Joan Aiken’s 100th Birthday

Wed 4 Sep 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Joan Aiken’s daughter, Lizza, posted on Bluesky that today, September 4th, is Joan Aiken’s Centenary. Lizza keeps her excellent Wonderful World of Joan Aiken site going as well as ensuring new editions of Joan’s work keep coming out. I’m delighted to take any opportunity to celebrate Joan’s work — although I am taking liberties here as we were never on first name terms. I think I only met her once when she was a guest at the IAFA Conference in Florida and it was a treat. She was an absolute fount of good stories from her childhood with her writer parents who split up to bringing up her own kids in a bus to publishing her first book of short stories (All You’ve Ever Wanted) to working at and writing — sometimes under a pseudonym — for Argosy magazine and others.

20+ years ago I interviewed Joan — by mail, I still have the answers somewhere in a file cabinet — for BookSense.com, the early website of the American Booksellers Association and happily for me Strange Horizons agreed to reprint it as part of a Focus Issue in 2001 where you can a story, poems, and reviews by Beth Kelleher and Jed Hartman.

I was looking for that interview and I read part of an interview Kelly did with Strange Horizons in 2005 where she said we were hoping to reprint Joan’s stories in a multi-volume set. We’d just started dipping our toe in the reprint world with Carol Emshwiller’s Carmen Dog and we didn’t have the experience to know how hard it can be to get publicity or to get bookstores to carry reprints. So the multi-volume set idea went out the window and instead between 2008 and 2016 we published three new collections of Joan’s stories.

The first collection we published was The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories and — it still amazes me — we somehow reached Philip Pullman who sent us this:

“Joan Aiken’s invention seemed inexhaustible, her high spirits a blessing, her sheer storytelling zest a phenomenon. She was a literary treasure, and her books will continue to delight for many years to come.”

But the real reason to mention that book is to mention UK artist Andi Watson who illustrated it and to send you off to celebrate Joan’s books by checking out this page of illustrators who worked on her stories over the years.

 


Blurred Boundaries Award Winner

Tue 3 Sep 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

OKPsyche cover Good news for Anya Johanna DeNiro whose short novel OKPsyche has been chosen as the winner of the Blurred Boundaries Award at this year’s Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards. You can read more about the awards here and here are the rest of this year’s winners:

FANTASY

Tashan Mehta, Mad Sisters of Esi (HarperCollins India)

SCIENCE FICTION

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chaingang All-Stars (Pantheon / Harvill Secker)

NOVELLA

Indra Das, The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar (Subterranean Press)

SHORT FICTION

Kristina Ten, Approved Methods of Love Divination in the First-Rate City of Dushagorod (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)


Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 48

Sun 1 Sep 2024 - Filed under: LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

If the regular button is not working, please use this Paypal link — thanks to readers who emailed to say the regular button was working sporadically.

———

Jennifer Hudak’s “The Witch Trap” is a Nebula Award finalist and will be reprinted in this year’s Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nnedi Okorafor & John Joseph Adams.

Aimed for May, published in September 2024. 60 pages. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731227.

L C R W 4 x 1 x 2 x 3 x 2 x 1
or IIL
or more properly XLVIII.

Editing, partially accomplished. Stories: mostly gathered. Design TK. Proofing TK. Printing TK. Ebook TK. Distribution TK. Reading by 10.2 million people TK.

 

Reviews

“Four tales in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #48 piqued my readerly interest. ‘The Skildraffen Stitch’ by W. J. Tatersdill is a very tall tale about a knitting stitch, a lost runekey, and puffins. These elements (and more) are all suitably spun together to entertain the denizens of a fantasy pub/tavern and, of course, us readers. A couple find an Alad­dinesque lamp in a thrift store in the clever ‘Diver­gence at the Village Thrift’ by Summer Olsson. They discover their wishes for the future may not be as they wish them to be.
“Bess Lovejoy’s engaging ‘Internal Theft’ is set in 2002. A small-town newspaper reporter investi­gates a 1990 story about a huge stash of undelivered mail discovered after the death of a thirty-year postal employee named Dorothy Fairchild. What he uncovers involves the positive side of mail theft and supernatural aspects of both a model of the town and the mail hoard itself.
“An old shoe is found beneath the floorboards of an old house in the interesting ‘The Witch Trap’ by Jennifer Hudak. Told that such hidden footwear was once supposedly believed to keep witches away, homeowner Elizabeth does her research. She discov­ers the superstition was really used to trap witches rather than repel them and a great deal more.”
— Paula Guran, Locus

Dylan Haston and Becca Schneid poetry review of Rachel Ayer’s “The Soldier and Death” at the Ancillary Review of Books.

Arrived in this leapyear 2024 and containing these parts:

Fiction

Lyndsie Manusos, Mnemonic
W. J. Tattersdill, The Skildraffen Stitch
Summer Olsson, Divergence at the Village Thrift
Zebulon House, Pianoskin Boots
Victor Ladis Schultz, Tributary
Bess Lovejoy, Internal Theft
Jennifer Hudak, The Witch Trap

Poetry

Rachel Ayers, The Soldier and Death
Daniel Rabuzzi, Along the River’s Edge

Nonfiction

Gavin J. Grant, Zining
Nicole Kimberling, The Food of Sadness
Dave Myers, Howard Waldrop Fishing: The Oso Letters 1995-2002
About These Authors

Art

Deborah Mills, b&w art
Gessica Maio, cover art: “Castle Panther”

Celebrating

Anya Johanna DeNiro’s OKPsyche is a finalist in the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards; Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places (& the press) being Locus Award finalists; and Naomi Mitchison being this year’s Memorial Guest of Honor at Readercon.

Masthead & colophon

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 48. September 2024. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618731227. Text: New Caledonia LT Std. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. Thanks, Valerie. Only surreal ingredients.
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: $24/4 issues — the chocolate option is very popular while the marmite option is gaining ground. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. DRM-free ebooks available from the lovely weightlessbooks.com, &c.
Cover illustration “Castle Panther” © 2024 Gessica Maio. All rights reserved.
Contents © 2024 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 again, authors, artists, readers.

Dear Subscribers,
please send your old and new mailing addresses to us at info@smallbeerpress.com.
Thank you!

About These Authors

Rachel Ayers lives in Alaska, where she writes and hosts shows for Sweet Cheeks Cabaret. She has a Master’s in Library and Information Science, which comes in handy at odd hours. The DM for her D&D group is constantly exasperated by her need for more research texts to read in her spare time, especially as they are a homebrew group. She dabbles with oil painting, knitting, and making burlesque costumes and pasties. Her fiction appears in Metaphorosis, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Radon Journal, and the anthology Fall into Fantasy; she is a regular contributor at reactor.com. She shares speculative poetry and flash fiction (and cat pictures) at patreon.com/richlayers.

Zebulon House is a white settler, born on unceded land of the Pennacook. They are the author of The psychic surgeon assists (Calamari Archive, Ink., 2024), and their work has previously appeared in ergot. and Sleepingfish. They work as a librarian, and play horror sound effects on the radio; you can find them online at zebulon-hourse.xyz.

Jennifer Hudak is a speculative fiction writer fueled mostly by tea. Her work has appeared on both the Locus and the SFWA recommended reading lists, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Boston, she now lives with her family in Upstate New York where she teaches yoga, knits pocket-sized animals, and misses the ocean. Find out more about her at jenniferhudakwrites.com.

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

Bess Lovejoy is the author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses. Her fiction has also appeared in The Ghastling, while her non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Atlas Obscura, Lapham’s Quarterly, the Public Domain Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle.

Gessica Maio is an illustrator. Initially trained in communication design. She works for Hermès, Fulllife, The Good Life, and Marie-Claire Magazine. In 2021, she won the Prix des Agents Associés prize and the Grand Prix Jeunes Talents prize at the Saint-Malo Comics Festival.

Lyndsie Manusos’s work has appeared in LeVar Burton Reads, The Deadlands, Lightspeed, and other publications. She lives in Indianapolis with her family, works as an indie bookseller, and writes for Book Riot. You can read more of her work at lyndsiemanusos.com.

Deborah A. Mills (she/hers) is a professional woodcarver, who trained in Norway. She has demonstrated & taught classes at the Cloisters/Metropolitan Museum, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the American Folk Art Museum. Her commissioned pieces are in many private collections. Deborah illustrated Daniel Rabuzzi’s two novels. She lives in New York City with Daniel, where they collaborate on various projects.

David E. Myers has published fiction in Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock’s and Pulphouse, and articles in the New York Review of Science Fiction and “How-To-Build an Igloo” at Gorp.com. He is a graduate and former administrator of Clarion West, has a Ph.D. in Psychology, and currently resides in Seattle. He fly-fishes when near water.

Summer Olsson is an emerging writer whose stories are threaded with loneliness, ghosts, everyday magic, and female perspectives. Besides being a writer, she works in theater as a physical comedian and puppeteer. She also works in stop motion animation, and was a Second Assistant Director on the film Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. She grew up in New Mexico and lives in Oregon.

Daniel A. Rabuzzi (he/his) has been published in, among others, Crab Creek Review, Asimov’s, Harvard Review, Abyss & Apex, Coffin Bell, Shimmer, Red Ogre Review, Goblin Fruit, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Pushcart Prize nominee. He earned degrees in the study of folklore & mythology and European history. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner & spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A. Mills.

Victor Ladis Schultz lives near Chicago. His fiction has been in various venues, including McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Chicago Quarterly Review, Barrelhouse, and Chiricú: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures. He is also an editor at the Chicago Review of Books.

W. J. Tattersdill writes stories about a fantasy ferry network, others of which have been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. With Sarah Crofton, he’s co-author of League of Thieves, a kids’ choose-your-own book published by Usborne. He lives in Scotland with an assortment of strange animals and is also a teacher, critic, and musician. He’s very good at Mario Kart.

Peace in our time.


Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

Thu 8 Aug 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I was just listening to Alisa Alering talk with Lindsay Hunter about her debut novel, Smothermoss — which has a great cover — on Lithub and thought you might enjoy it, too. You might remember Alisa had a great story in a LCRW 43.

Alisa Alering on Being the Mountain


LCRPrinter

Wed 7 Aug 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

It’s about true, next issue of LCRW is taking the snail trail to the printer quite soon. Which means I should make an ebook and start getting the old team back together to mail this thing out. Ok, I’m going to need a safecracker and a driver . . .


Readercon 2024, the Aftermath

Wed 17 Jul 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

We arrived at the Quincy Marriott for Readercon a little after 1 p.m. on Saturday. I was relieved and delighted to immediately get into our room and take a break as there was a panel I wanted to see at 3 p.m., The Works of Naomi Mitchison, with Amal El-Mohtar, Kate Nepveu (moderator), Lila Garrott, Max Gladstone, and Rebecca Fraimow.

Outside our room Kelly, our kid, and I were all masked and we all use a nasal spray: used to be Enovid, now we use ePothex.

I took a break then took the lift down (no more stairs for me, meh) and slipped into a seat at the back of the room while Kelly took some last minute books and T-shirts to the dealer’s room where Kate and Jonathan had set up next to friends at the Ninepin and Reckoning tables.

The panel was great. Everyone knowledgeably discussed three of Mitchison’s novels with thoughtful and sometimes amusing diversions into discussions of some of her other books. Her UK publisher does her few favors with the terrible covers they’ve slapped on all the books. Oh well, better in print than not? I’d have been happy if the panel had been twice as long. Well, maybe not all at once. I visited the dealer’s room to say hi to a few people, many fewer than I’d like to, returned to our room and went to bed.

Later on Kelly sat with three friends having dinner and now two of them have tested positive for Covid. I woke up when she came back from that and we ordered dinner delivered. I hoped to make it to more convention programming but I couldn’t really make it out of bed, so that was Saturday.

On Sunday morning after breakfast in our room we went to the dealer’s room at 10 a.m. and I was lucky enough to see some friends and chat while sitting down. By eleven I was done in and we set out for home.

I just checked Bluesky again — good break for when I get so tired every word or two has a typo — and someone reports there are now 20 Covid cases “out of a (rough) total of 700 attendees.”

So now we’re waiting to see if — at my first convention/bookfair/conference in four years — any of us have picked up Covid, too.

That said, I’m delighted that Readercon takes safety so seriously. They require masking in panels and added Corsi-Rosenthal boxes to rooms so as not to just rely on the hotel’s air filtration system. But they can’t control people outside of that. People travel, eat, wander around outside without masks and since the coronavirus is an aerosol that stays in the air (especially if a place gets stuffy), the virus gets passed around.

We’ve missed so many events, concerts, movies, let’s not even get into travel, and so on because 1) I am disabled, and 2) masking is not required. I don’t know what would would happen if I get Covid. Would I, lying on this couch as sitting up wears me out, shrug it off? Hmm.

We went to Readercon knowing and planning on it being a test for our household of The Way We Live Now (ahem). How will I do? Can we as a family go to conferences? (Our kid is 15 and would love to go to more of them.)

The answer is that we’re still assessing the risks — as ever these days. I understand the want for the pandemic to go away as it was so lovely to sit with friends, even if briefly. We’ll just cross our fingers and keep replying on nasal sprays, vaccinations, N95 masks, Corsi-Rosenthal boxes at Book Moon, and asking visitors to either stay outside or test before coming in. I don’t have the energy or ability to return to my pre-pandemic life so I really need to do what I can to not get Covid again.*

 

* I am in the long Covid cohort who never tested positive for Covid, woohoo, etc.


Times: Top 100. Lithub: 71 More. Small Beer: 101+

Wed 17 Jul 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

The NYT, not a paper I’ve given money to in years because despite their usually solid work I find them terrible on US politics — did they ever stop prevaricating and just state that Tr*mp lies? Ugh — and can be awful on minorities and trans people. They have millions of subscribers and don’t need me.

Anyway, their latest complicated listicle is something along the lines of some hundreds of writers come up with 10 books from this century they admire and they made a Top 100 out of that list: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

I’ve enjoyed some of the books on the list and there are definitely some I intend to read. Hilariously Lithub then published What the New York Times Missed: 71 More of the Best Books of the 21st Century. I don’t know if there is any crossover. So that’s 100+71 books. What about the 101+ Small Beer books? Always 10% off on Bookshop.org — shipping free today.

In the meantime, I’m reading Ben Francisco’s Val Vega: Secret Ambassador to Earth which is a pageturner and now our kid wants to steal it from me before I finish. Eek. I recommend it and am open to suggestions for what to read next.


Readercon 2024

Wed 10 Jul 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

I’m looking forward to Readercon this coming weekend. It looks like we will be there from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. I am hoping to attend a panel on Naomi Mitchison on Saturday afternoon and then lie around and not do much. A number of Small Beer authors will be there —

Benjamin Rosenbaum
Greer Gilman
Jeffrey Ford
Sofia Samatar
Susan Stinson

— and Kate and Jonathan will have some of their books at the Small Beer/Book Moon table in the dealer’s room.

I am both intrigued to go to a convention for the first time since Boskone 2020 (what a close escape as there was an early superspreader event at another Boston convention that month!) and also nervous about 120-year-old me running out of steam very quickly. Oh well! It will be a lot for everyone.

Quite a few people are down with Covid so we’ll be using our carrageenan nasal sprays, wearing our N95 masks, and cross our fingers that everyone doing the same will keep us all safe.

screenshot of many titles by Benjamin Rosenbaum Greer Gilman Jeffrey Ford Sofia Samatar Susan Stinson


Added Illustrations

Tue 2 Jul 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

As things move along on The Book of Love I’ve updated the description and added a page with all Wesley Allsbrook’s interior illustrations.


Ayize @ ALA, July 1

Wed 26 Jun 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Ayize Jama-Everett (Heroes of an Unknown World) will be winging his way down to San Diego next Monday to take part in a panel at 2024 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition:

How the World Might Be: Speculative Fiction, Horror, and the Endless Possibilities of Genre Fiction

Add to ALA Scheduler ▸

Speculative fiction, horror, and sci-fi offer endless possibilities for future worlds – so then why is so much of this genre associated with outdated tropes? In this diverse panel of authors and publishers, we’ll talk about how libraries can maintain a strong collection of genre fiction, and why speculative fiction can still give us hope in the bleakest times.

Panelists: Esme Addison, author of An Intrigue of Witches (Severn House); Bill Campbell, writer, editor, and owner of Rosarium Publishing; Ayize Jama-Everett, author of Heroes of an Unknown World (Small Beer Press); M. M. Olivas, author of Sundown in San Ojuela (Lanternfish Press); Jim Ruland, author of Make It Stop (Rare Bird); Sharon Virts, author of The Grays of Truth (Flashpoint); and moderated by Beth Reinker, manager of Collection Development Curation for Ingram Library Services.

Monday, July 1, 2024 

11:30 AM- 12:20 PM 

Stage: Diversity in Publishing Stage (Booth 2250)

There was a good and thoughtful review of Ayize’s most recent one by Jenny Hamilton on Strange Horizons:

The decision is shocking, and it highlights one of the key themes of the book: we are all imperfect, broken, compromised. The salvation of the world has fallen to Taggert and his team, and they are choosing to answer the call—but neither they nor the reader should be under any illusion that this makes them good guys. They’re not good now, and maybe they never can be. It’s just that they’re all they’ve got. Taggert and Tamara and Prentis are powerful, sure, but the most important thing they are is passionate.
What does it take to save the world — even if it’s not as you know it? Friends, frenemies, family, sacrifice, and a hell of a party.


Approving Proofs, Short Run Printing

Tue 25 Jun 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Just like old days here: sent two books to the short run printer before breakfast — 1 box of Laurie J. Marks’s Fire Logic for Book Moon, 5 boxes for our distro; along with another 3 boxes of Geoff Ryman’s Was. Both books generally receive a small annual boost from Pride Month, which — from a publishing and personal standpoint — heartlifting.

Was is also taught in a couple of universities. If you’ve visited our table at AWP or, really, almost any bookfair, in the last 10 years I may have tried to put this book in your hands. It is a heartbreaker, an absolute unstoppable train that no matter how many times I reread it, I keep hoping the end will be different. It wasn’t ever a book I expected we would reprint but then, after we published the US edition of The King’s Last Song we were able to pick up the rights. And I keep re-reading it, and keep hoping. So many readers have found the same. Ack. What a book.

I started this meaning to write 2 lines: one about reprinting books, the other about approving printer proofs. I am not sure when I’ll next do this so there’s an odd feel to it. What used to be a run-of-the-mill task now holds an extra weight. The proofs are for the limited edition of Kelly’s novel, The Book of Love, and are for the endpapers, the signing sheet, the illustrations, the onlays, and the text, and I am not sure we’ll get them all approved today. Luckily for the two of us, this (hmm, somewhat mentally exhausting, there goes the day!) work also qualifies as fun.


Slow Moving

Fri 21 Jun 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 48 comes along very slowly caused entirely by my laptop keyboard and trackpad no longer communicating with the computer. Who knew that could happen?


Sooner or Later in New StoryBundle

Fri 31 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Sarah Pinsker’s award-winning debut collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is one of thirteen books in Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott’s newly launched Pay-What-You-Want 2024 Pride Bundle.

The bundle is available for 31 days — today + Pride month! The 4-book basic bundle is $5, and is really 5 books as it includes both volumes of Ginn Hale’s Champion of the Scarlet Wolf. The real deal is at $20 (or more, seems to top out at $100, challenge activated?) where you get all 13 titles.

Every buyer chooses how their payment is split between the authors and the platform (StoryBundle) and can choose to donate 10% to the charity Catherine and Melissa selected, Rainbow Railroad whose mission is to help at-risk LGBTQI+ people get to safety.

Hope you enjoy the bundle and any help spreading the word over the next month would be much appreciated.


Kathleen at the Brisbane Writers Festival

Thu 30 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen will be on a couple of panels at the Brisbane* Writers Festival this coming weekend. We went to that festival I think a couple of times and loved it. Kathleen is on not just one but two panels with Naomi Novik whose Scholomance books I wholeheartedly recommend. Shelley Parker Chan is also on both of those panels and Angela Slatter — to whom Kindling is dedicated — is also on the Gothic Tales panel.

For a little more about Kathleen’s stories, she just posted notes on each story in Kindling.

* Friends (lovingly) called Brisbane BrisVegas and it stuck for me. Maybe one day they’ll have a BrisVegas Writers Fest.


10 Great Fantasy Book Series Without Romance

Thu 30 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Love to see Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp (and its sequel, Latchkey) on this list of 10 Great Fantasy Book Series Without Romance by Mary Kassel on Screenrant along with books such as The Goblin Emperor, and books by Pratchett, Le Guin, and more.


They [Do Not] Come in Peace: On Claire G. Coleman’s “Terra Nullius”

Wed 29 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

I recently came across Dr. Billy J. Stratton’s LA Review of Books article on Claire G. Coleman’s novel Terra Nullius, They [Do Not] Come in Peace: On Claire G. Coleman’s “Terra Nullius” LA Review of Books and I’m happy to say it references one of my favorite teen movies, John Carpenter’s They Live, as well as Coleman’s  2021 work of Aboriginal anticolonial history, Lies, Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation.” Low culture, high culture, it’s all culture!


Aurealis Convenors’ Award for Excellence for Jennings, et al.

Tue 28 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings, along with Helen Marshall and Jo Anderton, received the Aurealis Convenors’ Award for Excellence for their article “Science fiction for hire? Notes towards an emerging practice of creative futurism”! (read here)


eLCRW in the EU

Mon 20 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Over at Weightless Michael has found a way — with help from our friends at Interzone — to make LCRW available as an ebook in both the EU and the UK using Payhip. I am very grateful to everyone that 1) there’s a solution and 2) it was implementable.

I am sorry we can’t send chocolate over with the e-subscriptions. I’d say one of these days, but I kind of hope we don’t all end up with food printers in our kitchens so I hope you can get a good snack wherever you are to go with the zine. Is it really an issue of LCRW, anyway, if there aren’t chocolatey fingerprints on it/the ereader?


Kathleen Jennings at the Brisbane Square Library

Fri 17 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Brisbane Square Library has booked Kathleen Jennings for a local launch event for her debut collection, Kindling on Friday 14 June, 6 p.m.* AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

Meet Kathleen Jennings - Brisbane Square Library

* Flat Earthers please note the time is local, no matter where you live.


Lost Places is a Locus Award Finalist

Tue 14 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Lost Places cover - click to view full sizeDelighted to see Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places is a finalist for the Locus Award for best short story collection — along with one of her stories and one novelette.* Small Beer is a finalist which I take it to mean that all of our 2023 titles were much enjoyed by readers.

Congratulations to all the finalists! — including Kelly, for her collection White Cat, Black Dog, and her story “Prince Hat Underground” which are also finalists.

The Locus Awards weekend is June 19-22 live in — and online from — Oakland, CA.

* Still funny to write that instead of two short stories. When does one get used to the names for the various short  categories?


Mass MoCA & Me

Mon 6 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

me wearing my mask sitting in a wheelchair in a room with a rainbow painted around the door.

This past weekend Kelly and I and our kid (cropped out of photo above) went to Mass MoCA. I think this might be the first museum I’ve been to since the start of the Covid pandemic and the first time I’ve been to a museum since I came down with Long Covid.

Mass MoCA opened 25 years ago and it is a fabulous place to visit. It sprawls out over a series of old warehouses, there are weird and great permanent exhibitions, and always intriguing new ones. There are many floors with long hallways to get between them and stairways and, thankfully, elevators. They have two bookshops — Storey Publishing is in the same complex — and some great restaurants. And all the usual good things of a destination museum. I love it and was both anxious and delighted about going back.

I got an Apple watch a couple of years ago so that I could believe what I was being told by doctors: no, I wasn’t having a heart attack, something else was going inside my chest. It’s also been useful to show me how many steps I can take per day without wiping myself out: ~4,000 is my max. Sounds great! Except the stepcounter doesn’t quantify the part when I lie down for an hour+ after each meal or any tiny bit of doing anything. My body has calmed down somewhat (if my anger hasn’t), but I can’t walk around a museum all day, or half the day, or, really, for much at all. I go to Book Moon once a week or so and the big thing there is for me to remember to sit down and not spend all my energy at once.

Mass MoCA has free wheelchairs available so Kelly (and occasionally our kid) pushed me around so I was able to visit the museum and see two James Turrells again (and miss another) as well as some by Laurie Anderson and a fascinating exhibit, Like Magic, which I strongly recommend to any readers here who can see it.

I have not used a wheelchair since I first came down with this, but, I have also been incredibly limited in what I can do. I don’t know that I’ll get one (mobility scooter, here I come), but even though it was tiring (to be pushed around, ha), it was a relief to actually be able to go out and do something. My thanks to Mass MoCA for the wheelchair and to everyone who has ever fought for accessibility. I recommend currently able bodied try it (I say that because you never know how long that will last) wholeheartedly for a couple of hours: don’t stand up, see what it’s like to be wheeled around.

Anyway, now we’re home and I’m lying on our damned and blasted (and comfortable) couch. I’m still slowly piecing together our limited edition of Kelly’s The Book of Love and I’m wishing I’d been able to do more for the books we published in the last couple of years — I did most of what I’d usually do but there’s always more that can be done — and I’m grateful for the understanding shown by our authors. We’re not taking on new books but we’re supporting those we have, submitting them for awards as per usual (I generally believe, until announcement day, all our books will win all awards), submitting them for ebook sales and lists and so on, keeping them in print, working on international sales. And we recently received an intriguing email that might change the future of Small Beer. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m going to work a little on the next LCRW. After much taste testing, I think I have found the chocolate bar to go with the new issue.

 


Anya in New York

Thu 2 May 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Anya Johanna DeNiro will be in New York next week for two readings from her novel OKPsyche, both of which are with top notch readers. John Wiswell will be reading from his debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, on Wednesday at the KGB Bar Fantastic Fiction Series and then on Thursday Anya will be in conversation with Astoria Bookshops bookseller and author Nino Cipri. Don’t miss these!

Wed. 5/8, 7 p.m. KGB Bar, New York, NY, with John Wiswell
Thu. 5/9, 7 p.m. Astoria Bookshop, Queens, NY, with Nino Cipri

Astoria Bookshop logo


Big Moods

Tue 16 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Every month is cruel yet April still tries to claim the mantle of cruelest. Why the big mood? Powell’s is digging into it with a Big Mood Sale: Feel the love, or the angst, or the joy, or all the feelings, as long as they’re BIG. Enjoy big savings on new fiction that delivers the full range of human emotions, as only a great book can! Part of this sale: Kindling by Kathleen Jennings as well as new books from Scarlett Thomas, Jennifer Croft’s The Extinction of Irina Rey, and more.


New Elwin Cotman: Weird Black Girls

Mon 15 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Weird Black Girls cover Good news for short story readers: Elwin Cotman’s new collection Weird Black Girls comes out tomorrow from Scribner. WBG has seven stories, including the long title story, which go deep and wide into weird and, to keep you on your toes, not-so-weird places. Kirkus Reviews not only gave it a starred review (and called it “spendidly strange”) but also — knowing that you personally, you enthusiast, read about 240 books per year — included it in a list of 20 Best Books to Read in April.

Michael Kleber-Diggs, in the Star-Tribune, captures what I love about Elwin’s writing — not knowing what’s coming next and it being both deeply imaginative as well as feeling grounded — and this new collection:

Weird Black Girls is an exceptional work of magical realism. As Cotman hops effortlessly from year to year and city to city, seeing each age and place distinctly and well, his stories remain of another world.

They are imaginative places where readers are always one sentence away from something unexpected. They’re also grounded in sharp, concise truths that illuminate moments and generations. Impossible occurrences coexist naturally with real life in a very real America where weird things seem to be happening a lot lately.

Elwin’s going to on tour so I hope you can catch him reading in San Francisco, LA,DC, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Providence, and New York. Don’t miss his City Lights launch event with Lisa D. Gray either live or on Zoom tomorrow night at 7 p.m. PST.


New Vandana Singh Book — from Routledge

Wed 10 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Teaching Climate Change coverI just came across Vandana Singh’s recently published textbook Teaching Climate Change: Science, Stories, Justice. You can read the introductory chapter and part of chapter two on the Routledge page and I’ve pasted in their description of the book below. Despite not being a teacher, I was drawn in — I’m interested in just about anything Vandana is interested in enough to write about.

Teaching Climate Change: Science, Stories, Justice shows educators how climate change can be taught from any disciplinary perspective and in a transdisciplinary way, drawing on examples from the author’s own classroom.

The book sets out a radical vision for climate pedagogy, introducing an innovative framework in which the scientific essentials of climate change are scaffolded via three transdisciplinary meta-concepts: Balance/Imbalance, Critical Thresholds and Complex Interconnections. Author Vandana Singh grounds this theory in practice, drawing on examples from her own classroom to provide implementable ideas for educators, and to demonstrate how climate change can be taught from any disciplinary perspective in a transdisciplinary way. The book also explores the barriers to effective climate education at a macro level, focusing on issues such as climate misinformation/misconception, the exclusion of social and ethical concerns and a focus on technofixes. Singh uses this information to identify four key dimensions for an effective climate pedagogy, in which issues of justice are central: scientific-technological, the transdisciplinary, the epistemological and the psychosocial. This approach is broad and flexible enough to be adapted to different classrooms and contexts.

Bridging the social and natural sciences, this book will be an essential resource for all climate change educators practicing in both formal and informal settings, as well as for community climate activists.

“This highly original and radical book addresses the rapidly growing need for an accessible climate pedagogy which represents the different dimensions of the climate-change challenge and can be adapted to a variety of contexts.”

 


Kij Johnson at Constellation

Wed 3 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

There’s a new review of Kij Johnson’s collection The Privilege of the Happy Ending in Strange Horizons by M. L. Clark — the kind of review I’d love to just paste the whole thing in instead of excerpting a strong line. Anyway, if you’ve not read the book, go for it, and if you’ve read the book you might enjoy it as much as me.

Kij will be one of the Guests of Honor at Constellation in Lincoln, NE, in a couple of weeks. Set out now, arrive by April 19:

Constellation 13 So Say We All


A Naomi Mitchison Bibliography

Mon 1 Apr 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Naomi Mitchison is this year’s Memorial Guest of Honor at Readercon so I’ve been trying to find a way to write a little about her. I never met her and didn’t read her until I was in my 20s. I’m not sure where I first picked up a Virago paperback copy of Travel Light. Avenue Victor Hugo? Somewhere on  a used bookshop trip with Kelly? I loved it and bought copies to give to people. How happy I was to find $4 used paperbacks I could press on someone new.

Anyway, while fiddling around, I found Beccon Press’s deep and comprehensive Naomi Mitchison – Towards a Bibliography, what a gift to find this online. I’d been looking up a Mitchison title Kelly recently gave me, What the Human Race is Up To (1962). If I read that I’ll be completely up to date, although not to today’s date.

I’ve been to Readercon many times, although not since 2019, and always enjoyed catching up with and meeting new people. This year Kate from Book Moon will be tabling for BKMN and Small Beer. I don’t have it in me to attend, damn it, but I am so tempted to go along anyway and maybe get a wheelchair to save enough energy to listen to a panel or two about Mitchison or the guests, Rebecca Roanhorse & Amal El-Mohtar. Unlikely, but a nice dream.

If you’ve read Travel Light and would like to read more Mitchison, I recommend The Fourth Pig, in part because it’s in print and mostly because it’s fun.


Ayize Jama-Everett in Boston for A Table of Our Own & at Book Moon

Mon 25 Mar 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Ayize Jama-Everett is coming over from Oakland to Boston on Wednesday March 27 for a showing of his documentary, A Table of Our Own: A Documentary About Black People and Psychedelics. I’ll put the trailer below.

Since we don’t do events at Book Moon, I’ve set up an informal drop-in with him to sign books this coming Friday Thursday at 2 p.m.

If you don’t know Ayize, he was born in Harlem, has traveled a fair bit, holds three Master’s degrees (Divinity, Psychology, and Creative Writing), and has worked as a bookseller, professor, and therapist. Besides the Liminal series of novels, he has published three graphic novels with Rosarium and Abrams Press, and has written for The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Racebaitr.

His Liminal novels are fast-paced alternate now (and then: alternate reality) science fiction which pack a punch in many different social and speculative dimensions. Hope to see you there.

Regent Theatre poster for A Table of Our Own


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