1 Year of New Kij

Thu 24 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeIt’s a dozen years since we published our first Kij Johnson collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, and I’m delighted to say that last month we received copies of the sixth printing.

Today is the one-year anniversary of Kij’s wide-ranging second collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending. At the start of this month, she was at the Kansas Book Festival at Washburn University in Topeka where she was quoted as saying, “Sometimes you’re reading for story and sometimes you’re reading for art,” which is an especially good thought to hold while reading the new book.

Also, Phoebe Cramer, Publishers Weekly’s SFF, horror, and romance reviews editor chose it for PW Picks, a newsletter whose “best feature is its most personal: each week, our reviews editors single out the titles they’re most passionate about and excited for you to read.”

The Privilege of the Happy Ending
Kij Johnson. Small Beer, $18 trade paper (302p) ISBN 978-1-61873-211-8
Formal experimentation and fairy tale elements are like catnip to me, so Johnson’s latest collection was hard to resist. Featuring squirrel ghosts, squid girls, and sphinxes, these wild speculative shorts take the form of classic fables, modern bestiaries, and riddles told by crows.

Besides Kij’s Patreon, if you’d like to keep up you can now subscribe to her newsletter.