Hello again! The week ahead is spring break at the college where I teach, which seems a bit strange considering we haven't had winter yet. But whatever the weather I'm sure that this is the year I will definitely read the whole stack of things I've been meaning to get to and will of course do lots of writing as well and I will not get distracted or lazy at all.

If you're looking for something to read, here's what we've published on the site lately:

Our book review this week saw Geri Lipschultz writing about The Corner of East and Dreams, a collection of stories by Joan Connor. And our featured fiction was "Transfiguration #1" by Alice Maglio. We’re pleased to be publishing both Geri and Alice for the first time and hope you’ll read more of their work via their respective websites.

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In contributor news, Bradley Sides' story collection Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood was recently published by Montag Press. We published Bradley's story "Claire & Hank" in September.

And The Poets is a new novella by William Walsh available from Erratum Press. He's shared research notes with us for a couple of previous books, and was also a writer in residence during the days of the project (the archives of which haven't quite been restored to order yet since we moved our website to a new system).

We also encourage you to listen to "The Death of Wildflowers," a story by contributor and former fiction editor Helen McClory, broadcast recently by BBC Radio 4.

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I'd also like to recommend the novel Brian by Jeremy Cooper, a novel that follows the titular character across decades of regular attendance at the British Film Institute. That may sound dull but the magic of this book is how gripping and moving it is despite doing things writing students would be told not to do — all telling, little showing; little direct dialogue; few scenes, per se; the major dramas of the character's life happening well off the page. The story of how Brian, a socially isolated fearful man already arriving at middle age, becomes part of a community of "buffs" and through his developing knowledge of cinema finds the courage to engage the world in other ways — without lapsing into the sentimental or syrupy transformation this might become in a less artful novel — is going to stick with me for a very long time. And while the novel is full of references to specific films, my own knowledge of cinema is haphazard at best so please don't be put off by that. Though I imagine for someone who really knows film that will only deepen the experience (and I may even watch a few of the films referenced over spring break).

One of Cooper's earlier novels, Bolt From The Blue, was reviewed for us by Kit Maude. And I'm also a fan of his Ash Before Oak.

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Finally, don't forget that we'll be closing to regular submissions on March 15, and opening for submissions to our summer flash fiction series.

Thanks for reading,
Steve Himmer