ISSUE 50

Time points are markers, measures of having consistently sustained what started as a thought, an impulse – in this case a literary journal devoted to short fiction bearing a connection to the Indian subcontinent.

This release of Out of Print is our fiftieth. Half of a hundred! That feels like an achievement. In truth, though, every release of Out of Print bears, for me, the celebratory excitement of an achievement as we present a collection put together from the stories that have been submitted to the journal.

This fiftieth edition features authors whom we invited to be part of the issue, authors whose works we have admired but who have not appeared in Out of Print before, and translators we have followed and whom we respect.

Of the nine stories featured, three are written originally English. The remaining are translations. The works are:

‘Mother Bereft of Traces’ by Telugu Dalit writer, Joopaka Subhadra, translated together by Alladi Uma and M Sridhar;

‘Twilight’ by Tamil Dalit writer, Bama, translated by Anjum Khan;

‘Smugglers‘ by Epitacio Pias, translated from Portuguese by Paul Melo e Castro.

‘The News’ by Hari Krishna Kaul, translated from Kashmiri, in a collaborative process, by Kalpana Raina, Tanveer Ajsi, Gowhar Fazili And Gowhar Yaqoob;

‘The Class of 1991’ by Sumana Roy;

‘A Song Of Love And Thirst’ by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay, translated from Bangla by Arunava Sinha;

‘With Fate Conspire’ by Vandana Singh from her collection Ambiguity Machines; ‘Ajitesh Uncle’ by Amit Chaudhuri, reprinted from a 1998 anthology;

and two works by debut translators: Shakeela Akhtar’s ‘Dain’, translated By Annie Zaidi and Dadapeer Jyman’s ‘City Street’, translated by Indira Chandrasekhar.

We invite you to read these intensely focussed works that speak to the contemporary in unique ways – capturing moments of the past through a lens in the present; unpacking the present to reveal the staggering cruelties and misconceptions that inform the way we construct society; looking forward with the reality of human engagement in all its harshness and frailty, its analytic strength and emotional turbulence, in sight. The collection makes us, at Out of Print, proud that we are able to maintain this platform for short fiction.

The art on the cover of Out of Print 50 is by Aisha Khalid. We are grateful to Aikon Art, New York for the connection to the artist.