Issue 50: From the Pulp Lit Pulpit

Looking Forward and Back

In our fiftieth issue of Pulp Literature, founding editors JM Landels and Mel Anastasiou reflect on the magazine’s past and look ahead to the next fifty issues to come. Read the editorial from Pulp Literature Issue 50, Spring 2026 below!

From the Pulp Lit Pulpit: Looking Forward and Back

by JM Landels and Mel Anastasiou

Spring is a two-faced season, warm and welcoming one day, ferocious and freezing the next. This issue, being halfway to one hundred, is similarly dual-natured. Is it a chance to look back at the achievements of the last twelve and a half years of Pulp Literature, or is it a chance to spring (pun intended) towards the next fifty issues aboard the back of the fiery chestnut mare that is 2026, year of the fire horse?

Looking back, we have some familiar authors in this issue: founding editor Susan Pieters returns to join her co-conspirators Mel and Jen within these pages, and Hummingbird judge Finnian Burnett and contest shortlist frequent flier Mitchell Toews both earn their five-timer jackets. (Unlike SNL, we don’t have smoking jackets to hand out, but maybe we should have writing robes?) We also have repeat appearances from Alex Kitt, Kirsty Campbell, and KL Shilling.

But as always we delight in welcoming new-to-us voices like Sherry Shahan, Jaclyn Morken, comics artist Isabel Harvest, and feature author and rising star Brandi Bird. This issue marks the first poetry selections from our new poetry editor (but longtime Pulp editor) Sierra Louie. And we are thrilled to have a vintage s cover from Lynne Fahnestalk, an artist we have long admired, to bind the old and new together.

Welcome to Issue 50!

~ Jen & Mel

See what else Pulp Literature Issue 50, Spring 2026 has in store — on sale till June 15th!

JM Landels is the author of the bestselling Allaigna’s Song trilogy as well as the spy novel The Shepherdess, serialized in Pulp Literature. When she’s not writing, editing, or drawing, you can find Jen teaching people to swing swords and ride horses at Academie Cavallo in Langley, BC. You can find @jmlandels on most social media platforms, or at jmlandels.stiffbunnies.com.

Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Monument Studios Mysteries, and the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, available at pulpliterature.com. She won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award and was longlisted for the Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for her novel Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries. Look for Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu, available through online booksellers and at Pulp Literature Press.