Helen Ivory’s fifth collection from Bloodaxe, ‘The Anatomical Venus’ is a stark and possessing exhibition of female abuse throughout history. In these poems we witness women as ‘other’, she or her who is alienated for her body’s ability to birth and bleed, and objectified for her gender aesthetics. We find here the Venus, the doll,
STORGY reviewer Rachael Smart takes us on a journey of the best books that she read in 2019, and her recommendations are something that always throw up books that we then put straight to the top of our overflowing to be read piles! So, grab yourself a coffee and some biscuits and enjoy, then you
On the 23rd Day of Christmas Rachael Smart gave to me… He was a wise man because he went to wet the baby’s head wearing a hessian sack smock, came home serious about calling him Jesus. He was a wise man because he’d seen her ex-ex-ex in The Playwright and knocked the bold out of
We are delighted to bring you the latest instalment from Unthank Books – Unthology 11. It is a sublime treat for all short story lovers, a collection which hits above its weight in every possible way. The Unthology idea is a fabulous one – with many new voices coming from within their pages, showcasing the
Irving Howe once said of flash-fiction, or the short-short story as it’s otherwise known: ‘Everything depends on intensity, one sweeping blow of perception. In the short short the writer gets no second chance. Either he strikes through at once or he’s lost.’ ‘All That Is Between Us’ is a collection of flash-fiction that strikes through.
The Letters Page, Vol 3. edited by Jon McGregor is a celebration of handwritten correspondence. This epistolary journal features letters from established and emerging writers on the theme of departure. Its smart design boasts a fold-out mailing package combined with all the nostalgic features of handwritten letters. There’s a red wax seal on the cover,
The following books piled up on my desk this year and bought me atomic moments of reading pleasure. Books that have thoroughly immersed me, so much so that sometimes life has gone off the grid. One collection saw me miss all my stops on the tram and then my final connection home. Me and that
Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is a young adult fantasy with all the silvery enchantment of a Lithuanian fairy tale spun in to a fiction fit for our times. This is a novel bluish with snow and rime where a brittle chill rips through a fey King’s ice kingdom, and winter governs. Peasants starve out in
