Travis Jeppesen interviewed by Oskar Oprey. Travis Jeppesen Credit Jason Harrell Fancy a trip to Settlers Landing? It’s a brand new sovereign country, somewhere off the Brown Sea, founded and funded by a megalomaniac billionaire called Mrdok, and populated by his ragtag senate of dodgy real estate developers and fugitive rap stars (something to do with his sister and a sex tape)… oh, and there are some locals as well, from when this place used to be an island called Sagosia, but they don’t get much of a say these days. This hellish landscape serves as both the title and main setting for Travis ..read more

By Kyle Coma-Thompson.   When Old Grandmother was a child, she was taken by her lala (mother) and kalka (father) to the edge place where the steppes turned to stone. Old Grandmother spoke of this: her bewilderment, her fear, her lala and kalka explaining that to be grown one day she would need to prove she could walk alone as a person. In the village place she had heard other children mention it. She had believed what they’d told her were merely stories. That the first morning of a child’s tenth year they would be brought to the edge place to learn how to walk again. “Learn how to walk a ..read more

By Charlie Hill. Charlie Hill by Dave McGowan On my way to the bookshop, I got lost and met Dean. It was dusk and drizzling. I’d walked from the station and, having missed my turn, had arrived at some five-a-side pitches and a distinctly un-campus-like vibe. At a bus stop promising services to Moss Side I turned round and headed back the way I’d come, when a small slight fella came scuttling across the road. ‘Nearly got hit there,’ he muttered. ‘Yeah I saw that,’ I said. We walked together for a few yards then he turned off to the right, back onto the campus and I followed, only vaguely aware ..read more

By Matthew J. Sokulsky. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Matthew J. Sokulsky studied creative writing as an undergraduate at Kingston University, London, and in March of 2023 was commissioned by The National Gallery for his literary work. A selection of his poetry has also been published under the banner of Sampson Low Publishers, London ..read more

By Nina Stanger. Here is an extract from Nina Stanger’s Falcon (Romaunce Books, 2023) Through Radcliffe, his father’s personal private secretary, Guy had made an appointment with the Duke at eleven thirty on Tuesday morning. As he walked towards his father’s study, he found Rupert nervously hanging around in the Long Gallery. “Papa’s in a belligerent mood,” Rupert warned. “It’s nothing to do with you, but I fear that he will take it out on you. It is to do with the death of John Adams, a drunken carrier, and the family of the carrier are threatening to sue him for permitting the man to drink ..read more

By Ben Walter.   I am sitting in a net and yet the fish are biting me. My mailbox is stuffed with letters made from knives; needles and nails are baked into my bread. I have been followed from my workplace, from my laundry, from my bed. I don’t go out. When I do go out, I don’t go in. When I see myself in mirrors the glass seems ready to slice at my face. This morning, the whole of my house became a hallway as I paced without regard for kitchen or bathroom, bedroom or lounge. As the sun rose I stumbled into a patch of energy and prised the back door wide, walked among the long weeds fill ..read more

By C. D. Rose. Kevin Boniface, Sports and Social (Bluemoose, 2023) In his essay ‘The Reality Effect’ (in Richard Howard’s translation), Roland Barthes notes the difference between ‘superfluous’ or ‘filling’ details and ones which have a ‘predictive’ function. The former category, he notes, can even seem ‘scandalous … not participating … in the order of the notable’ — the ‘notable’ here being, put simply, details which advance the narrative in some way. But what then, is ‘the significance of this insignificance’? Kevin Boniface’s Sports and Social goes some way to answering this question. Whil ..read more

By Jeff Wood. Twin Peaks, The Return, Part 8, directed by David Lynch, 2017 At minute nine of what by minute 58 would become David Lynch’s career-culminating masterpiece — Gotta Light? Part 8 of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return — the upper torso of Mr. C (or Bad Cooper), Special Agent Dale Cooper’s doppelgänger played by Kyle MacLachlan, is lying face-up across the bottom of a very dark frame, the blackest night, a black so striking for its rarity on screens or these days. Cooper’s black leather jacket is open and his white t-shirt is bloodied. He is unconscious, or dead; and in the very first h ..read more

By C. D. Rose.   Melissa McCarthy, Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro (Sagging Meniscus, 2023) Though I have now read it twice, I cannot remember the title of this book — that is, I keep getting its four words mixed up. This is perhaps because the four essays of which it consists (‘Flowers,’ ‘Early Processes,’ ‘Refixing the Image,’ and ‘Explosions’) follow a sequence not of Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro but of phyto, proto, photo, nitro. The title might not have been chosen only for its more euphonious qualities but to acknowledge the fact that what the book does  among many other things — is ..read more

By Benjamin Wal.   By the time he was thirty his teeth were loose, the back molars showing early signs of disintegration. Mum used to say to me: You’re lucky you’ve got my teeth. Around forty they started to drop out, evenly, one side and then the other. Soon after, he gave up smiling. Even with his dentures in—a rare concession—he refused to smile. It wasn’t only vanity. Mum died and he found he couldn’t work anymore. I tried to tell him he was depressed but he wasn’t having it. I sent him books about grief. We lost touch for a while. I was out on the road. I used to do the circuit as a ..read more