A Place to Pause: A Lowestoft Chronicle Anthology

by Nicholas Litchfield (Editor), Mary Donaldson-Evans (Foreword by)

Overview

Adventurous college friends uncover ancient revelations while exploring unmapped territory on an obscure trade route in Central Asia. For the sake of a science experiment, a man fearlessly embarks on an aerial expedition across Montana in the comfort of his wicker lawn chair. And on a remote island southeast of Madagascar, grisly violence arises when a naive traveler doesn't present a gift to those who govern the area... A PLACE TO PAUSE is bulging with absorbing poetry, diverting travelogues, and spirited tales of far-flung adventure.

From savage, small island corruption and monstrous big-game hunting in Africa to hazardous American highways and dubious smuggling exploits in Southeast Asia, we proudly present poetry and prose by Jeff Alphin J.L.Austin, Roger Camp, Lorraine Caputo, Laurel DiGangi, William Doreski, Andrew Edwards, William Fleeson, David Hagerty, Ann Howells, Ben von Jagow, David Klein, Joan Mazza, Warren Merkel, Robin Michel, Michael Robinson Morris, James B. Nicola, Don Noel, Jennifer Swallow, Louise Turan, Ken Wetherington, and Melissent Zumwalt. Plus, new fiction and in-depth interviews with distinguished authors Mary Donaldson-Evans, Mark Jacobs, and Robert Wexelblatt

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732332836
Publisher:	Lowestoft Chronicle Press
Publication date:	03/30/2024
Series:	Lowestoft Chronicle Anthology , #11
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Litchfield is the author of the suspense novel Swampjack Virus and editor of eleven literary anthologies. His stories, essays, and book reviews appear in BULL, Colorado Review, Daily Press, Shotgun Honey, and The Virginian-Pilot and elsewhere. He has contributed introductions to numerous books, including eighteen Stark House Press reprints of long-forgotten mystery novels. Formerly a book critic for the Lancashire Post, syndicated to twenty-five newspapers across the U.K., he now writes for Publishers Weekly. Reach him at nicholaslitchfield.com.

Mary Donaldson-Evans' creative work has been published by the Lowestoft Chronicle, Boomer Lit Magazine, The Literary Hatchet, The Metaworker Literary Magazine, and Spank the Carp, among others. Her book, Behind the Lines: A Soldier, his Family and the 10th Mountain Division, was published by Austin-Macauley Publishers, London. She can be reached at [e-mail].

Editorial Reviews

2024-03-21
Editor Litchfield presents a collection of work from the literary magazine Lowestoft Chronicle, loosely centered on “humorous writing with an emphasis on travel.”

The latest in a series presents 32 pieces with settings that range from Africa to Asia to North America, with many stops along the way. The collection is evenly split between poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, with three interviews with authors added for background. Outside of the table of contents, the book makes no effort to distinguish when a piece is fiction or not, although with the poems this is generally self-evident, as with Mark Jacobs’ quasi-dystopian story “After the Meltdown, On the Hunt” or the slight surrealism of Mary Donaldson-Evans’ “Bulkhead Seat.” (Both authors receive in-depth Lowestoft Chronicleinterviews.) In other cases, readers may find themselves having difficulty suspending disbelief, as when traveling along the knife’s edge between absurdity and danger in Jeff Alphin’s nonfiction piece “Family Circus,” about a bizarre lottery-commercial shoot. Still, with all the blurring of lines, this collection delivers a certain uniformity in tone; some readers might have preferred an earthier, less erudite approach to the material. Still, despite the stated preference for humorous writing, readers will find that not every tale falls cleanly into that category. For example, interview subject Robert Wexelblatt’s fiction piece “Lost City” leaves little room for laughter. The story, which starts as a chronicle of former college buddies seeking a “vacation adventure to take us away from our humdrum lives,” involves a trip along a minor trade route in Central Asia; along the way, the story takes an intense detour into a haunting chapter of regional history. Similarly, the authors of stories such as “Singapura” use tales of human foibles and flaws to venture into shadowy, if not pitch-dark, places.

Creative variations on a theme that often makes for vibrant reading.

Kirkus Reviews