Small Beer press is the publisher started by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, publishers of incredibly brilliant, mind-boggling science fiction and fantasy. They're copyfighter-friendly too, with many Creative Commons releases — and they're committed to publishing some of the best independent work in the field. — Read the rest

Small Beer Press, which publishes wonderful science fiction and fantasy titles like Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, is having a giant sale to raise cash to cover its printers' bills. This is a rare opportunity to get hold of some of the finest genre lit being published today while doing a solid for an amazing, ground-breaking, Creative Commons-friendly specialty press:

Get a Massive Box of Books: The Mount, Carmen Dog, Report to the Men's Club, Travel Light, Mockingbird, Perfect Circle, Trampoline: an anthology, Kalpa Imperial, Meet Me in the Moon Room · 9 good books: Only $59

Carol Emshwiller 3-for-1 Super Special:
The Mount, Carmen Dog, Report to the Men's Club
Don't forget to tell us which titles you'd like!

"Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales." That's how Small Beer Press describes Never Have I Ever, the new short story collection from Isabel Yap. And that's accurate.

I first discovered Isa's work in 2013, when we studied together at the Clarion Writer's Workshop with Cory Doctorow and other fantastic teachers. — Read the rest

Macarthur "Genius" Kelly Link and her husband Gavin Grant are the forces-of-nature behind the amazing Small Beer Press (previously).

The novel tore my heart out in 1992: a contrafactual memoir of L Frank Baum; a desperately poor girl called Dorothy Gael from Manhattan, KS; and a makeup artist on the set of the classic MGM film.

I've been reading and admiring Nathan Ballingrud's short fiction since 1992, when we were both students at the Clarion workshop. Now, some of his very best work has been collected in a moving, sorrowful volume called
North American Lake Monsters, from the wonderful Small Beer Press. — Read the rest

The next SF in SF free science fiction events is coming up on Feb 13, with guests Jedediah Berry and Laurie R. King:

Jedediah Berry was raised in the Hudson Valley region of New York State. His short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy.

Small Beer Press is an astoundingly good independent science fiction press run by Gavin Grant and the brilliant short story writer Kelly Link. Kelly has been in Franciscan Children's Hospital with their newborn, Ursula, having moved in after Ursula's early tenure at Ronald McDonald House following her very premature birth last February (she weighed 1 Lb, 9 oz at birth!). — Read the rest

Ben Rosenbaum sez, "The marvelous Small Beer Press has put the entirety of my new short-story collection The Ant King and Other Stories under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license and made it downloadable in a number of formats. To celebrate I am having a little contest for the best derivative works!" — Read the rest

Mary sez,

To raise money for the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series, the hosts (Ellen Datlow and Matt Kressel) are holding a raffle. The prizes are unbelievable. Original art from Thomas Canty, Neil Gaiman's keyboard (autographed), short story critiques by Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois… The list goes on and on.

Woohoo! I'm on the Locus Award ballot — twice! Once for Best Novella for my story After the Siege and again for Best Collection for my book Overclocked. Thanks to everyone who voted for me! I'm in damned good company too — if you're looking for a masterclass in contemporary sf, this would be the place to start:

SF NOVEL
The Accidental Time Machine, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
Brasyl, Ian McDonald (Pyr)
Halting State, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
Spook Country, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK)
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL
Endless Things, John Crowley (Small Beer Press; Overlook)
Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
Pirate Freedom, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
Territory, Emma Bull (Tor)
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc)

Link

Cole sez, "Maureen F. McHugh's speculative fiction collection MOTHERS & OTHER MONSTERS has been released online by Small Beer Press as a free Creative Commons download."

Small Beer is knocking them out of the park with CC releases by some of science fiction's most talented, most brilliant short fiction writers. — Read the rest

Gavin of Small Beer Press sez,

It's tax day in the USA and we all need cheering up. We're celebrating at Small Beer Press by publishing John Kessel's first collection of short stories in ten years, The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, as well as releasing it as a free download in a number of completely open format — with, of course, no Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The latest installment of Rick Kleffel's Trashotron podcast is an interview with sf greats Karen Joy Fowler (whose magic realist novel about Chinese rail workers on the US frontier, Sarah Canary, still haunts me, nearly 20 years after I first read it), Kelly Link (author of the magnificent short story collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners) and Gavin Grant (Kelly's husband and publisher of Small Beer Press and the wonderful sf zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet). — Read the rest

The 2005 Nebula Awards have been announced and several of my favorites were winners — including two knockout Kelly Link stories from her collection Magic for Beginners —

Novel:
Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman,
(Analog, March-May 2004, also Ace book Aug. 2004)

Novella:
"Magic for Beginners", by Kelly Link,
(Magic for Beginners, Small Beer Press, July 2005;
also in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept.

The final Nebula Award ballot is out and my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is a finalist! w00t! The awards ceremony is in Chicago on April 30th — I'll be there with fingers crossed (check out the tough competition!) — Read the rest

The preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award came out yesterday, and my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is one of six novels that made the first cut. Between now and Feb 15, my colleagues in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will vote on a final ballot. — Read the rest

My pal Jim Munroe is taking his punk performance Vaudeville show back on the road with a seven city US/Canada tour that includes Gavin Grant, co-publisher of Small Beer press and all-round swell guy, sign language poet Liisa Ladouceur and "off-kilter ranter" Geoffrey H. — Read the rest

Fantastic Metropolis has published my "(non-exhaustive, non-proscriptive) list of several noteworthy books that I read this year (including one book I'm in and a bunch of books by my pals and cronies)"

Stranger Things Happen
by Kelly Link
(Small Beer Press, 2001)

Kelly's first short story collection is wondrous, an 11-pack of fanciful gems.

Oh, what a time I had at the WorldCon! One of the highest of the highlights was meeting up with Gavin Grant and Kelly Link, the dynamic duo behind Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, a literary zine without equal.

Apparently, we're starting a new literary movement, at the behest of Gardner Dozois, and I've been appointed ideologue. — Read the rest