editorial

First class post

brought express delivery is what you get. Find one, lift the flap and put your hand in. We can guarantee that you’ll get a free issue from every letter box with a newleaf logo on the side.

Half of the authors in this issue have not been published by us before; among them Anna Zacharias, Florence Geiss, Anne Hensel and Anna Reissert. With short-story writer Alan Aydelott we enter the world of crime, and we have the chance to introduce Chrystalla Thoma, an exciting new poetic voice from Cyprus. The other half dozen have returned to newleaf with a fresh supply of well-aimed words of love, God and cats. The smell of chocolate wafts up from between the pages as well – and take care not to overdose on the last poem.

A newleaf without a text by Ole D. Herlyn is like a snail without a backpack, or a fish without a puncture kit, but for some reason her ghostly handwriting insisted on appearing in, around, behind and between the other texts. Scary.

Per capita, Bremen is pretty hot stuff in literary terms. It is home to writers like the poet Sujata Bhatt, Michael Augustin and crime thriller author Juergen Alberts, Artur Becker, Bas Boettcher or Martin Brink­mann – and there are still twenty-four letters to go. In December 2005, Das Literaturhaus Bremen launched its website at www.literaturhaus-bremen.de, where you’ll find newleaf under Literaturorte/N and newleaf press under Literaturorte/Verlage.

Now break the seal, read and enjoy. For, as A. E. Housman once said, ‘Twenty will not come again.’

Julia Boll, Simon Makhali and Ian Watson, January 2006

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