We read a lot of stories sent to us through the mail by kind and patient writers. These are the nine we liked a lot and thought you might, too. We're also happy to introduce a new columnist, Joanna Buoniconti, whose monthly columns we've enjoyed in our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Masthead & colophon
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 52.
Text: New Caledonia LT Std. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow.
LCRW is (usually) published in June & November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027. info@smallbeerpress.com · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. Contents © 2026 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration Cactus © 2026 Guilherme Nunes. All rights reserved. Printed by Paradise Copies.
Subscriptions: $28/4 issues. More options on our website. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. DRM-free ebooks (ISBN: 9781618732200) available from the lovely weightlessbooks.com
Please send fiction and poetry submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.
No AI use in any way.
As ever thanks to the authors, artists, & readers.
Made by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link using Affinity and Pixelmater Pro.
About the Authors of the Unofficial Burn It All Down Handbook
Matthew Bean plays benevolent god to some shrimps. He writes in the Iodine State.
Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She also has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Ash Huang has been published in Nightmare, Lightspeed, Ecotone, and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Diverse Worlds Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation, and is an alum of the Roots. Wounds. Words. Retreat, Tin House Winter Workshop and Reading Fellowship, and the Periplus Fellowship. She is currently a Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler Resident with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
Nicole Kimberling thinks about cooking way too much. When she's not wondering how to improve frozen vegetables, she is a novelist, and the editor of Blind Eye Books.
Tammy Komoff was a finalist for the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in Uncharted, Abyss & Apex, and more. When not writing she's usually found chasing her semi-feral daughters and their growing pack of mutts. For more information please visit tammykomoff.com or follow her on Bluesky.
Janice Leadingham is a Portland, Oregon based writer and tarot-reader originally from somewhere near Dollywood, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in the Northwest Review, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, Tiny Molecules, Maudlin House, Flash Frog, and Best Small Fictions 2024, among others. She is a 2026 Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, Pushcart, and Best American Short Stories nominee. You can find her at hagsoup.com and @thehagsoup everywhere.
Guilherme Nunes is a Brazilian illustrator and content creator who primarily works on private commissions, but also does advertising for companies in his country and even Riot Games' Wild Rift. His TikTok is one of the largest in the Brazilian art niche. He explores themes such as routines with two cats, digital anxiety, loneliness and not belonging, and fear of death with nonsensical humor. He primarily paints digitally, but also uses watercolors, acrylics, pastels, and markers in the process.
Caroline Shea is the author of Lambflesh. Her work has appeared in Cold Signal Magazine, The Deadlands, and Luna Station Quarterly, among other publications.
Alice St. Stirling is a writer from Western Pennsylvania. She studied creative writing at PennWest, Clarion, and Chatham University. Alice is a submissions reader for Fusion Fragment. Her other fiction is featured on Thirteen Podcast. Additionally, Alice has work forthcoming from UP magazine and Menhera Post-2020. When she's not working, writing, or reading, Alice can be found drawing and participating in local alternative fashion subcultures. Alice lives in an apartment in Pittsburgh with several Fate/Grand Order figures. Follow Alice on substack at @hystericalmagicrealism and on Bluesky.
Rhian Waller is a writer based in North Wales and Cheshire, UK. She reads and writes SF, fantasy, nature/eco-lit and horror for adults and young people. She also dabbles in poetry. She has worked as a journalist, lecturer and in PR, and when she's not doing that, she plays computer games, throws axes and looks for the green things growing through concrete. You can find some of her work at rhianwriting.wordpress.com.
Sophie Wereley was born in a suburb in the Mid-Atlantic, far from the ocean. She writes and reads from the home she shares with her family, including her husband, daughter, and cat. She is currently at work on a novel.
Santiago Wilson Heredia is a Peruvian-American writer from Boca Raton, Florida. He graduated from Brown University and is currently an MFA candidate at Syracuse University, where he's Fiction Co-Editor of Salt Hill Journal. His fiction is forthcoming in Gulf Coast and Okay Donkey.
