I will be in the air between Amsterdam and Boston when this week's newsletter goes out to you all, having concluded the study abroad program I've been teaching. Unless I've fallen asleep on the flight I'll be reading Eric Siblin's book The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece which so far is a fascinating account not only of how Bach came to compose some of my favorite music, but also about Pablo Casals finding that music, recording it in response to and in the shadow of the Spanish Civil War, and of Eric Siblin becoming so enthralled by the music decades later that he had to write about it.

All of which is to say, in my roundabout fashion, that the the carrying of experience and ideas from place to place by flying, and the movement of music and art and literature — and the experiences they express — between people and places and periods of time (even via a weekly newsletter hastily pre-scheduled on not enough sleep), feel very important right now and an airplane home after an inspiring summer spent with young writers seems like a very good place to consider all that. 

So! Our book review this week was JP Cavender writing about Still Alive by LJ Pemberton, published by Malarkey Books. JP previously wrote for us about Dragon Palace by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Ted Goossen.

Our featured story, continuing our summer flash fiction series, was "Home Tastes Like Purple Prickly Pears" by Pegah Ouji, a writer we're happily publishing for the first time and more work by whom can be found here.

And in our research notes series, Brendan Gillen (author of a story we published a few months ago) wrote about his new novel Static from Vine Leaves Press. 

In contributor news, Snowden Wright's novel The Queen City Detective Agency is about to be published by William Morrow.​​ 

Finally, you may have seen the awful news that East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, CA was badly damaged by fire a few days ago. I've never been to the store but I have ordered from them in the past mostly because I enjoy owner Brad Johnson's presence on Twitter and more lately Bluesky, and what his store is about. Bookstores I'll likely never visit are part of that spread of art and ideas mentioned above, and I encourage you to support the store's recovery if you're able to do so.

Thanks for reading,
Steve Himmer