Litro #119: Ghosts — Editors’ Letter

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From Shakespeare to Stephen King, writers have long plundered the memory of ghosts past and present to inject fear into the hearts of their readers, and this fault line of human existence has conjured up some of the most memorable moments in English literature.

What are ghosts, if not the dark residue of memory? Their form is shaped by our own, their fears our fears grotesquely inversed. They mirror our own lives—a warning, or a promise, of how things may come to be.

But take them away from the occult and into the realm of the living and they become freakishly sinister, and even familiar. They become the moments that slide between wakefulness and dreaming, that gnaw away at the soul of human experience. From Daniel Knauf’s eerily unsettling and nightmarish horror fable “Bye, Bye Blackbird” to “Flat Pack Pirate”, Sabrina Mahfouz’s slick and chilling tale of domestic paranoia, there’s something to chill even the hardened ghost lover. And if you want your shot of horror laced with a hint of violent realism, we have an exclusive extract from Sam Hawken’s Tequila Sunset to see you through into the morning hours.

It’s been a blast mixing this collection together. We hope the issue disturbs and delights.

Mohsen Shah & Alex Goodwin
Your Editors

October 2012

Alex Goodwin and Mohsen Shah

About N/A N/A

Alex Goodwin and Mohsen Shah are the co-editors of Litro Magazine. Alex Goodwin studied English at Bristol University, where he co-designed Helicon, a student magazine shortlisted for the Guardian Student Media Awards in 2006. After graduating, he joined Rogers, Coleridge and White, a literary agency in London, as an assistant to two agents and has worked on many books there over the years. A sometime writer of short stories, his work has also appeared on Untitled Books. Mohsen Shah is a writer, editor and former reviewer for the Financial Times. His work has appeared at Soho Theatre, the Royal Opera House, and on BBC2. He currently works in publishing.

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