last made a tiny zine which is available here.

Chicken by Ursula Chicken by Gavin Chicken by Kelly


Tonight: Kelly Link & Kevin Brockmeier

Thu 25 Mar 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Well, maybe you know this by now but just in case you don’t why don’t you come join us on le zume tonight:

Join authors Kevin Brockmeier (The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead) and Kelly Link (Get in Trouble, Magic for Beginners) online for a reading and discussion of Kevin Brockmeier’s new book, The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, which will be published in March by Pantheon.

**Register here**


Tonight: Alaya Dawn Johnson & C. L. Polk

Wed 10 Mar 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Join co-hosts Alexandra Manglis, Yvette Ndlovu & Nadia Saleh
of the Strange Light Reading Series
tonight, March 10 at 7:00p EST
featuring

Alaya Dawn Johnson (Reconstruction: Stories, Trouble the Saints)

and

C. L. Polk (Soulstar, The Midnight Bargain).

*Register here*


Catching up

Tue 2 Mar 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We’ve shipped out the boxes and boxes of pre-orders for Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever and now it looks like stock of the book is making its way through the system: you can now get copies on Bookshop.org. If you want to wait and get a signed bookplate with one, Isabel will be doing an online event at Book Moon next month — we have all our titles at Book Moon, no matter what the website says. The inventory on the site is tied to our distributor. I’m working to change that later this spring.

In the meantime, Lit Hub has just posted a new essay by Isabel:

MFA vs. MBA? Finding Unlikely Literary Inspiration at Harvard Business School
Isabel Yap on Learning the Art of Storytelling Where She Least Expected It


Shipping updates

Wed 24 Feb 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeAnd while I’m posting meh news, here’s more: while we’ve been able to ship some books to the lovely readers who pre-ordered Isabel Yap’s sparkling debut collection Never Have I Ever, we’re waiting on a storm-delayed delivery from our printer before we can ship the rest. We’re sending out a free book — mostly returns from our distributor so occasionally they’re shelf worn and sometimes they’re like new — with each pre-order. We expect to complete shipping preorders on Friday or Monday, depending on the delivery. I’m happy to refund any readers who’d prefer that (email me at info at smallbeerpress).

In the meantime, you can read a story here, follow Isabel on twitter, and read this not-t0-be-missed new interview by Megan Kakimoto posted today at Full Stop.


April to August

Wed 24 Feb 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Slipping a note in here that we are moving Zen Cho’s collection Spirits Abroad from April to August to better fit our printer’s schedules. In better news the book received a glowing review from Publishers Weekly:

“Powerful but subtle magic woven into the fabric of intricate worlds make Cho a sure favorite for readers of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado.”

 


Never Have I Ever

Tue 23 Feb 2021 - Filed under: Books| Posted by: Gavin

trade paper · 320 pages · $17 · 9781618731821 | ebook · 9781618731838
Second printing: May 2022

Polish edition: MAG Jacek Rodek.

Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales all gathered together in one fabulous bundle.

British Fantasy Award winner
Ladies of Horror Fiction Award winner
World Fantasy Award finalist
Ignyte Award finalist
NYPL Best Books for Adults
Crawford Award shortlist

“Am I dead?”
Mebuyen sighs. She was hoping the girl would not ask.

Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the friendship and fear building in “A Canticle for Lost Girls” to the joy in “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” to the terrifying tension of the urban legend “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez.”

Read a story: Asphalt, River, Mother, Child

Read an essay: MFA vs MBA

Read an interview by Megan Kakimoto at Full Stop.
An interview at My Life, My Books, My Escape.

Bzzzz

“For those who love urban legends, Yap’s debut collection is one for the top of the TBR pile. From stories about high schoolers to goddesses to androids, Publishers Weekly hails Yap as a powerful new voice in speculative fiction, and Tamsyn Muir (Gideon the Ninth) calls the book a masterclass collection.”
— Lyndsie Manusos, Book Riot, 10 Speculative Short Story Collections to Enjoy in 2021

“Drawing from science fiction, Filipino folklore, fantasy and horror, these thirteen stories are monstrous, scary, joyful, unexpected, inventive, eerie and weird.”
— Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

“A debut collection from Small Beer Press, Never Have I Ever combines fabulism, horror, and science fiction. Charlie Jane Anders says that “these gorgeous stories will help you to glimpse a world that is both stranger and more immense and varied than any you’ve visited before.”
— R. O. Kwon, Electric Lit: 43 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2021

“Yap dances through sci-fi, horror, fabulism, and urban fantasy, and often Filipino folklore.”
— Leah Schnelbach, Bookmarks, 7 SFF Books to Soothe Your February Blues

Reviews

“The horror in these stories isn’t always drawn from a ‘supernatural other.’ Instead, through Philippine folklore, they explore a world where the supernatural is an accepted element of everyday life and the horror is mined from the realities of existing.”
— New York Public Library Best Books of the Year

“Never Have I Ever overflows with life and magic, and if you are not familiar with the vibrant literary scene in the Philippines, let this serve as a worthy introduction.”
— Washington Post

“Absolutely outstanding. . . . Every story is outstanding, and I certainly plan to use this book in future courses. I haven’t read many texts which so deftly explore the murky boundaries between Filipinx folklore and speculative conceits, so it’s a real treat to have this book out in the world. A definite must-read!”
— Asian American Lit Fans

“Yap’s unique voice is oft-praised for a reason — her stories are unique and lyrical. Full of love and pain.”
— Rey Rowlan, Book Riot

“Once they get going, they always peel off a few layers to reveal something incredible—or incredibly dark, mysterious, or strange—that’s living right beneath the surface.”
— Gabino Iglasias, Nightfire

“A wondrous and impressive collection from a gifted writer with a fresh voice.”
— Paula Guran, Locus

“Every one of these stories was a gem. They’re a mix of urban legends and stories inspired by the legends of the Philippines, and many of them also feature queer themes and/or characters. Which is always a plus! It’s such a great, creepy, creative collection that’s also suitably gruesome for folks who want their horror stories to contain a certain amount of viscera and monsters devouring children.”
— Book Riot

“Every story in this book is filled with magic and legend and power. My favorite thing about a short story is when it captivates me so completely I forget that only a fraction of the book is dedicated to this one world, and Never Have I Ever accomplished this again and again. Fans of folklore and myth will be swept up in this wonderful collection.”
— Katherine Nazzaro, Porter Square Books

“Vicious, vindicating, and visceral at once, Never Have I Ever balances compulsively readable humor with the good, transformative sort of devastation. This is a truly powerful, propulsive collection, exploring the makings and reshapings of myth, and the myriad ways we might save each other. Each character is vividly drawn, be it an exhausted magical girl wondering if she and her friends will ever be done slaying monsters, a servant in love with her charge, or the disbelieving new roommate of a vaguely discontented manananggal. Her stories tread somewhere between familiar and uncanny, interrogating human connection and monstrosity, and all unapologetically, beautifully Filipino. Each story with its own specific atmosphere, each its own sort of spirit, each sure to haunt the reader in its own uncanny shape. Here, magic makes mirrors of us, and we won’t always like what we see. Yap writes with an expert hand as she moves the reader through the looming horror and magic of what it is to be alive.”
— Maya Gittelman, Tor.com

“Yap’s characters foster fierce protective love, and her ability to channel those emotions into extraordinary, strange tales is what makes Never Have I Ever such a joy to read.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“I urge you to dig in, to experience the dark wonder of a seriously underrated writer, and to take your time savoring these stories. Yap will surprise you, she will startle you, and she will impress you.”
— Arley Sorg, Lightspeed

“If you love Filipino mythological characters, want to know more about other mythological characters (like the Japanese kappa), or just want to see new perspectives on genre fiction, you can’t go wrong with this book. I guarantee that there’s something in it for everyone who likes stories.”
— Raven Lingat, Rappler Reads

“These 13 captivating short stories entwine fantasy, horror, and science fiction to explore monsters, Filipino folklore, immigration, and queerness. In the dark fairy tale ‘A Cup of Salt Tears,’ Makino’s mother warns her of the dangers of making deals with kappas, even though Makino was saved by kappa as a child. When Makino’s husband falls ill, she seeks out that same kappa. In ‘Hurricane Heels (We Go Down Dancing),’ a group of five girls befriend one another at a summer camp when a goddess charges them with protecting the world from darkness. Ten years later, the the girls are still fighting. These ambiguous, vivid, and dark tales manage deep characterizations despite their short formats.”
— Buzzfeed: 21 Fantasy Books To Get Excited About This Winter

“Yap’s impressive debut collection of 13 fabulist, sci-fi, and horror shorts explores themes ranging from monstrousness, shared trauma, and systemic violence to friendship and the ambiguity of love. Yap is at home with whatever topic she puts her hand to, easily immersing readers in the perspectives of high schoolers, ancient goddesses, androids, and witches. . . . Yap is a powerful new voice in speculative fiction.”
— Publishers Weekly

Advance Praise

“Never have I ever realized how much I’ve been waiting for this book. Full of magic and mystery, monsters, and miracles, everything a reader could need during these troubling times. I just wish I could read it for the first time all over again.” — Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Never Have I Ever proves Yap the master of both the grand and the everyday. In each of these hard-hitting, incredibly assured stories, Yap shows how deft her hand is by sliding effortlessly from marriages and monsters (‘A Cup of Salt Tears’), to future anxiety and food in a near-future Manila (‘Milagroso’) to the uncertain future of grown-up magical girls (‘Hurricane Heels’); her ghost stories terrify as much as they comfort (‘Asphalt, River, Mother, Child’) and are so woven into the fabric of our real and human lives that their power to unsettle is unmatched; imagine if M.R. James had known the precise 1990s desire to own a Baby G . . . But where Yap consistently dazzles is her unsentimental, tender, evocative and brutal examination of the life and interiority of young women and girls: the innate monstrousness of growing up in the shoes marked ‘woman’. A masterclass collection.”
— Tamsyn Muir, author of Gideon the Ninth

“These stories of shy witches, beautiful elementals, bloody and watery monsters, miracles and tender-hearted machines, are written with color and crisp precision, and all their startling invention is firmly grounded in our own familiar and endlessly surprising world.”
— Elizabeth Knox, author of The Absolute Book

“Isabel Yap’s fiction channels the wary energy of meeting places: schools, hospitals, offices, hotels. In her work, the spaces of everyday life brim with weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories.”
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender

“Isabel Yap’s prose is a constant delight and her characters are endlessly rich and fascinating. I’m in awe of her capacity for playful weirdness and mind-expanding terror. These gorgeous stories will help you to glimpse a world that is both stranger and more immense and varied than any you’ve visited before. My head is just full of images and feelings and ideas after reading these wondrous tales. Isabel Yap is a writer to watch out for, and you need to experience her brilliance for yourself.”
— Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night

“Never Have I Ever is a stunning, lyrical debut by one of SFF’s brightest voices. Isabel Yap’s stories are luminous. Intimate and tender, hilarious and cruel, they cut straight to the bone. This collection is full of deft, painful portrayals of Filipino girlhood, queerness, and struggling to find a place in the world. They remind me of being in my lola’s house in Manila, listening to my titas and titos gossip over the breakfast table. Yap’s stories feel like coming home.”
— Alyssa Wong, the award-winning author of Doctor Aphra

“Biting, searing, exquisitely wrought, Never Have I Ever is a tour de force of dark fantasy. The cultural and mythological vectors driving these stories transform the reader as much as the book’s characters. Isabel Yap is a writer to watch.” — Usman T. Malik, author of Midnight Doorways

“I am full of admiration for Isabel Yap. Her dreams are authentic and her nightmares vivid and inventive.”
— Priya Sharma, author of All the Fabulous Beasts

“The first time I read Isabel Yap’s work—she was in college at the time—it made me smile, it was so polished and assured. The next time I read a story of hers, it made me cry; it was so moving, yet nuanced. Over the years since, as this book proves, Yap has only gotten better, showcasing her impeccable yet seemingly effortless command of language, and a deft balance of emotional honesty and expert restraint. As one of her first editors, I’m filled with pride; as a fellow writer, with envy; and, as a reader, once again, with sorrow and delight.”
— Nikki Alfar, Palanca-award winning author of WonderLust

“The delight created by Yap’s stories rests in her deep understanding of what makes us all human, that irrepressible longing to ask, to understand, to explore, to strive, to hold on, and to let go. In her hands, worlds open up and words become transformative.”
— Dean Francis Alfar, author of Salamanca and editor of Philippine Speculative Fiction

“Isabel Yap’s stories are somehow sharp and vivid and gritty at the same time as they’re timeless and mythic; I’ve been a shameless strung-out addict for years now, and I’m so excited to have this splendid overdose in my hands. And to watch as a whole new audience gets hooked on these stories drenched in heartache and salt water, folklore and monsters and gorgeous prose.”
— Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of Blackfish City

“Never Have I Ever is a showcase of Isabel Yap’s many enviable gifts: gorgeous prose, deep characterization, and exquisite ambiguity. Yap moves from humor to despair with easy confidence, plunging you down into the murkiest depths with the gentlest touch. You’ll get lost in these pages and each word will sit heavy in your chest. The best fiction does that.”
— Cadwell Turnbull, author of The Lesson

Table of Contents

Good Girls
A Cup of Salt Tears
Milagroso
A Spell for Foolish Hearts
Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?
Syringe
Asphalt, River, Mother, Child
Hurricane Heels (We Go Down Dancing)
Only Unclench Your Hand
How to Swallow the Moon
All the Best of Dark and Bright
Misty
A Canticle for Lost Girls

Praise for Isabel Yap’s stories:

“An elegiac story of love, grief and sacrifice.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Lovely and very affecting.” —Sabrina Vourvoulias, author of Ink

“Beautifully crafted. . . . Delightful.” —Ada Palmer, author of Too Like the Lightning

“Isabel’s gift for writing friendships is out in force.” —Sara Saab

“Oh, this story… What a gem it is, a sharp and sweet fairytale about friendship and love, fate and duty, and the freedom that might be there for the taking (if you dare to grab hold of it). . . . Gorgeous and mesmerizing prose.”
—Maria Haskins

“‘How to Swallow the Moon’ by Isabel Yap is a love story crossed with a fairy tale. Anyag is a binukot, a girl kept away from the world to enhance her value as a bride. Amira is Anyag’s servant, but also her dearest friend, caregiver, and protector. She’s also in love with Anyag. Male suitors arrive one after another and Amira suffers in silence. It turns out Anyang feels the same way about Amira. Complications arise. Both young women must be heroic. Connec­tions to Philippine mythology freshen this well-told tale.” —Paula Guran, Locus

Cover

Cover illustration “Serpent’s Bride” © 2020 by Alexa Sharpe (alexasharpe.com).

Isabel Yap (@visyap) writes fiction and poetry, works in the tech industry, and drinks tea. Born and raised in Manila, she has also lived in California and London. She is currently completing her MBA at Harvard Business School. She attended the Clarion Writers Workshop and is the secretary for the Clarion Foundation. Her work has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction.


Shipping delays

Fri 19 Feb 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , | Posted by: Gavin

We are hearing from our faithful and hard working distributor, Consortium, that their warehouses have been closed on and off all this week due to the winter weather — never mind the whole pandemic thing and the intentional destruction carried out on the USPS — so please, go ahead, order all our books but please do be patient with all those indie bookstores trying to send you your books. Thank you!

Need a lift? Have you seen this tiny video of Hugh Jackman recommend Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius? Woah!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Claire Coleman (@clairegcoleman)


Susan Stinson & Sally Bellerose in Conversation

Fri 19 Feb 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Next week — Friday Feb. 26 at 5 p.m. EST — from the comfort of your couch, hammock, kitchen table, or rooftop, you can join Susan Stinson and Sally Bellerose in conversation as part of the Gulfport, Florida, ReadOut21 Festival. The event is free and you can register here.

Susan is celebrating the recent reprint of Martha Moody and Sally is celebrating the publication of her new novel Fishwives.

ReadOut21 Festival: A Festival of Lesbian Literature runs from Feb. 26 – 28. Check it out here.


Dance on to the PKD Shortlist

Wed 20 Jan 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Dance on Saturday cover - click to view full sizeWe’re delighted to see that Elwin Cotman’s Dance on Saturday is one of the finalists for the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Here’s the press release:

The judges of the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, are pleased to announce the six nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

FAILED STATE by Christopher Brown (Harper Voyager)
THE BOOK OF KOLI by M. R. Carey (Orbit)
DANCE ON SATURDAY by Elwin Cotman (Small Beer Press)
BONE SILENCE by Alastair Reynolds (Orbit)
ROAD OUT OF WINTER by Alison Stine (Mira)
THE DOORS OF EDEN by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, April 2, 2021 at Norwescon 44 which will be held virtually this year. The link to the ceremony will be posted at https://www.norwescon.org when it is available.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States during the previous calendar year. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust and the award ceremony is sponsored by the Northwest Science Fiction Society.

Last year’s winner was SOONER OR LATER EVERYTHING FALLS INTO THE SEA: STORIES by Sarah Pinsker (Small Beer Press) with a special citation to THE LITTLE ANIMALS by Sarah Tolmie (Aqueduct Press).

The 2021 judges are F. Brett Cox, Brendan A. DuBois, Cynthia Felice, Tim Pratt, and Jessica Reisman (Chair).


Big Dark Hole in July

Thu 14 Jan 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Big Dark Hole cover - click to view full sizeSome might argue we’re at the bottom of a big dark hole now (but, really, isn’t it generally the human condition?) but just wait until July when Jeffrey Ford’s new collection Big Dark Hole drops.

The book had been scheduled for March but July, with the possibility of a slightly brighter world — and Jeff being one of the Guest of Honor at Readercon — beckoned, and the switch has been made.

Preorder here or on Bookshop (why is the cover not showing there? How uninterestingly mysterious) or at your fave indie bookstore and to keep you going Jeff has posted a new story on his own website.


Sign up for this Sofia Samatar online event

Mon 11 Jan 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Sofia Samatar is part of the upcoming Living Writers Series at UC Santa Cruz — also in the series: K. Ming Chan, Lauren Groff, Valeria Luiselli, Tess Taylor and Danusha Laméris, & Tommy Orange.

Samatar will be reading from Tender on Thursday, January 14, via Zoom. The event runs from 8:20 – 9:55 Eastern time and event registration (free) is here.


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