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Many of us feel that we are other; that we are on the outside looking in, wanting desperately to be over there while tethered to the here.
Twenty-five stories by acclaimed and award-winning international writers who offer up their unique cultural perspectives in short works of fantasy and speculative fiction, emphasize the universal truth that we are all on the outside. And perhaps this truth will bring us all together…
But not anytime soon, we expect.
Featuring the remarkable voices of Christina Ardizzone, M.H. Bavlsik, A. Katherine Black, D.M. Beucler, J.E. Brooke, Anjum Noor Choudhury, J.L. George, Madeleine Gibson, Altaire Gural, Paula Hammond, Cass Sims Knight, Michelle Koubek, Emily Mackay, Hannah McLaughlin, Carly Midgley, Angie Novak, Silvina Palmiero (translated by Monica Louzon), Y.M. Pang, Chloie Piveral, Jacqueline Perez, Rebekah Postupak, Halli Reid, Camden Rose, Kerry Ryan, and Sarah Totton.
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Authors
Christina Ardizzone is a writer and mother living in New Jersey. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop as well as the MFA writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in Dragon Gems under the last name Ardizzone and various publications under the name Christina Scott.
M. H. Bavlsik works in software and IT by day to support her bossy corgi. By night, she prefers dark lipstick and darker stories.
D. M. Beucler is a fiber artist, writer and professional chaos manager from Ohio. She has 2 kids, 3 cats, and enough crafting supplies to outfit a small army. Her debut novel Memory and Magic is coming out in fall of 2025 from Luna Press.
A. Katherine Black lives in Northern Minnesota with her family, cats, and coffee machines. She loves snowstorms, multicolored pens, and dreaming up stories about creatures with bunches of legs, tentacles, and wings. Find her at flywithpigs.com or on bluesky @akatherineblack.bsky.social.
JE Brooke is an anthropologist and a speculative fiction writer on the autism spectrum. When she isn’t writing stories and novels, she can be found crafting, experimenting with her sourdough starter, or lost in the pages of a good book. She lives in Iowa with her husband, their dog, Arwen, and their cat, Darcy. Her work has been published in Iowa City Writers’ Rooms anthologies Writers of the Depths, Writers of the Ether, Writers of the Loam, and Iowa [W]rites of Winter. She can be found on Instagram as je_brooke_thewriter.
Anjum Noor Choudhury is a speculative fiction author and climate policy researcher from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is the author of The Divining Thread (HarperCollins India, 2022), and her short stories can be found in Winter in the City (Ruadán Books, 2024), Escalators to Hell: Shopping Mall Horrors (From Beyond Press, 2024), Tangle & Fen (Crone Girls Press, 2023), and Selene Quarterly Magazine: The Complete Series (Aurelia Leo, 2022).
JL George (she/they) was born in Cardiff and raised in Torfaen. Her fiction has won a New Welsh Writing Award, the International Rubery Book Award, and been shortlisted for the Rhys Davies Short Story Award. In previous lives, she wrote a PhD on the classic weird tale and played in a glam rock band. She lives in Cardiff with her partner and a collection of long-suffering houseplants, and enjoys baking, live music, and the company of cats.
Madeleine Gibson is a writer and collector of hobbies. She can be found wherever there is wool or perhaps a piece of terrible media that needs pondering.
A. Gural is a screenwriter, a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, and a professional acting coach for stage/film and TV, where her YA fantasy novel, Forgotten, has recently been optioned for television.
Paula Hammond (@writer_paula) is a professional writer & artist based in Wales. She has been published by Abyss & Apex, Third Flatiron, and Air & Nothingness Press, amongst others. Her fiction has been nominated for the Eugie Award, the Pushcart Prize and a BSFA award. Her greatest joy is discovering the things that can be found in the strange, the weird, and the neglected corners of the world. She reads too much, sleeps too little, and firmly believes everything can go in a sandwich. Her new Sherlock Holmes collection, Eliminate the Impossible, is out now from MX Publishing.
Cass Sims Knight lives in Portland, OR with her pets, who are not pulling their weight on social media. Her fiction has appeared in several magazines, including Penumbric Speculative Fiction, Stupefying Stories, Luna Station Quarterly, and Drunk Monkeys. You can find her at cassandrasimsknight.com.
Michelle Koubek is an autistic writer with other recent work of hers either published or forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and Factor Four Magazine. Her website can be found at www.michellekoubek.com. She dreams of owning a castle one day.
Monica Louzon (she/her) is a queer writer, translator, and editor from the United States. Her translations have previously appeared in Apex Magazine, Cosmorama, Extrasensory Overload, Futura House, MAYDAY Magazine, and others. Her story “9 Dystopias” was a Best Microfiction 2023 winner, and her speculative poetry was nominated for the Dwarf Stars Award. She fills what free time she has with making zines, climbing on things, crocheting ridiculously large blankets, walking her dog, volunteer work, and tending to her books and houseplants. To learn more about Monica and her work, please visit https://linktr.ee/molowrites.
Emily Mackay is a Scottish writer and editor based in Hertfordshire, England. She has written about music for the Guardian, Uncut, NME and more, and is a news copy editor for the Guardian. In 2017, she wrote Björk’s Homogenic, a volume in Bloomsbury’s 33 ⅓ series on classic albums. She has since edited several books in the series, as well as in the Manchester University Press series British Pop Archive, and contributed the chapter, “Kenickie’s At the Club,” to 33 ⅓: The B-Sides. Her first published story, “Tin Can Alley,” appeared in the journal Riffs in 2021.
Hannah McLaughlin teaches creative writing and composition to both high school and college students. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband of fourteen years and their three kids. When she isn’t working, she loves nerding-out about games and fictional worlds, and she gets most of her inspiration from her experiences as a military brat.
Carly Midgley is a writer, freelance editor, and library program planner based near Toronto. Her work has been published in outlets including The Huffington Post, Litmosphere, and Working Title. When not writing, she can be found drinking too much tea and overanalyzing books and video games. You can find her on Instagram @carlymidgleywrites or online at carlymidgley.com.
Aggie Novak lives with her wife by the beach in Australia, where she spends most of her time hiding from the sun and heat. She writes around studying for her pharmacy degree and entertaining her three dogs. She loves all kinds of speculative fiction and often draws inspiration from Slavic folklore and mythology. When not writing she can be found drinking tea and reading everything in sight. Her published works can be found in Hexagon, Flash Fiction Online and more! For the full list see aggienovak.com.
Silvina Palmiero was born in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has authored five books for children and young adults, as well as various stories and poems published in Argentine and international anthologies and digital magazines. The Spanish-language version of “The Word Thief” is one of the latter, originally published in the Uruguayan magazine Revista Mordedor. Silvina is also a public accountant, film critic, and is currently studying for a degree in Letras at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She is married, has four daughters, and —in addition to writing— loves reading and traveling.
Y.M. Pang spent her childhood pacing around her grandfather’s bedroom, telling him stories of magic, swords, and bears. Her work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and The Dark, among other venues. She is a finalist for the Aurora Award and the WSFA Small Press Award. She dabbles in photography and often contemplates the merits of hermitism. Despite this, you can find her online at www.ympang.com or on Twitter / X as @YMPangWriter.
Jacqueline Perez is a new writer, publishing her first short story, Venus. When not writing, she enjoys browsing for used books, collecting vinyl records, and propagating her many houseplants. She lives in Boston, MA with her husband, Iván.
C. Piveral‘s stories combine the dark and whimsical. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Flame Tree Press’s Robots & Artificial Intelligence, ZNB Presents: Year One, Common Deer Press’s Short Tails, Apparition Lit, and more. A transplant from the American Midwest, she now lives near the Colorado mountains with her rescue dog, Ziggy. For more of her work, visit her website at www.cpiveral.com.
Rebekah Postupak lives on a fault line between two volcanos which, disappointingly, relates in no way to her day job of answering the phone. Her stories can be found in places such as Penumbric, Not One of Us, and Daily Science Fiction. Rebekah is an assistant producer and writer for the Nebula Awards and a chapter co-chair for Willamette Writers. She is indebted to these creative communities and so many others for demonstrating the power of words to change lives.
Halli Reid has short stories and poetry published in We Shall be Monsters with Renaissance Press, Tesseracts with Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy, New Spaces with Lintusen Press and many others. Her genres range from horror and science fiction to fantasy and poetry. She is a creative writing instructor and a structural editor with essentialedits.ca.
Camden Rose is a queer author who loves seeking out magic beneath the everyday world. She can often be found at the ocean’s edge taking notes on the local mermaid population. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse, black cat, and collection of books and board games. You can find her online at www.camdenscorner.com.
Kerry Ryan has won the Spilling Ink Short Story Prize, the Hachette GYOS Prize 2024, and has been shortlisted for the Myriad First Editions Prize, the Writers & Artists Prize 2023, and the HG Wells Prize 2023. Her writing has appeared in The Manchester Review, The Kenyon Review, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Evening Standard and others. She is founder of Write like a Grrrl and her courses and workshops are taught all over the world.
Sarah Totton’s short fiction has appeared at The Walrus, Room Magazine, Nature: Futures, On Spec, and in her short story collection, Animythical Tales. Her humor has appeared at McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and where no man has gone before, namely, the Funny Women section of The Rumpus. Her debut humor collection, Quirks & Super-Quirks, is out now.
Cover art by Ilan O’Driscoll
Ilan O’Driscoll is both a visual artist and a professional actress, and has won awards for her work at fine arts festivals, as well as for her performances on stage. Most recently she starred in the psychological horror feature Believer, and will next be seen in Fear Street: Prom Queen for Netflix. Instagram: @lilwheemo
Release date: December 12, 2024
BANNISTER PRESS 