Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 47

by Kelly Link (Editor), Gavin J. Grant (Editor)

Overview

LCRW 47, the May, the June, the July, the August, the September of this year issue.

Made by
Gavin J. Grant
& Kelly Link.

As in my LCRW 46 note, I am chronically ill and limited compared to the previous times. I’m still planning (hoping? how zine-esque of me) on two issues of this zine this year. But we have two books coming, Anya’s (OKPsyche) and Kij’s (The Privilege of the Happy Ending) — two writers from the Twin Cities, how unexpected — which is enough to keep me busy and then Kathleen Jennings’s January collection, Kindling. Then next February Random House is publishing Kelly’s huge immersive, amazing novel, The Book of Love. Can’t wait to see it out in the world. — Gavin

ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732156. Text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June & November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 | [e-mail] |smallbeerpress.com/lcrw.

Printed by Paradise Copies. Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see page 26 or our website for options) — the chocolate option is very popular but the marmite option is gaining ground. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. 

Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. 

LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through the lovely weightlessbooks.com, &c. 

Contents © 2023 the authors. All rights reserved. 

Cover illustration “Leo Moon” © 2023 Holly Link. All rights reserved. 

Celebrating: a UK edition of Zen Cho’s collection, Spirits Abroad. A World Fantasy nomination for the press. Redemption in Indigo being bought by Random House so that Karen Lord can have all her books under one roof. Starred reviews for new books from Anya DeNiro (OKPsyche) and Kij Johnson (The Privilege of the Happy Ending). Reprinting Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial and Sarah Rees Brennan’s In Other Lands.

Please send fiction and poetry submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781618732156
Publisher:	Small Beer Press
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Series:	Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet , #47
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	893,080
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Callum Angus is the author of the story collection A Natural History of Transition (Metonymy Press). He lives in Portland, Oregon where he teaches trans writing workshops, edits the journal smoke and mold, and is at work on a novel with/about lichen.

Maya Beck is a broke blipster, lapsed Muslim, animanga oldhead, demipan demigirl, pastelcore bunnymom, socially-anxious social justice bard, and speculative fiction writer currently wrapping up a middle grade novel about marronage as part of the UCSD Literature MFA. Their work has been published by venues including Strange Horizons, PANK, Mizna, and NAT BRUT and they have participated in writing programs including the Clarion Workshop, Tin House, Kimbilio, and the VONA. Born on Kumeyaay land with a Motor City mom/Windy City dad Black lineage, Maya is a blended descendant of displaced Bantu, Hausa, and Fulani peoples. They can be found lurking under [e-mail] on Mastodon, a.Maybeing on Instagram, and their website mayabeck.com.

Serafina Bersonsage received a PhD in English from the University of Rochester, where she wrote several fantasy novels while avoiding her dissertation. Her first poetry collection (A Witch’s Education) is available from EMP Books.

Brandon Clippinger grew up in South Florida and now lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he practices law. His fiction also appears in Shenandoah and the Carolina Quarterly.

Jennie Evenson has received support from Bread Loaf and Tin House and has work published in Ninth Letter, Brevity, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flash Fiction Online, and elsewhere. She lives in California with her loved ones and a rescue Cairn terrier who looks like Toto. Her website can be found at jennieevenson.com.

Nicole Kimberling has cooked so much food in her lifetime that she’s developed a philosophy around nearly every aspect of it. When she’s not putting hot meals on the table she can be found either running Blind Eye Books or procrastinating until the last possible second to finish her most recent novel. You find her on IG @the_nicole_kimberling

Holly Link, based in Philadelphia, has been experimenting with collage art for several decades, drawing on texture and color to create dreamscapes from old photographs, and piles of National Geographic, mail order, and other magazines.

Dear Print Subscribers, please send your old and new mailing addresses to us at [e-mail], thank you!

Meg Toth is a professor of film studies and literature at Manhattan College. While she is an emerging fiction writer, her non-fiction essays on cinema and literature have appeared in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Adaptation, and the Journal of Narrative Theory. She is currently revising To Be Real, a speculative satire set in near-future Hollywood. Toth has lived in New York for over a decade, but she was born and raised in Cleveland, and Ohio—and the Midwest more generally—appears frequently in her short fiction.

Lena Valencia’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Epiphany, Electric Literature, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from the New School. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit.

Randall Van Nostrand’s stories have appeared in the Rappahannock Review, 96th of October, and East of the Web. She lives on the side of a mountain north of San Francisco with a naughty dog named Baxter.

Kelly Link's first novel, The Book of Love, will be published by Random House in 2024. She teaches at Smith College and lives in Northampton, MA, with her family, her black dog, and half a dozen chickens.

Gavin J. Grant, he/him, is a peely-wally Scottish immigrant with long covid since 12/21 (meh). He runs Small Beer Press, works from home for Book Moon, and lives in Northampton, MA, with his family.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpts from LCRW 47:

"Radoret"
Serafina Bersonsage

The trouble was that I could not remember just what my great-great-grandfather had done.
He was not one of my more illustrious ancestors. I could not guess, and my captor did not seem at all inclined to say. It had taken me most of the morning to get him to divulge the name. I had managed it at last, phrasing the question in River, as my mother had taught me. ‘Excuse me, but would you tell me whose despicable crime has occasioned my not unreasonable abduction?’ It sounded less stilted in my kintongue—but, if I had been able to put the question in my kintongue, then I would not have needed it at all.

"Red Work"
Callum Angus

In the summer of 1959 we were awash in monster parts. Tails, specifically. The rain had come early and then not again for months, which saw a flourishing of the berries that make up the bulk of the Snake River monster’s diet: lizards the length of your forearm, with markings on the back of their heads like a man’s face gazing dead-eyed at the sky; when frightened, they skittered their arms and legs so furiously that the plump lizard men appeared to be dancing in clouds of dust. That was the summer my brother Tibb got Pup. She’d lose her mind chasing the monsters sunning themselves on the porch. Their fleeing was fun to watch, and more often than not they escaped Pup’s puppy jaws by losing their tails in her mouth; the tailless monsters scurried to their burrows before Pup realized that what she had was only the toughest, rangiest part of her quarry and she spat it out in disappointment. For most of that summer her nose was red from the blood, and the sacrifices piled up as Pup learned her limits.

"Those Who Struggle the Most"
Jennie Evenson

I couldn’t wait to die. All my friends had done it—I was the only one left in our year who hadn’t, and it was humiliating.
Cleo loved every moment of my pain and she had me cornered. Her two best friends, Khensa and Ray, posed darkly next to her like a two-headed bird of prey. They were the kind of girls who enjoyed teasing kids until they cried, and Cleo was their leader.
Eucalyptus steam hazed the limestone bathhouse, illuminated by star-shaped skylights. Their glass concentrated the sun’s radiance, transforming the ceiling into a glittering planetarium.

"So Personal"
Nicole Kimberling

Why is it that we mostly cook eggs for our close companions at the quiet times of the day? Late night after the party’s over or else early morning when we’re not quite awake? Times when our consciousness is compromised by revelry or sleepiness? Sure, occasionally an egg will make a dressed up appearance at an afternoon barbecue, sitting alongside its deviled companions on a party platter but that’s a premeditated party trick of a food, not an gesture of one to one care.
I’ve cooked thousands and thousands of eggs, but you know what? I’ve never cooked an egg for a stranger. The recipient has always been at least a coworker. After cooking professionally for a long time, it’s strange to think that when I’ve cracked a couple of shells open it’s mostly been for a person who I love—sometimes love deeply—sometimes just love right that moment when possessed by joie de vivre.

"The Reckoning"
Meg Toth

By 1891, Edith Irvine knows about ghosts, but it isn’t until 1892, three days before her seventeenth birthday, that she believes she can kill them.
She sits in a near-empty car on the Wabash Special observing her breath. Sister Mary at the St. Louis Orphans’ Asylum, where all the orphaned children who’d survived the cholera outbreak were sent, said that the bothers come when her soul needs air. Believing her soul lies in her chest, Edith inhales deeply. But the bothers clamber in like wicked children and block her throat.
If the snow delays us. If I miss the connection in Albany. If I don’t arrive in time.

"The Fledgling"
Randall Van Nostrand

No one calls me coward. I climb to the hayloft, toes itchy on wood, and step to the edge. The fields are parched ribbons of brown and gold. My feet tingle from the height. Barn swallows swoop so close I can almost touch them. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wings.
“Fraidy cat,” my older brother says as if I hadn’t heard him the first time. He’s nine and thinks he knows everything.
“Bettina, don’t listen to him.” Cara sounds like Mum. She’s six, two years younger than me, and already old.
Orange seams the horizon. A thin lip of moon hangs in the dusky sky. The day is paused between light and dark. In dreams I catch the wind’s currents and soar with the swallows. In dreams I’m free.
I take a breath and jump. Cara screams. The ground pulls me down and crushes my foot. I cannot get away.

Black Girl Liminal
Maya Beck

Miriam almost didn’t see the rabbit god hunched there in the shadows. It was just so small, no match for the whirling thoughts inside her: goddamn buses and their random routes and stupid hours . . . Should’ve called a rideshare. Too late now, but next time . . . Could’ve asked someone to pick me up, but who? Shawn? Ew. Laura? Nah. A partner, ideally, hopefully soon. Damnit! No crying. We’re almost home. Use the Gift of Fear. Next time, I’ll have my car, next time I’ll call a taxi, this time we’re almost there. This time walk straight, don’t slow, don’t get distracted. You’re all alone now, kid. Own it.
Miriam was alone on the curving suburban streets of her neighborhood, dragging behind her a rose-print wheeled suitcase that grumbled down sidewalks. It was one in the morning, and she regretted every decision that brought here, the budget redeye flight most of all.

"New"
Brandon Clippinger

4.

By the time I refill my customer’s iced tea, I firmly suspect he is an OFW. He is different from the other tourists. He eats alone, slowly chewing each bite of his grilled cheese sandwich with his eyes closed. His skin has a subtle sheen; from certain angles he is nearly luminescent. When a breeze blows, he pauses and lets the sea air run through his hair like water through the gills of a fish.
Upon receiving the check, he hands me his card to pay for his meal. The reflective OFW emblem flashes in the sun, confirming my suspicions. I’ve never met an OFW in person before.

"Blood Pool"
Lena Valencia

Mrs. Windchime floats outside my bedroom window. She’s finally found me. I knew she would. I’ve known ever since we left her for dead in the playa. It’s dark out, desert black, but she’s lit yellow by some demonic light. She’s dressed in her usual outfit: scuffed brown leather work boots, those convertible hiking pants that unzip at the knee, flannel shirt over faded Greenpeace tee. She looks like a kindly grunge grandmother, with the exception of the gasmask. This she wears for effect, I know. As long as she has the ring on, she doesn’t have to worry about what she breathes, because as long as she has the ring on, she’s only half alive. Or maybe she’s twice as alive as she was before. Either way, she’s there, watching me through the glass.
She bobs there a few times. Probably wants to make sure I’ve seen her, to give me a chance to run. She seems like the type of predator who likes to chase. I wonder if she’s been to Gio’s house, or Junior’s, or Esther’s, whizzing through the neighborhood like a massive deranged hummingbird. The houses in Floriciente, the planned community where we live, all look alike. I don’t know how she tells them apart. Her new form leads to more questions than answers.

Table of Contents

Fictions

Serafina Bersonsage, Radoret
Callum Angus, Red Work
Jennie Evenson, Those Who Struggle the Most
Meg Toth, The Reckoning
Randall Van Nostrand, The Fledgling
Maya Beck, Black Girl Liminal
Brandon Clippinger, New
Lena Valencia, Blood Pool

Nonfictions

Nicole Kimberling, So Personal
About These Authors