Anna Vaught

After the death of her steady, constraining husband, Catherine discovers that grief can be a liberation. A haunting exploration of loneliness, taboo and the magic of reinvention - where freedom comes at a cost and even the ghosts refuse to stay quiet...

In the county of Wiltshire, there are thirteen white horses carved on the chalk uplands. In Her Winter Song we find ourselves transported to a Wiltshire long past, surrounded by a host of characters that are firmly interwoven into the tapestry of the land, their storylines cutting through time. A beautifully written, lyrical work, Her Winter Song is a folkloric fable about white horses, shadows, possession and terrible deeds in the Wiltshire uplands that gives a firm nod to the classic ghost-story writer M.R. James, and, with the help of the gorgeous illustrations by Maya Chessman, breathes new life into winters yet to come.

The Alchemy is a robust, frank and loving guide to an often opaque industry. As well as offering tips on working in gentle increments and re-imagining what productivity and the work of writing look like, there is advice on sending out work and navigating the industry, looking after your mental health as you go. Full of practical advice, strategies, comfort and the occasional entertaining essay, The Alchemy is about writing a book when you thought you could not. It is for all writers, but with a particular eye on those who are tired and lacking in confidence, and those who face significant challenges – perhaps you are chronically ill or care for a loved one. It is a book for beginners, but it is also for those of you who are stuck in your habits and practice – perhaps you just need a pal to guide you through the day to day with the book you wanted to write. That's what The Alchemy is. Let's do this together.

A listless aristocrat, Lord Jones, finds himself in London during the Blitz, attending to insurance matters. A zebra and her foal, having escaped from the London Zoo during a bombing, cross his path, and he decides to take them back to his estate in Pembrokeshire. Little loved by his fascist-sympathiser parents, something in Lord Jones softens, and he realises he is lost, just like these zebras. The arrival of the zebras sparks a new lease of life on the Pembrokeshire estate, and it is not only Lord Jones but the families his dynasty has displaced that benefit from the transformation. Full of heart and mischief, The Zebra and Lord Jones is a hopeful exploration of class, wealth and privilege, grief, colonialism, the landscape, the wars that men make, the families we find for ourselves, and why one lonely man stole a zebra in September 1940 – or perhaps why she stole him.

Writer Phillip Lopate described the essay as ‘an open-ended adventure, an invitation to doubt and self-surprise’. The essays in this special issue use the form as a platform to allow a multitude of voices to ring clear, inviting us to explore topics as varied as nature, trauma, last lines of poetry, and Esperanto.Featuring writing by Tom Bailey, Susmita Bhattacharya, Bonnie Lander Johnson, Constance Kresge, Christopher Linforth, Zachary D. Shell, Rob McClure Smith, Charlie J. Stephens, S.Y. Tam, Jack Young, and Anna Vaught

In this dark and toothsome collection, Anna Vaught enters a strange world of apocryphal feasts and disturbing banquets. Famished: eighteen stories to whet your appetite and ruin your dinner.

How would it be if four lunatics went on a tremendous adventure, reshaping their pasts and futures as they went, including killing Mussolini? What if one of those people were a fascinating, forgotten aristocratic assassin and the others a fellow life co-patient, James Joyce's daughter Lucia, another the first psychoanalysis patient, known to history simply as 'Anna O,' and finally 19th Century Paris's Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann? That would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? How would it all be possible? Because, as the assassin Lady Violet Gibson would tell you, those who are confined have the very best imaginations.