The novella is an inbetween form: shorter than a typical novel but longer than a typical short story – though there are no precise strictures on length. It can be as compact as Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich as or as expansive as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It can encompass a span of time, as with Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Café. Or it can occur on a single evening, as with James Joyce’s The Dead. Because of this inbetween-ness, editors and publishers generally shun the novella. It’s too short for a standalone book, since the buying public likes to get their money’s worth. It’s too long for a story in a literary journal, since a hundred-page novella leaves no room for anything else. And yet the list of novellas that are works of genius is long, including (with the aforementioned) such well-known masterpieces as Robert Louis Stephenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

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New Welsh Reader 116 contents:

Creative: Plankton Collector by Cath Barton

Creative: The Seal by Olivia Gwyne

Creative: The Night Where You No Longer Live by Nicola Daly

Creative: Smugglers' Tunnel by João Morais

Creative: Against the Current by Caryl Lewis trans. Gwen Davies

Creative: Infirmarian by Rebecca Casson

Essay: Everywhere to Everywhere: Edward Thomas, George Borrow and the Open Road by Jem Poster

Poetry: 'Nude in a Roomscape' by Amy Wack

Poetry: 'Translations from the Narwhal' by Annette C Boehm

Poetry: 'A Practical Treatise on the Scavenging and Cleansing of Cities' by Annette C Boehm

Poetry: 'Child of Divorce' by Sophie McKeand

Poetry: 'Poem to His Line Manager' by Jonathan Edwards

Poetry: 'Augenblick' by Neal Alexander

Poetry: 'Freud Museum, Vienna' by Giles Goodland

Poetry: 'WLTM' by Craig Dobson