an invitation to feel deeply

September 2024

We at Gutter were delighted with our thirtieth edition, published last month – and it seems readers were, too. There are copies lingering still in bookshops around the country, but here at Gutter HQ we’ve almost sold out. So if you haven’t yet got your hands on one, you know what you need to do.

Up on the website, we’ve turned our attention to food. Our Book of the Month for September is Between Two Waters, by the celebrated chef Pam Brunton, co-owner of Inver, in Argyll, Scotland’s first Green Michelin Starred restaurant. But this isn’t a recipe book, designed only to make your mouth water. This is a book to make you think. According to Candice Chung, our reviewer, the book is an ‘absorbing, intellectual and fiercely personal inquiry’. In it, she writes, ‘Brunton will skilfully –sometimes devastatingly – reveal how our eating lives are bound to our relationship with land.’

If you’d like to read Candice’s review, you’ll find it here. Between Two Waters, she concludes, ‘is not a feel-good book. But it is an invitation to feel deeply.’ (And thanks to Candice for providing this month’s title.)

The other new piece of writing you’ll find online is Sara Baume’s essay, ‘The Arts Centre’, from Issue #30. Sara is a tremendous writer, truly world class, so it was a real treat to feature her work in the magazine.

The essay is an account of a friendship in its earliest days – in this case a friendship with the artist Mollie Douthit. The pair met in the West Cork Arts Centre, in Skibbereen, ‘An acropolis of concrete and glass and steel’.

Sara recounts her first impressions of Mollie:

She was single and had no family in Ireland, and I immediately saw something terribly beautiful in this version of a life – spare, self-contained, resolute – it was the kind of life I would invent for a character in a novel; stripped of responsibilities and entanglements that might clutter my plot or get in the way of the course I had set for her.

It’s a beautiful, captivating piece of writing, and you can find it on our website, here.

News

The big news to share is that soon – any day now – we’ll be opening up for submissions for our next issue. It’s always an exciting time in the Gutter calendar, and our editors are very much looking forward to read your work. As usual, we welcome short fiction (up to 2,500 words) and poetry (up to three poems per writer). We’re also especially keen to read some non-fiction, so if you’re an essay writer, send us what you’ve got.

The submissions window should open by the 7th September, and will remain open for four weeks. Check this page for details.