Scary Books

Thu 17 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , , , , , , | Posted by: Gavin

Every October I think, Darn it, should have posted about our scary books so instead of occasionally thinking that for the next two weeks here’s a skeleton’s handful of scary books all pretty much guaranteed to be a mistake to start reading after 10 p.m. (Although maybe I should have included Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius which is terrifying in a completely different way.)


The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle

Tue 20 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Mike Allen has put together a great StoryBundle, The Twisted Folklore Histories Bundle, which includes not just one but two Small Beer titles, Isabel Yap’s award-winning debut, Never Have I Ever and Elwin Cotman’s Dance on Saturday. It’s a good time to check out Elwin as his next book, Weird Black Girls, comes out April 16 from Simon & Schuster.

There are books by Angela Slatter, Eugen Bacon, Theodora Goss, two books from C. S. E. Cooney, and more. You can pay whatever you want, direct some of your payment to Girls Write Now, and no matter how much you pay, you’re going to end up with some great books:


Isabel Yap @ KGB Bar

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

Next Wednesday Isabel Yap will be reading in New York as part of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading series hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel:​​​

Isabel Yap & Randee Dawn, February 14th, 2024, 7pm ET.

KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003
(Just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)


Never Have I Ever Polish Edition

Fri 8 Dec 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover Good news for Polish readers: we just received the on-signing contract payment from MAG Jacek Rodek for Polish rights to Isabel Yap’s award winning debut collection Never Have I Ever. That’s the first international rights sale for that title.

In other news, Isabel and Alyssa Wong will be anchor instructors for the final two weeks of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego next summer. Applications are now open.


Congratulations World Fantasy Award finalists!

Wed 20 Jul 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Congratulations to all of the World Fantasy Award finalists and especially to:

Isabel Yap for her collection Never Have I Ever
and her novella “A Canticle for Lost Girls”

Jeffrey Ford for his collection Big Dark Hole

Sarah Pinsker for her story “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” — originally published in Uncanny and collected in her 2023 collection Lost Places

The news came in just too late to put in the forthcoming late issue of LCRW which might even be mailed out this month, that part is out of my hands.

Anyway, congratulations to all the finalists, what fun!


Ladies of Horror

Thu 30 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Yay! Congratulations Isabel Yap and Hailey Piper whose collections Never Have I Ever and Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy were jointly awarded the 2021 Ladies of Horror Award for Best Collection.


Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominees

Fri 10 Jun 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Frightfully happy to see Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever on the 2021 Ladies of Horror Fiction Award Nominee list for Best Collection and her story “Syringe” from her collection on the Best Short Fiction list. Congratulations to all the nominees!
Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full size


Never Have I Ever Again

Tue 24 May 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever coverI’m delighted to report that the second printing of Isabel Yap’s debut collection Never Have I Ever is now starting to wend its way back to bookshops. The book came out last February and has found a very happy readership, no doubt helped by it being a NYPL Best Books for Adults and on both the Locus and Crawford Award shortlists.

It turns out last year I sent eleven books back for reprints — one of those numbers that makes it more obvious why I felt so busy even though we only published six new titles: 4 short story collections and 2 Elizabeth Hand mystery novels in paperback. Even though it takes 2-3 times as long now to get a reprint as it did a year or two ago, running out of books is the best problem to have!

Anyway, here’s to our second reprint of the year — and I’m sending another book back this week and another back next week — may this reprint be the first of many for Never Have I Ever.

Want some more about the book?

  • Here’s Isabel Yap interviewed by Megan Kakimoto at Full Stop.
  • The Washington Post said the book: “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.”
  • And in their starred review Booklist ended by calling it “A joy to read.”
  • You can also read some dark and fabulous stories: Good Girls, Milagroso, Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?
  • & that fabulous cover illustration? That’s “Serpent’s Bride” by Alexa Sharpe.
  • And here’s Isabel’s site.

Good Weekend for Never Have I Ever

Mon 14 Feb 2022 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover Congratulations to Isabel Yap whose debut collection Never Have I Ever received a Stabby Award this weekend! That was a new award for me and I’m delighted to discover it this way.

Then I read that Never was shortlisted for the 2022 Crawford Award “presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy.” Usman T. Malik won the award for his collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan (Kitab) and E. Lily Yu’s novel On Fragile Waves (Erewhon) was the other runner-up. Congratulations all — and may all weekends be as fun!

The news comes in slightly too late to go on the cover of the second printing of the book — it is back at the printer slowly making its way through the general slowdown and will be back in stock oh in a blink of an eye (as slowed down to last weeks and weeks).


Full of love and pain

Tue 16 Nov 2021 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeIsabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever gets a shout out in this Book Riot very solid list of Out of This World SFF Short Story Collections:

Last but not least, this is another collection that mixes the magical and the horrific. It is full of urban legends, Filipino folklore, and immigrant tales that explore the lives of women and girls. Yap’s unique voice is oft-praised for a reason — her stories are unique and lyrical. Full of love and pain. They also include things like ghosts, vampires, androids, and elementals to name a few. Watch out especially for “A Spell for Foolish Hearts,” “Good Girls,” and the heartbreaking “Asphalt, River, Mother, Child,” which talks about the Philippine drug war.

Every reader pulls different favorites from a collection — for instance this reader highlighting Asphalt, River, Mother, Child. I’d like to highlight the three stories that appear in Never Have I Ever for the first time, “A Spell for Foolish Hearts,” “Syringe,” and “A Canticle for Lost Girls.”

“Syringe” — as the title promises — is a short sharp shock while the two other stories are much longer, albeit very different. They’re both stories about friendship, love, and magic but while the first is a sweetly seductive story the second is a much darker story that will stay with you long after you’ve put the book down.


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.


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**


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.


Their power to unsettle is unmatched

Tue 22 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeTamsyn Muir sent this along after reading Isabel Yap’s forthcoming debut collection, Never Have I Ever:

“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


Plunging you down into the murkiest depths with the gentlest touch

Mon 21 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeToday’s advance reader of Isabel Yap’s forthcoming collection, Never Have I Ever is Cadwell Turnbull who sent this:

“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.“


Sharp and vivid and gritty

Sun 20 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeIn February we’ll publish Isabel Yap’s debut collection, Never Have I Ever, and everyone will have a chance to read everything at once like Sam J. Miller or parcel it out, one story at a time:

“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


Playful weirdness and mind-expanding terror

Sat 19 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeOne of the earliest responses to Isabel Yap’s forthcoming debut collection, Never Have I Ever, was this lovely paragraph from Charlie Jane Anders:

“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


Gossip over the breakfast table

Fri 18 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeIn the third morning of advance reader reaction to Isabel Yap’s debut collection, Never Have I Ever, we have an early reactions from Alyssa Wong, the award-winning author of Doctor Aphra:

“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.”


Shy witches, beautiful elementals, bloody and watery monsters

Thu 17 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

ONever Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizen February 9th everyone will get their chance to read Isabel Yap’s debut collection, Never Have I Ever. This week we have some early reactions:

“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


Weird vitality, crossed by ghosts, monsters, and above all, stories

Wed 16 Dec 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

INever Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizen February we’ll publish Isabel Yap’s debut collection, Never Have I Ever. This week we’re going to post some early reactions from those who’ve had a chance to read an early edition:

“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


Get Immersed in the Monstrousness

Wed 25 Nov 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Never Have I Ever cover - click to view full sizeWhile we’re a bit transfixed by the ongoing democratic paroxysms of effort to get rid of the monstrous occupants of a certain White House, we’ve been working away on a different, much more enjoyable type of monstrousness: Isabel Yap’s Feb. 2021 collection, Never Have I Ever. A few advance readers have sent us reactions which we’ll share next week and the book just received its first strong trade review from Publishers Weekly:

“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.”


February’s Gone, But We Already Have Something to Look Forward to Next February

Wed 4 Mar 2020 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , , | Posted by: Gavin

Although 2021 seems far away and everything in the future gets blurrier every day we’re still slowly, slowly reading manuscripts for Small Beer Press and so we are already very much looking forward to next February when we will publish Isabel Yap’s as-yet-untitled debut collection of stories in trade paperback and ebook editions.

We’ve long enjoyed Isabel Yap’s fabulous stories and — as you can see from her website — she has published a good number of them over the years. Working with her on putting a collection together has been a joy for the two of us. Good news for all: there will be at least one, perhaps two, new stories in the book.

As time goes by we will add links to more stories (for example: “How to Swallow the Moon” from the Nov/Dec 2018 Uncanny Magazine)  and so on. There will be advance reading copies, reviewers can do their review thing, and at some point we will send a beautiful thing out into the world for you the reader to find.