Nothing truly disappears

April 2025

With another submissions window now closed, we’re getting down to the wonderful – and difficult – task of selecting work for Issue #32 of Gutter. We have hundreds and hundreds of poems, stories and essays to read over the coming weeks, and read them we will. If you sent work to us, thank you! We’re grateful for every single submission, and we promise to get back to you as soon as we can.

Over on the website this month, we have a real treat for you, with two online-only stories to enjoy, plus another from Issue #31 by the fabulous, Booker-longlisted author Martin MacInnes.

All three of these stories were jointly commissioned by the Edinburgh Science Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and we’re delighted to have the chance to publish them together.

The first is by Eris Young: ‘Asking for Trouble’. In it, the reader is thrown backwards, into the depths of a jungle, where researchers encounter a fungus previously unknown to western science. It is a fungus that offers almost unimaginable hope, turning what is most poisoned and damaged into pure, clean water.

The second story is by L.R. Lam, which centres on the work of a mysterious artist called Verdigris. Their great masterpiece, a weathered old safe, the contents of which are unknown, sits in the National Gallery of Scotland. After 50 years, it is finally going to be opened, its secret revealed. The story is called ‘Future Safe.’

The last piece of fiction is ‘Adam’s Breath’, by Martin MacInnes. Adam was a collector of air, the invisible breath of the world. He gathered it in jars and vials, each one looking precisely alike. But with Adam now gone, his sister Zoe must try to make sense of what her brother left behind. What remains of the dead, she wonders, and our many bygone worlds? (This month’s title comes from Martin’s story.)

With all of this to enjoy, we are spoiling you. So you won’t mind, I hope, if you have to wait a little longer for our Book of the Month review. The book is Archivum, a collection by the poet Thereza Muñoz, and it’s published at the end of April. You’ll find our review online in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, for us at least, it’s back to reading your work!