Image: Jordan McQueen

Dear writers, readers and friends,

July’s Visual Verse (https://www.visualverse.org) is a tribute to summer, to the heat of imagining, to the land. Our image is by photographer Jordan McQueen (https://unsplash.com/jordanfmcqueen) and as we bask in its midsummer glory, we also question what land means to us and how we think about it – politically and poetically. This question is becoming more and more important as new states come into being, climates change, and borders, cultural and political, are being redrawn. For some, our July image might represent a future utopia or the escape of holidays, for others, nostalgia – the land is part of all of us, inextricably linked to our sense of who we are.

We are thrilled to lead this month with work by Nikesh Shukla (http://www.nikesh-shukla.com) , whose new novel Meatspace, has been lauded by the Guardian, the New Statesman, BBC Radio 4, The Independent on Sunday, and the Daily Mail. Which, as he says, is funny, because they usually hate immigrants. Nikesh’s debut novel, Coconut Unlimited was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2010 and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011. His writing is moving and provocative, just what we need to keep us from a summer stupor; this piece attests to his skill in making art out of politics in a postcolonial age. His short stories feature in Best British Short Stories 2013, Five Dials, The Moth Magazine, Pen Pusher, The Sunday Times, Book Slam, BBC Radio 4, First City Magazine and Teller Magazine. He has written for the Guardian, Esquire and BBC 2. He has, in the past, been writer in residence for BBC Asian Network and Royal Festival Hall.

Our other lead writers are short story writer Janet H Swinney (http://www.janethswinney.com) and poet Seán Hewitt (http://www.seanehewitt.com/) . Janet was born and brought up in the North East of England, and in a previous incarnation, she worked as an education inspector. Her story, The Work of Lesser-Known Artists, was one of two runners-up in the London Short Story Competition 2014; The Map of Bihar was editor’s choice in the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose 2012, and appeared in Best New Writing 2013 (Hopewell). She has also had work short-listed in the Fish International short story competition. The Queen of Campbeltown, about a little lad’s struggle to be re-united with his mother, was a finalist in the Earlyworks Press competition 2014 and will appear shortly in the EWP anthology. Her stories often play out in a landscape that features poverty, thwarted aspiration, personal resilience and black comedy. She is currently awaiting the publication of her first collection of
short stories by Circaidy Gregory Press.

Seán Hewitt (http://www.seanehewitt.com/) has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review and PN Review, amongst many other magazines. He was awarded Arts Council England funding in 2014 to work towards a pamphlet collection. He is one of the Aldeburgh Eight, 2015 and you can hear him read at the Aldeburgh Festival in November.

In literary news this month, Kumkum Malhotra (http://www.gatehousepress.com/2015/06/gatehouse-new-fictions-1-kumkum-malhotra-by-preti-taneja/) , the debut novella by our editor, Preti Taneja, is published by Gatehouse Press and has already received much deserved praise for “its beautifully sculpted surfaces” (Maureen Feely) and for being “Inclusive and deeply engaging” (Stella Duffy). Please diarise 13th October at Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge and joins us for the launch. In the meantime, the Resurgence Eco Poetry Prize (http://www.resurgenceprize.org/) launches this month at the Curious Arts Festival in the UK on July 17th. Perhaps the inspiration for your entry will start with our July image?

What will you make of our image this month? What will it inspire in you and in your writing? We can’t wait to see.
Visit www.visualverse.org (https://www.visualverse.org/) to see, read and submit your writing to this month’s Visual Verse: Anthology of Art and Words.
https://www.visualverse.org
Preti and Kristen