Publication: Volume 1, Issue 1 ‘Wonder Voyages’

I am delighted to announce the release of our inaugural issue, Wonder Voyages. It is available for purchase through our online store, in print and digital formats. As an editor, I couldn’t be more pleased with how the issue has turned out, and with the truly remarkable array of artistic ingenuity that’s gone into it. It’s a mixture of poetry and story and illustration, coalescing around the idea of a wonder voyage and imagining it in often surprising ways. As introduction says:

In offering you these stories, we hope that they guide you on a voyage of imagination—if not from island to island in goatskin boats, then from story to story, to new lands discovered by story. I do not promise they will change you. But you will, I hope, discover something new, even indescribable.

The cover image was drawn by the marvellous Laura Anderson (who also made our logo). Here’s the Table of Contents, with suitable extracts, to whet your imagination:

UNSETTLING WONDER 1:1
Table of Contents:

Dear Reader
From the Editor

Now, Winnie-the-Pooh called this sort of wandering an ‘Expotition’, and he, starting aimlessly, did in fact accidentally find the West Pole. So that may be as good an English word for it as any.

The Woman Who Wore Frost Slippers
Claire Massey

When the woman set off for the market she took a wrong turn. Whether it was the touch of north wind threaded into the frost slippers, or her own wayward memory, she couldn’t be sure.

Great Grey Moles
Johnny Wink

Before Chekhov, long before Chekhov,
Ten thousand years or so before

Illustration: The Voyage of Maelduin
Patrick Weck

Wonder Voyages
Katherine Langrish

All voyages are voyages of wonder. All voyages are voyages of discovery, explorations of life and death. All voyages are dangerous.

Folktale: Simon and Margaret
Told by Michael Faherty; collected by William Larminie

They were not long from land when they saw a great bulk making towards them, and it seemed to them that it was more like a serpent than anything else whatever.

The Voyage of the Fool
Jennifer Povey

Unfortunately, he had no idea where he might find a flying ship. What he found instead was a stranger.