Saturday greetings, everyone. Here's what we've been up to at Necessary Fiction this week:

On Monday we published Ceillie Clark-Keane's review of Sister Golden Calf by Colleen Burner, published by Split/Lip Press. Ceillie has reviewed several books for us now and we're always glad to have her return to our pages. You can find more of her writing via her website.

Our featured fiction this week was "Three Pieces" by Brendan Todt. We previously published Brendan's story "The Toddler" in 2021.

And in research notes, Mindy Friddle writes about Her Best Self, recently published by Regal House.

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In contributor news, Andrew Bertaina's essay collection The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place is forthcoming later this month from Autofocus Books and can be preordered now. We published Andrew's story "Of Lakes And Swans" back in 2017. Autofocus, if don't know their books yet, are publishing consistently interesting things and I encourage you to check out more of their titles — along with Andrew's book, I suggest  A Calendar is a Snakeskin by Kristine Langley Mahler, and Duplex by Mike Nagel (then his followup, Culdesac).

Another forthcoming book to look for is The Worst Kind of Girl, a novel by our former reviews editor Susan Rukeyser, to be published next month by Braddock Avenue Books. 

Finally, a recommendation: Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances by Lucas Mann, published by University of Iowa Press. Good, thoughtful writing about fatherhood isn't the easiest thing to find but this collection is one of the best I've read — not only for its subject matter but also for the varied and innovative approaches to the essay genre on display. You can learn more about it at the author's website or read one of the included essays at Barrelhouse.

Thanks for reading,
Steve Himmer