I have a new story out! It’s part of a truly gorgeous and exciting project: New Fairy Tales: Essays and Stories, which brings together original literary fairy tales and academic essays on the fairy tale form around the world. I am itching to get my fingers on my contributor copy. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that you can get it at Amazon UK and Amazon US; I’m told other outlets are to follow.

My contribution is called ‘The Sea in the Hat’, and it starts like this:

They said she was the best fishwife in the market. Not the loudest, or the strongest, or the sharpest-tongued: simply, her fish were the best. She only came once a week, and when she did, you couldn’t get them fatter, couldn’t get them fuller-flavored. What was her secret? She had given her nights over to studying the sea, straining to understand the waves. The waves speak a flummoxing language, their slip-slap voices always folding over, one into the next. But the fishwife sat up, under the moon, listening until she recognized certain strands of their chatter. Where to fish and when to fish—that’s what she heard, between the fall and the drag. When she slept, the waves muttered on, and she dreamed the things they spoke of: deep fish, ones she would never catch, fish with lights in their mouths, fish with horns and antlers, fish of shadow, fish of glass.

With thanks to editors John Patrick Pazdziora and Defne Çizakça for putting together such a wonderful thing, and the kind friends who beta-read the tale for me.

Over the last few months Claire Trévien and I have been busy behind the scenes putting together the inaugural issue of Verse Kraken: The Magazine of Hybrid Art, and today we are THRILLED to be launching it. The online version is up on the magazine website, and the offline version – a limited edition treasure box of poetry, art and other magic – will be available to buy at our launch party tonight (there are still advance tickets left if you’d like to come!).

I feel a bit like we’ve made something quite special. There are video poems, concrete poems, audio pieces, art, and a hypertext story-game – and that’s just to mention a few of the things in the issue. There was so much that surprised and delighted us in the submissions. I’m so excited to be sharing them with the world.

None of this would have been possible without the support and enthusiasm of our friends, generous Kickstarter backers, and brilliant contributors. Thank you.

Hey, Internet! I’ve teamed up with the dashing and brilliant Claire Trévien to make a magazine. It’s called Verse Kraken, and it’s a place for weird, interstitial, experimental, multi-media, collaborative and other not-quite-usual stuff.

And it is currently OPEN TO SUBMISSIONS for issue one, scheduled for summer 2013. What are we looking for? See above. Basically – writing/art/photography/film/animation/music/hybrid-offshoots-thereof/other that in some way plays with form, style, genre, and/or engages with thematic borders and in-betweens.

The full guidelines can be found here.

For our first issue, we’re asking for submissions in response to one of the three ‘spurs’ currently on our website. These are things we’ve selected from the public domain, which we feel have loads of potential for interesting riffs or reinterpretations.

We’ve had some great stuff in the inbox so far, the majority of it traditional poetry. So if you want a tip: try us with other media, or interesting combinations!

We’ll close to submissions on the  31st of March. Send us your strangest!