Forty Foot Press

05/03/2025

Before she published “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Lee had written short stories in which she explored some of its themes and characters.

05/03/2025

The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards shortlist has just been announced and we’re thrilled to see two of our titles included in two categories: Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, and Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry.

Here's what the judges wrote about our shortlisted titles:

‘What is ugly in this collection are the conflicts and secrets that drive each plot: burning wind turbines, mutated salmon and mortal hatred. In stories set in the UK and New Zealand, Kirsty Gunn’s characters confront forces that challenge their capacity to endure. Images of triumph are brought into sharp focus by a masterful wordsmith: memories of a pristine river, a herd of running deer and the shot not fired.’

‘This is a collection concerned with fibs and fables, and telling true stories perceived by others as tall stories. Emma Neale’s word alchemy takes everyday fustian and transforms it into something fine and precious and enduring as she strives for epiphanies, for transcendence, for truth-telling — for telling moments sifted from the quotidian flux. Fastidious attention to precise luminous detail, a vigilant ear for sound patterns, and an ironically self-aware literary consciousness are in play.’

Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors! And congratulations again to all the wonderful longlisted titles, including The Twisted Chain by Jason Gurney.

https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/2025-awards/shortlist/

04/03/2025

The end of the world according to Dürer 🐴⚔️

Albrecht Dürer was a master of printmaking. One of his most famous series of woodcuts on religious subjects is ‘Apocalipsis cù figuris’ (The Apocalypse), first published in 1498.

In this climactic version of 'The Four Horsemen', they represent Death (trident), Famine (scales), War (sword), and Plague (bow).

Albrecht Dürer, 'The Four Horsemen'. Published in Dürer’s 'Apocalipsis cù figuris', Nürnberg 1511. Woodcut. 39 x 28 cm. Photo: ©Royal Academy of Arts, London.

04/03/2025

Happy Mardi Gras! 💜 💚 💛 This 1898 Mardi Gras poster features twenty Mystick Krewe of Comus floats representing a total of eighteen Shakespeare plays.

🎨 : T. Fitzwilliam & Co. Stationers, Engravers and Printers, New Orleans, 1898. Folger Shakespeare Library.

04/03/2025

🎉Cover reveal! 🎉 Our March/April issue features new work from Alex Dimitrov and so many more. Read excerpts now at aprweb.org, or better yet, subscribe today for less than the prize of one fancy coffee per issue: https://loom.ly/rcBl6Z4

04/03/2025

Manchester’s the Lowry has unveiled its 25th anniversary programme, including a free immersive experience billed as “one of the most ambitious projects” that the venue has ever undertaken 👇

04/03/2025

04/03/2025

A new biography of Anthony Hecht shows that his life was as various and unexpected as his poems, which evolved from modernist pastiche to extended experiments with the dramatic monologue.

03/03/2025

[Armantrout] has dialed into [William Carlos Williams’] vision of the world as a realm of fructuous and bountiful fertility…[Go Figure] contains 92 poems and what feels like an equal number of sharply observed images drawn from the vegetable kingdom.

—Robert Archambeau reviews Go Figure by Rae Armantrout from Wesleyan University Press https://tinyurl.com/2v2a2w4s

03/03/2025

Michael Berkeley's guest is the poet Imtiaz Dharker.

02/03/2025

All Fours, July’s second novel, is about a ‘semi-famous’ interdisciplinary artist whose work is filled with ‘...

02/03/2025

Out now: ABR March issue! ABR looks at lives and their legacies.

We review biographies of Ronald Reagan, Angela Merkel, Boris Johnson, Joan Lindsay, and Glyn Davis asks whether leadership matters at all.

Our cover features 'You Yang Ponds' by Fred Williams and Christopher Allen reviews The Diaries of Fred Williams, 1963-1970 by Patrick McCaughey

unearths letters sent to Menzies during the Petrov Affair and Andrea Goldsmith addresses her ‘unread books’.

We review works by Fredric Jameson and Colm Tóibín, about Indie p**n, films The Brutalist and Babygirl, a poetry collection from Eileen Chong, fiction by Olga Tokarczuk and much more.

02/03/2025

When Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans published his novel À rebours in 1884, he was still a part-time author. By day, the thirty-six-year-old Parisian was a