Announcement and Cover Reveal: An Invite to Eternity. Tales of Nature Disrupted
Calque Press is pleased to announce the ToC and unveil the cover of its inaugural publication.
The cover has been designed by Vince Haig, who has also created our logo: an iceberg is an iconic image of the fight against climate change; it also represents the small percentage of visible voices available in translation. At present, independent presses are effecting real change in the visibility of translated literature. Calque would like to join this ever-growing community of projects committed to creating bridges between different readerships and cultures.
Our first project, An Invite to Eternity. Tales of Nature Disrupted, takes its cue from John Clare to address the most pressing issue humanity is facing: anthropogenic climate change. Edited by Gary Budden and Marian Womack, and with a foreword by Helen Marshall, it includes fiction written originally in English, short fiction in translation, and also stories produced by a new generation of multi-lingual authors working in more than one language, and engaging with more than one culture. The result is a collection of ecological short fiction for our times, from an international group of writers, working from a variety of languages, cultures and traditions.
We are extremely proud of this amazing international ToC, and thankful to all the authors - Naomi Booth, Tiina Raevaara, Timothy J. Jarvis, Alexandra Manglis, DP Watt, Vida Cruz, Claire Dean, Regina Kanyu Wang, Malcolm Devlin, Gareth E. Rees, Usman T Malik, Camilla Grudova, Alberto Chimal, Helen Marshall and Kathleen Rani Hagen - who are helping launch this project.
This project is a summary of the aims of Calque's editors, James and Marian Womack. About the press, whose remit is 'Translation, Poetry & Nature', its co-founder, award-winning poetry translator James Womack, said: 'We've wanted for a long time to publish what we think is some of the most interesting and engaged literature around, whatever language and whichever culture it derives from. We are very happy to be starting Calque's journey in English with such a fascinating book, and we are sure that our forthcoming titles will live up to this initial statement of intent.'
The press is launching a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the final stages of the anthology and support the larger project. This will go live on 29th of May. The book is scheduled for publication in Autumn 2019.
The press release can be downloaded by clicking in the below image:
AN INVITE TO ETERNITY - TALES OF NATURE DISRUPTED
ToC:
Foreword, by Helen Marshall
Introduction, by Gary Budden and Marian Womack
Naomi Booth - WARNING: Localised Quicksand
Tiina Raevaara - The Birds Always Return
Timothy J. Jarvis - Brother Burgholt's Charm
Alexandra Manglis - What Planets Are These, Conjured from the Depths of Our Imagination?
DP Watt - We are the Clay
Vida Cruz - In the Shadow of the Typhoon, Humans and Mahiwaga Cooperate for Survival
Claire Dean - Lichen Storey
Regina Kanyu Wang - The Story of Dao
Malcolm Devlin - My Uncle Eff
Gareth E. Rees - Tyrannosaurs Bask in the Warmth of the Comet
Usman T Malik - Laal Andhi
Camilla Grudova - Jackfruit
Alberto Chimal - Body
Kathleen Rani Hagen - Snow, Wind and Diesel
AUTHOR BIOS:
Naomi Booth is the author of acclaimed novels Sealed (Dead Ink, 2017) and The Lost Art of Sinking (Penned in the Margins, 2015). She was born in Bradford and grew up in Dewsbury. Naomi read English at the University of Cambridge and spent several years working in publishing before completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Sussex. As an academic she has lectured in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Sussex and York St John University, where she serves as Subject Director for Creative Writing.
Gary Budden is a writer and co-founder of Influx Press. His book of uncanny psychogeographies and landscape punk, Hollow Shores, was published in 2017 by Dead Ink, and his dark fiction novella, Judderman (as D.A. Northwood) was published in 2018 by the Eden Book Society, and has been recently shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. His experimental creative essay, illustrated by artist Maxim Griffin, The White Heron Beneath the Reactor – a tale of egrets, climate collapse and Dungeness in Kent – is published in summer 2019. His short story ‘Greenteeth’ was nominated for a 2017 British Fantasy Award and adapted into a short film by the filmmaker Adam Scovell. His work has been published widely, including in Structo, Black Static, The Shadow Booth, Elsewhere, Unthology, The Lonely Crowd, The Quietus, Gorse, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction (vol. 4).
Alberto Chimal (Toluca, México, 1970). Fiction writer and essayist. He is the recipient of the Premio Bellas Artes de Cuento San Luis Potosí, the Premio Bellas Artes de Narrativa Colima, the Premio de la Fundación Cuatrogatos, and in 2013 he was shortlisted for the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos. He is the author of the novels Los esclavos (2009), La Torre y el Jardín (2012) and Cartas para Lluvia (2017), as well as several volumes of short fiction. He has also edited anthologies such as Viajes celestes. Cuentos fantásticos del siglo XIX (2006) and La tienda de los sueños. Un siglo de cuento fantástico mexicano (2015), and has written two books of essays: La cámara de maravillas (2003) and La generación Z (2012). He teaches literature and creative writing, and has given classes and workshops in Mexico and other countries. Some of his work has been published in magazines and anthologies in English.
Vida Cruz was working as a journalist during Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan). Six years and four jobs later, the memory of the things she’d seen and the stories she’d heard still burn bright in her mind. A 2018 Tiptree Fellow and a graduate of the 2014 Clarion Writers Workshop, she is also the first Filipina to win the Writers of the Future Contest. Her fiction can be found in Expanded Horizons, LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, the Philippine Speculative Fiction series, and various other anthologies. She lives in Manila with her family and six rambunctious, meme-able dogs.
Claire Dean’s short stories have been widely published and are included in Best British Short Stories 2011, 2014 & 2017 (Salt). The Unwish, Bremen, Marionettes and Into the Penny Arcade are published as chapbooks by Nightjar Press. Her first collection, The Museum of Shadows and Reflections, was published by Unsettling Wonder in 2016. Claire is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University where her research explores material writing practice and ecological storymaking.
Malcolm Devlin's stories have appeared in various publications including Interzone, Black Static and Shadows and Tall Trees. His collection, You Will Grow Into Them, is published by Unsung Stories.
Camilla Grudova lives in Edinburgh, UK. Her fiction has appeared in The White Review and Granta. The Doll's Alphabet, her first short story collection, was published in 2017 by Fitzcarraldo to great critical acclaim.
Kathleen Rani Hagen (1988) is a Norwegian writer. Her first novel Grunnleggende plantediversitet (Fundamentals of Plant Diversity) was published in 2018. She also works as a literary critic and essayist, with a special interest in ecology and environmentalism. She lives in Oslo with her family, where she is currently working on her second novel.
Timothy J. Jarvis is a writer and scholar with an interest in the antic, the weird, the strange. He has published one novel,The Wanderer, which came out from Perfect Edge Books in the summer of 2014. His short fiction has appeared in various places.
Regina Kanyu Wang (1990) is a bilingual writer from Shanghai. Her writing has been supported by Shanghai Culture Development Foundation and Writing Downtown in Las Vegas residency. Her short story, 'Back to Myan' won the SF Comet international short story competition. Her novella, Of Cloud and Mist won the Xingyun Award for Global Chinese SF. Her stories can be found in Mengya, Science Fiction World, Southern People Weekly, Galaxy’s Edge, Where the Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation. She has also published a science fiction story collection, Of Cloud and Mist 2.2.
Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani writer resident in Florida. He has won a Bram Stoker and a British Fantasy Award. His stories have been finalists for the Nebula, the Storysouth Million Writers and the World Fantasy awards and have been reprinted in several Year's Best anthologies. He likes distance running but you can catch him on Twitter @usmantm.
Alexandra Manglis is a Cypriot writer and editor. She writes short SFF and creative non-fiction while also working as a poetry editor. Most recently she is the co-editor of 21 | 19: Contemporary Poets in the Nineteenth-Century Archive (Milkweed 2019), an anthology of lyrical essays by contemporary North American poets on the subject of nineteenth-century US literature. She is an enthusiastic alumna of the Clarion West class of 2017 and holds a D.Phil in English from the University of Oxford.
Helen Marshall is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of two short story collections and two poetry chapbooks. She holds a PhD from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University investigating literature written during the time of the Black Death, which inspired her recent novel The Migration (Titan, 2019). She is Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing and Publishing and Director of the Centre for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Anglia Ruskin University.
Tiina Raevaara (1979) is a Finnish author who has written short stories, novels and non-fiction books. Her short story collection I Don’t Feel You Beside Me (2010) won the acclaimed Runeberg literature prize in 2011. Several of her short stories have been translated in English. Short story My Creator, My Creation, was published in The Best European Fiction 2013 anthology. Raevaara uses her writing to give a point of view to animals, creatures and things that people fear, admire, consider strange. Her latest work is a trilogy, which mixes dark romanticism and classic horror with elements of modern science.
Gareth E. Rees is the author of Car Park Life, an exploration of the UK's retail car parks from Plymouth to Edinburgh (Influx Press, 2019), occult Hastings memoir The Stone Tide(Influx Press, 2018), and acclaimed psychogeographic work Marshland (Influx Press, 2013). He has written weird fiction and horror tales for titles including This Dreaming Isle, The Shadow Booth, Unthology and The Lonely Crowd. He is the founder of the website Unofficial Britain (www.unofficialbritain.com), lead singer in garage punk band, The Dirty Contacts, and guitarist in psychedelic noise duo, Black Arches.
DP Watt lives between Scotland and England in an otherworldly, misty borderland. He taught drama, literature and philosophy in various UK universities for twenty years before focusing on writing. His stories have appeared in anthologies with Ex Occidente, Zagava, Side Real, Egaeus, Sarob and Swan River presses. His collection Almost Insentient, Almost Divine, published by Undertow Publications, was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. You can find him at The Interlude House: www.theinterludehouse.co.uk
Marian Womack is a writer and co-founder of Calque Press. She is the first Spanish graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop, and her debut English-language eco-fiction collection, Lost Objects, was published in 2018 by Luna Press. She has published speculative and hybrid fiction and poetry in Weird Fiction Review, Apex, LossLit, and the anthologies EcoPunk! Speculative Tales of Radical Futures, The Silent Garden Collective, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction (vol. 3). Her fiction has been performed, exhibited in Somerset House as part of an installation about activism and ecology, and translated into Italian. Marian's short story 'Kingfisher' was nominated in 2019 for a BSFA Award, and her non-fiction can be read in New Internationalist, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. She works as a librarian, and her doctoral research looks at the intersections of eco-storytelling, independent publishing, and activism.