Image by Mae Mu
Dear writers, readers and friends,
Welcome to the last issue of 2019 – a year in which so much has happened upon our planet. Never far from our minds is the reality of our changing climate and the questions around it, and our future. It has been an inspiration to watch, over the course of this year, as young people rise up and confront an issue that has long been denied, silenced and ignored. As a small homage to this mighty movement, we are proud to provide a platform from which you – our amazing, global writing community – can use your art to have your say.
This month’s image is an antidote to the winter setting in for us Northern hemisphere folk. It comes to us via Mae Mu who specialises in food photography and still life.
On page 1, we have New Zealand writer Paul Ewen (https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/paul-ewen) whose books include London Pub Reviews (Shoes With Rockets) and Francis Plug: How To Be A Public Author (Galley Beggar Press) which was listed for awards including the UK Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. His second novel Francis Plug: Writer in Residence (Galley Beggar Press) was shortlisted for the 2019 Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Paul’s writing has featured in the NZ Listener, Dazed & Confused, Five Dials, and until recently, he was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich, London.
Next is Shobha Rao (https://twitter.com/@ShobhaRaoWrites) , author of the short story collection An Unrestored Woman and the novel, Girls Burn Brighter. She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, and her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2015. Girls Burn Brighter has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. She lives in San Francisco.
On page 3, we present Rosamund Taylor (http://www.rosamundtaylor.com/) , who won the Mairtín Crawford Award for poetry at the Belfast Book Festival in 2017. In 2019, she was a recipient of a Words Ireland mentorship and placed third for the Ginkgo Prize for Eco Poetry. Her work has recently appeared in Agenda, Banshee, Channel, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, and on LambdaLiterary.Org.
And finally, Tom Denbigh (https://twitter.com/@tom_denbigh) , resident of Bristol and owner of “an obscene number of books”. Tom is the first Bristol Pride Poet Laureate and a BBC 1 Extra Emerging Artist winner. He has a PhD on plant roots and crumbling soil and works on climate change policy. In his debut collection “…and then she ate him” Denbigh holds up a distorted mirror to the world to portray the bizarre and brilliant in the everyday. The book is out now with Burning Eye Books (https://burningeye.bigcartel.com/product/and-then-she-ate-him-by-tom-denbigh) and in all good bookshops.
So, dear writers, here is your last chance for the year – get your writing boots on and wade through the fake snow in your mind. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you…
Happy December, wherever in this crazy world you are.
Preti, Kristen, Lucie and Luke
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