Good morning, friends.

I hope Fat Bear Week has been good to you. It's a little thing — well, not a little thing — and may not mean much in the scope of so many higher stakes demands on our attention and action and time. But for me that's the beauty of it: so many people, in so many places, interested in the same thing — the same beings — at the same time for a few days, voicing our varied perspectives not to shout down a person who happens to think a different bear is better equipped for hibernation but because we want all the bears to hibernate successfully and voting is a way to celebrate that together. As is remembering the past masters and what they gave us. So, sure, it's a bit silly how excited I get for Fat Bear Week but I've come to think that's the point. I'll be thinking of all that when I try to choose between bears once more on Monday.

 Anyway, here's what we've been up to this week:

Mia Carroll reviewed The Summer House by Masashi Matsuie, translated by Margaret Mitsutani (Other Press). It's great to have Mia's writing back on our pages.

And this week's featured story was "Walk It Forward" by Kim Chinquee, who has also written for us before.

Elsewhere, Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why it Matters by contributor Joanna Walsh was published by Verso Books. 

The Night Is Not For You by contributor Eman Quotah will be published by Run For It a few days from now. Eman will be giving a virtual craft talk for The Writer's Center on November 20.

Contributor and former reviews editor Susan Rukeyser recently published her novel The Worst Kind of Girl with Red Light Lit Press.

Congratulations are in order for contributor Roy Kesey, whose collection Lore was named winner of the 2025 Mary McCarthy Prize in short fiction, selected by Ed Park, and will be published by Sarabande Books.

And I think I missed it a few months ago so I want to also mention contributor Kate Folk's novel Sky Daddy, which was published in April.

In the week ahead we'll start publishing our annual month of spooky October stories, and will announce a call for submissions from DeMisty Bellinger, who will be selecting and editing some stories to be published in spring.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Himmer