Issue 51: From the Pulp Lit Pulpit

Sunshine on the Page

For our Summer 2026 issue of Pulp Literature, Mel Anastasiou contemplates the art of re-reading. Read her full editorial from Pulp Literature Issue 51, Summer 2026 below!

From the Pulp Lit Pulpit: Sunshine on the Page

by Mel Anastasiou

Remembering summer reading clubs brings a smile. We signed out stacks of library books, and all of them were bigger inside than out. Our friends asked, often kindly, why we read so much. Our answers were as different as we were: some of us read to escape, some of us to live more lives than one, some of us because we couldn’t stop if we wanted to.

That’s how it still is, when the sun shines on a beach towel or chaise longue and lights the pages of the stories and poems saved up for summer reading. New books broached, and favourite authors read again.

Perhaps we’d find an old flame, like 20th-Century Poetry and Poetics, edited by this issue’s featured writer, poet Gary Geddes. That collection was to hand on my desk throughout my adult life, informing my teaching, prompting me to write. It was the same for many of us. His own poetry continues to delight and challenge, and we are thrilled to publish his work in Issue 51. We know you’ll enjoy it as much as we do.

~ Mel Anastasiou

See what else Pulp Literature Issue 51, Summer 2026 has in store!

And a reminder that the 2026 Raven Short Story Contest is open for entries until October 15th, 2026. Find all the details, and enter, here!

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.