Image by Curated by Fiona Kearney, Lewis Glucksman Gallery

Dear writers, readers and friends,

What a wicked sense of humour those Irish have. Fiona Kearney, Director of Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork and our guest-curator this month, has bestowed upon us this surreal gift. These macabre little gnashers were exhibited at the Glucksman in a show called Grin and Bear It: Cruel Humour in Art and Life and presented as a re-creation of elements of Wake Games that used to be played with the corpse in Ireland.

The only match for this image is the playwright Enda Walsh whose work is fierce, deep, dark and very funny. His razor-sharp dialogue has a way of bewildering you with its absurdity while moving you with its humanity. It is a dream come true to publish him here after stalking all of his plays. The latest, an adaptation of Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (https://www.giaf.ie/tours/grief-is-the-thing-with-feathers) , opens in Galway this month and stars Irish hottie Cillian Murphy who is arguably at his best when in an Enda Walsh play. It is produced by Complicité, doesn’t get better than that.

Emer Martin (https://www.instagram.com/emerobergo/?hl=en) sends us her words from a cottage in the west of Ireland. She grew up in the UK with Irish parents and read English Literature and Italian at Manchester University before working in national news journalism. In 2016, Emer left London and her job to ‘rewild’ and write. She’s now writing her first novel, The Road To The River.

Next up, we are thrilled to publish Isabel Waidner, the author of Gaudy Bauble (https://dostoyevskywannabe.com/original/gaudy_bauble) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2017), which is shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize in the UK. Isabel is also the editor of Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (https://www.dostoyevskywannabe.com/experiments/liberating_the_canon) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018), which includes work by Visual Verse contributors. Definitely worth a read.

Finally, wondrous new words by Kusi Okamura, founder and editor of The Wild Word (http://www.thewildword.com) magazine. All she’ll tell us is this: she lives in Berlin with her family. But you know, there’s so much more… start by checking out the Wild Word and their recently published fiction and poetry anthologies (https://thewildword.com/buy-our-anthologies/) .
So there it is, writers. Don’t forget the new rules: submit before 15th February. Also please only submit your piece once, and be patient. Any pieces that are submitted multiple times will not be considered for publication.

As always, enjoy the challenge. The image is the starting point, the text is up to you.

Kristen, Preti and Lucie

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