New Writing

Eminence – New Novel Extract by Deepak Kamra

The Cantacuzene Family Crest (Quae Nocent Docent – What Harms, Teaches) Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books PROLOGUE The Waters Off Greenland September 1899 The steamship surges forward, its prow lifting and falling over the swells of the North Atlantic. At each new wave, the ship hesitates and shudders, leaning backward towards America, … Read more

Iron Dragon, Black Swan – New Novel Extract by Abby Sandman

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books I.I The first eight years of Dai’s life smelled like stone. Like the smoky musk of sunbaked battlements and the salty nip of sea-soaked tunnels. And they smelled like gonalei, the roots of the bone white gona flower that grew in abundance at the base of … Read more

Tamara’s Angel – New Nonfiction by Ralph La Rosa

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction For a few seconds I was disoriented, unable to focus in the shadows. “Come over here, please,” Tamara said. I stepped around chunks of fallen plaster and joined her. “Can you see it now?” she said. “Yes, I see. What do you call that big one?” “My … Read more

The Woman Behind the Painter – New Nonfiction by Devora Rogers

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction The True-Life Story of Mari Carmen Flores Aizpuru, Partner and Lover to Famed Spanish Abstract Painter Bonifacio Alfonso. In 1964, as Spain was thirty years deep under the rule of Francoism, a poor painter came to sit at the table of a well-heeled couple who owned a popular … Read more

The Fabric – New Poetry by John Peter Beck

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry A thread of birds pulledfrom the shorn field becomesa scarf knit by the wind,intertwining the branches, flowingastride the bare necks of trees then expands to a needlepoint shawlthrown wild within the October aircovering the grey and brown shoulders of low hillsagainst the coming cold then explodes, full as … Read more

The anti ice cream van – New Poetry by Tim Shore

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry No magic roundabout reverie herethe anti ice cream van haunts the suburbssinging scrap iron, any old iron A tannoy trumpets a thin melodya voice singing with a scrape of scrap metalno magic round about here A Bedford van drives slowly down the streeta hawker sings, walking aheadscrap … Read more

Finisterre – New Novel Extract by Caroline Brothers

Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books 1. Feather She hesitated at the fork. One branch ran inland a little way, then hugged the perimeter of the wheat fields where the harvesters had been and gone, scraping the landscape raw. In a couple of weeks, the diggers and then the fertilising machines … Read more