As for individual works, there were so many great stories and poems. They came from both the genre and literary side. I look forward to finding out the identity of the anonymous author of ‘Soul Stains’ in Nemo 5. This story deserves a reprint in the highly regarded literary-genre annual anthology, ‘The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.’ Ralph Robert Moore’s ‘The Machine of a Religious Man’ from Midnight Street 4 was also a gripping read. Rosanne Rabinowitz’s ‘Return of the Pikart Posse’ from the same magazine had a novelistic vision and showed a gift for casting a spell over the reader.

’The Fish Factory’ by Joyce Carol Oates was a wonderfully dark read, and encouraged me to get hold of two of her collections. Lydia Lunch’s story in a different issue of the same magazine (Storie) reminded me a bit of Kathy Acker’s work. Gregory Corso’s ‘Deluge’ was definitely one of the best poems I read this season. A beautifully piece of work. The outstanding story in Aesthetica was ‘In the Mouths of Insects’ by Shelly Wass, and treads a dark path similar to some of Oates’ writing. ‘A Day in June’ by Len Gasparini and ‘Grangran Warmfeather’s Sitting on a Hot Bingo’ by Cathleen Kirkwood were the most memorable stories in Front and Centre. Meanwhile, the third issue of The Orphan Leaf Review is the best yet from that magazine. Martin Brick’s ‘Lost and Found: Hotel Castellar’ and Juliette Shapiro’s ‘Simulacrum’ were two of the best prose pieces. Knut Mork Skagen’s ‘Whiteout’ and C Allen Rearick’s ‘It’s Not as Crowded as the Subway’ were the two best poems, though the overall quality of poetry and prose was high. There was something about Rab Fulton’s ‘Postcaird Fae Cyprus’ that appealed to me too, and the poem reminded me of an up and coming Scottish prose writer everyone should be looking out for - Rob McClure Smith. Check out Smith’s story, ‘Scots in Hawaii’, in the archive of the Barcelona Review site.

At Gator Springs the awards go to ‘Like Waves on Rocks’ by Lisa McMann and ‘Dominique’s Mother’ by Steve Newton, both fiction pieces. At Cadenza, there was Ned Balbo’s poem ‘The Hitchhiker’. While at Versal, there was so much to choose from, but Ryan G Van Cleave’s ‘Evolution’ and ‘Orders of Identification’ by Marc Pietrzykowski were two works that stood out for me.

There’s going to be an interesting line up of magazines in the Winter roundup. Glimmer Train, Night Train, TriQuarterly, QWF, The Fairy Tale Review, and Bonfire are just some of the publications that will appear.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.