a shy moth to a flame
May 2025
It’s been a beautiful week here in Scotland – the kind of weather when staying indoors is hard to bear. And so, when I ought to have been at my desk, I was outside, reading some of your work for the next issue of Gutter, squinting at my laptop screen in the sunshine. And what a joy that was!
There’ll be more news on Issue #32 in due course, of course, and if you did submit to us, you should hear back before long.
In the meantime, you can head over to the website, where you’ll find Rebecca Smith’s moving, powerful account of a friend’s experience of postpartum psychosis, ‘Ruth’, which featured in Issue #31. It’s a powerful piece, and if you’ve not read it yet, I really recommend you do so now:
I have never seen someone completely vanish before. I sit opposite Ruth on the bench, a plastic tub of strawberries in my hand. She takes one at a time and feeds them to her 9-month-old son. I watch her, trying to find something of the person I knew.
The other new piece of writing is our Book of the Month review, which this month features Michael Pedersen’s new novel, Muckle Flugga. Reviewer Frances Cannon describes it as ‘a new flavour of magical realism’, ‘fresh and thrilling,’ with ‘the air of a modern fairy tale.’
It’s delightful to track the poetic impulses and techniques in his fiction—the book is lyrical and rich with metaphor. Themes from Pedersen’s previous non-fiction prose publication, Boy Friends, resurface in Muckle Flugga, specifically the complicated nature of male friendship, communication and affection.
(The title of this newsletter is borrowed from Frances’ brilliant review.)
And that’s it for this month, but stay tuned to hear more about what’s coming up in the next issue. And if you submitted to us, remember to check your junk mail!