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arthurmandal.bsky.social
Brit/US writer of uncanny fiction. Best Small Fictions 2025. Over 30 stories in The Barcelona Review, LITRO, december, The Forge, The Los Angeles Review and others. @nightjarpress Based in Eugene, Oregon (but grew up in UK). www.arthurmandal.com
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Sharing the most recent issue of The Lincoln Review @thelincolnreview.bsky.social , which has the beautiful prints of Imogen Reid @imogenreid.bsky.social featured in it (link in first comment).

Looking forward to starting these three I bought today. Amit Chaudhuri, “Sweet Shop”; Banu Mushtaq, Heart Lamp (which won the International Booker); and one of these ghost/horror collections that Penguin are starting, clustered around a single idea – this one is on myth, edited by Katy Soar.

In the midst of these turbulent times, I will monastically continue to list my top ten list of literary criticism – no. 2: “Literary Theory” by Terry Eagleton (1983). It’s hard to write ‘funny’ literary theory, but Eagleton on the fascism of British modernism is just exquisite.

Great piece came out this week by Swetha Amit in Bending Genres @bendinggenres.bsky.social . Well worth the read. bendinggenres.com/mountain-lio...

A short fiction of mine came out in a previous issue of the Stand last year. Now their new issue is out, I’ll share it. (there’s also a link to the pdf in the first comment). It’s called “Walking in Circles”.

About a month ago I posted some pictures of an art gallery I visited in the state of Orissa, India. Now here are a few pictures from the actual place itself. 1/2

Sitting in a UK café: a British Asian Muslim in full kurtah, joking with older white working-class folks. It strikes me—if no one’s feeding us hate, most people manage difference just fine.

The writer whose work I’m sharing this week is Sean Padraic Birnie @seanbirnie.bsky.social , a writer of dark/horror short fiction based in Brighton, UK. Some very disturbing atmospheres in these texts – check out “Nubbins” and “Three Stories”. seanbirnie.com

A disturbing but enlightening interview with an American academic about the effect of instagram/tiktok/snapchat on youth. Three recommendations at the end: no personal device until you’re 14, no social media account until you’re 16,and a ban on all devices in schools. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MX...

Pleasantly surprised to find my name on the Best Small Fictions list of 2025 for a piece I had in @bendinggenres.bsky.social called “Apparitions”. Many thanks to Robert Vaughan for nominating me. Big congrats to all the other winners. altcurrentpress.com/best-small-f...

Arrived five days ago in my father’s (British) hometown. I yearned to flee this place as a kid. And yet I’ve been gravitating back to it every summer for over half my life now. Odd how you never really escape life’s rhythms, no matter what you think of them, and no matter how hard you try.

The peer whose work I’m sharing this week is Mikki Aronoff, a fiction writer based in New Mexico. What I really loved about this piece was the relationship between the siblings, and the amount of story the writer wisely leaves unsaid. midwayjournal.com/wasps/

My top ten list of literary criticism – no. 3: Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude. For all its faults, still the most amazing piece of prose ever written on what it means to be Mexican.