‘Cheers’: New Cover Art by Melissa Mary Duncan

Raise Your Glass!

Melissa Mary Duncan was our very first cover artist, with ‘The Beer Fairy’, for Issue 1, Winter 2014. And so, for Issue 41, Winter 2024 — ten years later! — we couldn’t think of a more fitting illustration to grace the front cover than ‘Cheers’. Because, as you loyal Pulp fans know, we’re still all about bringing you ‘Good books for the price of a beer!’

Melissa Mary Duncan is a Canadian-born fantasy painter whose work explores the rich expanse of northern European faerie and folklore. She works primarily in pencil and watercolour but recently dusted off her acrylic painting skills for a gallery exhibition.

Melissa was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to wanting to be an artist. As a broke single mother, she took it into her head one day to paint her daughters’ bedroom walls with flowers and fairies. She has never looked back. And for that we are so thankful! 

Now raise a glass to all that you can look forward to in Issue 41:

Ghosts rise from the depths of different pasts to haunt the pages of stories by Finnian Burnett and JJ Lee. Family anchors and unmoors the varied casts in fiction by EC Dorgan, Matt Lumbard, and JM Landels.

Time and space rattle and quake in work by Franco Amati and ‘Separate Worlds’ by Chip Houser. And the shattering continues with poetry from Aaron Poochigian, DS Maolalai, Purbasha Roy.

But journeys finally find peace in the destination with a graphic short by Sierra Louie and a novel excerpt from Mel Anastasiou.

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Check out this gorgeous gallery of all of Melissa’s Pulp Lit covers:

The work of Melissa Mary Duncan has graced the covers of Pulp Literature since Issue 1! More of her work followed, with Fondly Remembered Magic (Issue 5), The Story Teller (Issue 12), Frost and Snow (Issue 21), The Butterfly Witch (Issue 36), and now Cheers (Issue 41).

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Melissa also painted the incredible covers for the Allaigna’s Song trilogy by JM Landels:

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Meet Melissa Mary Duncan

Melissa’s work reflects her love of history, the natural world, and humanity. Her favourite time of day is twilight. Her favourite season is fall. Now that she is in her 70s, her favourite drink is decaf tea — Murchies, of course. Melissa enjoys historic reenactment, British cozies, folk music, and filling a blank page with her Once Upon A Time imaginings. She lives in historic New Westminster with her writer husband dvsduncan and their cat Major William Catastrophe.

The show, ‘Witches, Bitches and Canny Women’, with fellow artist and sculptor Lynne Fahnestalk, took place in the autumn of 2023 at the Mission Art Gallery in Mission, BC. With a wink, Melissa will tell you the title of the show is a nod to her grandmother, a jailed British suffragette. Melissa blames her fascination with folktales on a misspent youth in her local library. There she lost hours poring over the seemingly endless stacks of cloth-and-gilded volumes of fairylore published during the golden age of book illustration.

She has had numerous solo exhibitions, and her art has found homes in private collections from Japan to Great Britain. Her book, Faye: The Art of Melissa Mary Duncan, was released in 2013 and is available for sale through her website. Find more of her beautiful paintings at melissamaryduncan.com.