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Magpie Moon

The end comes slowly.

Takes hours and every ounce of strength. As she sits by his bed Alice’s lungs grasp at the last remaining atoms of hot and fetid air.
And still the magpie stays.

For as long as Alice can remember, she has trailed after Agnes ears open and mind eager to learn the names and uses of all the plants in the wood. Her mother, she knows, has a way with healing and does her best to help the desperate and wary who show up at their door. Agnes is cautious and discrete in her workings but there are risks to wielding an unknowable skill. It’s a quick turn from grateful to frightened when Alice’s return to her hometown coincides with five sisters all falling sick.

Magpie Moon is a tale of mothers and daughters, of medicine and magic, a crisp walk through the dark days of girlhood where sisters collude and the kind may turn cruel.

Oh I do like to be

Like the sea these stories are set beside, Rachel Canwell’s writing sparkles like sunshine on waves. The flash and micro pieces that make up her debut collection, Oh, I Do Like to Be, are sometimes full of hope, like that first breath of sea air; other times they are dark or laced with despair, but they are all powerful – the strong undercurrent pulling you into their depths. This is a fabulous collection from a new voice in short fiction writing.
Laura Besley, author of (Un)Natural Elements

Rachel Canwell’s “Oh, I Do Like to Be” is a stand-out debut flash fiction collection from an accomplished and masterful writer. Unfolding against the evocatively rendered backdrop of a seaside town, these stories are daring, often magical, at times humorous, and utterly compelling. Canwell grapples with themes of motherhood, disability, and women coming into their own, among others, with skill and precision. “Oh, I Do Like to Be” showcases the very best of what flash can be - exquisite, powerful, rule-breaking, breath-taking - and I absolutely loved it.
- Kristen Loesch, author of The Porcelain Doll (Allison & Busby, 2022)