We’re pleased to present an excerpt from Shannon Robinson’s new collection The Ill-Fitting Skin, out this week from Press 53. Danielle Evans had this to say about the book: “Robinson shifts seamlessly between approaching the world with a visceral clarity and building fantasy worlds that illuminate the strangeness of our own.” This excerpt is taken from “Origin Story.”
More horror fiction should have footnotes. Bennet Sims’s A Questionable Shape has forever connected the footnote to the concept of the undead, and I seem to recall a few turning up across John Langan’s nestled narratives. Matthew Cheney’s Changes in the Land features a few as well, which is understandable given that one of its characters is, in fact, an academic. “A horror novel with an academic at its core?” you may ask. “What’s so frightening about that?”
Ecocatastrophe science fiction was supposed to be a warning, not a roadmap. We need more hopeful stories of the future.
by Cat Sparks
A climate-rattled world, ravaged by extreme weather events, is now a popular backdrop for top-shelf fiction. From Booker shortlisted The New Wilderness by Diane Cook to The Coral Bones by EJ Swift, authors are exploring the dramatic possibilities of a post-apocalyptic future. There’s something decadent yet alluring about ruined landscapes littered with once grandiose, now crumbling structures – civilisation’s reset button having been well and truly punched.
Some reckon it’s no better than we deserve, but I’m not one of them.
Chapter 17
It’s that feeling that everything is so good that you try to think back to earlier that day to where you missed something. Because you must have missed something for you to feel this good. I try to explain this stuff to Butler and get no reaction. It’s another thing I can’t articulate well.
Nicole Haroutunian’s new novel, Choose This Now, wrestles with a lot of big themes in the subtlest of ways. This is a book about creative struggles, intimacy, and families both found and biological. Over the course of this book’s timeframe, its characters make decisions that are rewarding and emiently frustrating; they go to bizarre parties and embark on ill-concieved relationships. It’s an immersive work with the ebb and flow of life, and I chatted with its author about the project’s origins and her own experiences while writing it.
Chapter 16
Everhet employed his swooping charisma to charm the director of the contemporary art museum downtown to let him use the main exhibit room for his newest installation.
Immediate upon getting our passes it began to feel like I was leading one of those required timeshare sales meetings during your vacation that you earned by sitting through the same meeting on your last vacation. It’s infinite loop logic.
Crowdfunding is currently underway for The Essentials, a new graphic novel from writers Luke Arnold and Doc Wyatt and a staggeringly good selection of artists. Arnold is best-known for his work as an actor — notably on Black Sails and Glitch — but he’s expanded his purview into writing in recent years, and Wyatt has an extensive list of credits in both comics and television.
As for the art? Well, there’s a preview below featuring some of Jason Howard’s work on the book; you might know him from Big Girls, The Vallars, or Trees. Also contributing to Essentials are DaNi, Glenn Fabry, Vince Locke, Brendan McCarthy, Andrea Mutti, M.K. Perker, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Greg Sarris’s new collection The Forgetters. Writing about the book earlier this month in Literary Hub, Jane Ciabattari had this to say: “These new, intricately spun stories narrated by twin Crow Sisters are parables passed down through generations, re-envisioned for a 21st-century world fraught with unnatural dangers. They offer all of us the possibility of healing, connection, even love.”