London's First Open Literature Magazine

Here’s Issue Eight in the printed flesh. Be sure to keep up with our Twitter feed to find out when and where you can pick up a copy (you can also do this by visiting this website’s homepage – once there, if you turn your head slightly to the right you’ll see why).

Alternatively, leave it till the weekend, we’ll have it with all our stockists by then.

As always, let us know if you can’t find a copy, and when you do find a copy, let us know what you think.

Here’s Issue Eight. It’s what you’ll pick up if you head to one of our stockists this coming weekend and the weeks to follow.

Inside you’ll find:

-An editorial by MG Paterson of London Historians.

-The cover story The Very Short Journey Of Mr R. by Akis Papantonis. (It’s breathtaking, we promise.)

-A painful look at ifs in a tale by Jo Gatford, entitled If, Then.

-The mood-lightener that is Jehovah’s Witness by Alun Evans which gets funnier as it gets darker, such is often the way.

-N Quentin Woolf yapping on about writing again with his now regular column. (Yapping? Nay. It just keeps getting better. Words That Mean Home couldn’t come with better timing as Summer Holiday season fast approaches.)

-That Open Penner Tamara Vos wandered around Hackney until she found Pages of Hackney. Thankfully for our column Stinky Little Bookshops she loved it and has provided a spotlight on the Lower Clapton Road bookshop.

-A cringeworthy and explicit look at the Saturday morning of S. Manley Hadley’s shameless protagonist in Wank.

-And a round-up of the best so far from our Little Printer publication

You’ll also find a typo we missed. For this, our editor feels he should punish himself by handing over books from his personal bookshelf. First three people to email in identifying the eyesore of a typo will receive one from his shelf.

Should you have any trouble finding your FREE issue of Open Pen Issue Eight, contact us and we’ll contact your stockist.

Thanks again to Josh Neal – our new staff illustrator – for providing the front cover image.

“So I’m driving across Europe in a car like a womb, with the windows shut tight against the cold and the music on, driving in thin white daylight and darkness, hour after hour, and I realise early on that I don’t know how to pronounce the town-names.”

That’s right.

Watch out for N Quentin Woolf’s latest article for Open Pen Words That Mean Home. Mr. Woolf takes a look at the nature of words across Europe and muses as to our own relationship with words, and how England chooses to employ them. This is Woolf’s third article for Open Pen, and is well worth checking out.

Aside from writing, literary trailblazer N Quentin Woolf hosts a podcast for the Londonist. You can listen to latest shows here. Open Pen editor and literary grump Sean Preston will serve as a guest in the next few months, so be sure to listen to that show if you’re keen to find our more about Open Pen’s plans for the rest of two-thousand-and-thirteen.

The latest must-read episode in the adventures of Open Pen goes by the name of Issue Eight and will hits bookshops next week, just in time for what HAS to be a horrendously sunny late April weekend.

Bob’s your uncle.

Meet Josh Neal, our new staff illustrator. Except ‘new’ is a sort of fiction, as Open Pen back copy aficionados will know (that may just be our editor). Josh first illustrated for Open Pen’s front cover way back when he pitched for our Issue Three winning short story Stories by Eddie Willson. Since then, we’ve had some great illustrations adorn our covers, twice courtesy of a winning author themselves, in fact, but Josh Neal’s illustrations truly feel like the snuggest fit for Open Pen, which is why all future editions of Open Pen will come with his unique drawn style of thick black lines and flooded pastels… we love it.

Josh Neal – illustrated for our OUTWORD event poster in November, 2012.

Josh graduated from the University of Plymouth with First class honours after studying Design: Illustration.

Since then he’s provided work for the likes of Ammo Magazine, AOI Images 36, Don’t Panic, 24 Hour Comic Etc, Fake Magazine, Mambo, Plymouth Short Fiction, Computer Arts Magazine, Puck Studio, Put A Egg on it, Pictoplasma, Secret 7 Records and a fair few more. His work was also a feature on Creative Review’s Pick of D&AD New Blood 2011, so it’s a delight to have him on board.

You can catch Josh’s next illustration for Akis Papantonis’ Issue Eight story The Very Short Journey Of Mr. R in just a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for news on that.

You can contact Josh through our contact page or by visiting his website.

What are you doing tomorrow? Wrong. You’re heading down to the North London Lit Fest. They’ve got quite a feast going on. Then you’re going to go home and get a good night of sleep, because you’ll be doing it all again on Thursday

There’s a host of dynamic events throughout the two days, and some very special guests, including Faber. For a full look at the schedule, check out the North London Lit Fest website. There’s something here for everyone, whether you’re an industry type or not. Here’s a list of the more special or enticing events throughout the two days (our favourite is one that none of you budding writers should miss: Speed-Pitch – Two minutes, face to face, pitching to an agent. Ha!):

Faber How to Get Published

Flash Fiction

Gala

Hird, Laura (workshop)

Poetry Slam

Small Publishing Forum

Speed-pitch

Twiction

As mentioned, the festival takes place over two days (that’s tomorrow, 26th and Wednesday, 27th March, 2-7pm each day), and is hosted by Middlesex University Hendon Campus (in the heart of North London), which is a short walk from the Northern Line’s Hendon Central station.

Open Pen will be on hand, so be sure to pick up a copy. We promise we won’t watch you during your two-minute pitch.

Yes, we know. It’s been ages since the last Open Pen. Three long months! At long last Issue Eight is on its way, due out in a month, tops. It’s a sort of plum/lavender in colour. Rather wimpy looking, actually. So it’s a good job we’ve got the balance right with the content.

Now, I want to throw out testosteroned hyperbole here like ‘No Holds Barred Lit’ or ‘Hard-Hitting No Bullsh*t Word Bombs’, but after reading Open Pen columnist N Quentin Woolf’s Issue Eight article on an Englishman’s relationship with the word, I’m much more comfortable with stating that the included short stories are anything but wimpy (forgive me Ernie).

Ernest Hemingway. Keen proponent of hard-hitting literature. And bath-time.

Akis Papantonis is our Issue Eight winner. Greek National and Oxford Fellow, Papantonis has sculpted an excellent tale in The Very Short Journey of Mr R. that will leave you a gulpy stunned mess at its excellent climax. Short stories and essays of his have appeared in Greek literary journals and newspapers, in the ‘Oxford Magazine’, and in the anthology ‘We Are All Immigrants’ (Patakis Eds., 2007).

We’ve also got If, Then by Jo Gatford. Gatford has short works published in SmokeLong Quarterly, PANK, Litro and The Pygmy Giant, amongst others.  She lives in Brighton where she wrangles babies and writes for her supper. Wank by Scott Hadley is as charming a read as the title suggests, but immensely cringeworthy and funny. Also on the table is the playful tale Jehovah’s Witness by Alun Evans, previously published in Structo Magazine, Éclat Fiction and others. Will you see the light? Either way, we’re chuffed to bits with the richness of this issue’s librettos. Really hard-hitti… erm… quite… erm… Ah forget it… they’re a positively full-braced clusterfudge!

And on top of all that, we’ve got a tasty guest editorial (that’s not a hint that we were able to agree terms with literary behemoth Ainsley Harriot), as well as another look at one of London’s Stinky Little Bookshops.

Right, Hyperbole (pron (here at least); HYPERBOWL!!!) engaged. Open Pen Issue Eight is super-charged to knock you for six, whatwhat!

Ugh, it’s confusing being English.

Y’ here! Which probably means you’re aware that our website has been revamped, restyled, reimagined (much like Indiana Jones, but much, much prettier). Take a look around. All the usual content is here, but you’ll notice how slicker it is than its previous clunky incarnation.

A carnation, not ‘incarnation’, which is a different word.

It’s been a quiet, somewhat subdued start to the year for Open Pen. But we’ll be standing up straight and screaming for the final three-quarters of the year, mark our words in upper case. Look out for:

Open Pen Issue Eight. Landing in mid-April. It’s a sort of lavender in colour. Ooo-er.

Live events. We’ve been holding crisis talks and after several walk-outs and at least one deadlock situation, Mother Nature has agreed to an extended run of blistering heat in early May, which is when our next live event will be. We’ll be serving up all of the Issue Eight winning authors, some Filthy Fiction (via Piers Pereira, natch) and a microfiction competition which is actually a very glib way of sourcing new content for:

Little Printer. If you haven’t heard (or bothered listening), we’ve got a weekly publication on BERG’s Little Printer. Microfiction on tiny print. It comes naturally to us.

More details on the above will of course follow in all the usual sleazy online ports (Facebook, Twitter, newsletters and right here… here… here).

As ever, we’re looking for new and interesting writers to submit to Open Pen Magazine. Please have a look at our submissions page and see what you can cook up.

Stay in touch.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Open Pen Issue Seven from any one of our stockists.

This is what you’re looking for, featuring new and aspiring writers AJDunn,  Peter Higgins, Tom Wood (winner of our London Writers’ Cafe section), an article on Brick Lane Bookshop by Kate Ellis and yet another bang on the money article from N Quentin Woolf.

Thanks to everyone that attended Outword to make it a huge success. For photos of the event check out our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/openpenmagazine 

Our winner and reaper of the full cover-story treatment (the seventh person to seal it thus far) is none other than AJDunn, who runs an art gallery, ‘UK-Artworks‘, which is based online. However, literature has always been her passion and considers herself motivated by the writer/reader connection that is established through the medium of literature.

AJDunn’s noiresque short story Heir Hunter can be found in Issue Seven of Open Pen, out next week, along with a new column by Londonist Out Loud‘s N Quentin Woolf and the latest edition to Stinky Little Bookshops by Issue Four winner Kate Ellis, who is covering Open Pen stockist Brick Lane Bookshop.

All our winning fiction writers for Issue Seven will be on hand to read from their winning pieces at OUTWORD. Check here for tickets.