It's been a busy week for us as the year turns toward February.

First, Court Ludwick reviewed the anthology Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women, edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley. We're grateful to have had Court write three book reviews for us now, with the others being You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari, translated by Brian Robert Moore, and Patterns of Orbit by Chloe N. Clark.

On Tuesday we brought you Amina Gautier's conversation with Theodore Wheeler about writing his trilogy of historical novels, the latest of which is The War Begins In Paris. Amina has interviewed a number of writers for us in the past, and we're glad to have her back in our pages. 

Our featured piece of fiction this week was "The Midden" by Marguerite Sheffer. After you read that you'll find more of Marguerite's stories listed on her website, including "The Observer's Cage" recently published at The Offing.

And on Friday Terese Svoboda returned to Necessary Fiction with some research notes about her new novel Roxy and Coco, published by WVU Press this week.

Meanwhile, submissions are open until February 15 for stories with the theme "Nature" to be published in April, and general submissions remain open too. 

In contributor news, congratulations to Anna Mantzaris whose collection of flash fiction Occupations was recently published by Galileo Press. Congratulations as well to contributors Christine Lai and Mandy-Suzanne Wong, whose novels Landscapes and The Box both appear on the US/Canada longlist for this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize. The list also includes some books we've reviewed in recent months.  

Finally, if you're in the Washington, DC area, our friends at Barrelhouse are currently taking registrations for their annual Conversations & Connections Conference. I won't be there this year but have attended several times and it is always a great day with a great group of people. I can't recommend it highly enough. And speaking of conferences, if you're attending AWP next week, have a great time. Drink lots of water, talk to lots of strangers, and bring an extra bag to haul home your books.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Himmer

PS It has been great to see so many of our contributors from the past fifteen years (!) signing up for this newsletter recently. I hope you'll also share this newsletter with your friends and readers if they might be interested in keeping up with what we're doing, too.