BFS Journal #26 Midsummer Launch Showcase

BFS Journal #26 Midsummer Launch Showcase

Welcome to the virtual launch party for BFS Journal #26! Join us on midsummer night around the digital hearth for an evening of literary celebration as we unveil our latest issue. Get ready to immerse yourself in a world of fantastical stories, fascinating articles, and artwork. Meet the talented contributors behind this issue and hear readings from their work. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow fans of speculative fiction and support the BFS community. Bring your favourite tipple to toast the Journal and the contributors. Save the date and join us for a magical night!

Special Guests include:

Alexandra Beaumont is a folklore fantasy novelist with a passion for folk music and exploring the wilds of the UK. Her latest release, Dissonance of Bird Song, is praised for being a “visceral and lyrical” page turner with “praiseworthy worldbuilding” and was recently named Distinguished Favourite in the 2025 Independent Press Awards. With a background from her English Literature and Creative Writing degree specialising in gothic and folkloric literature, Alexandra’s lyrical books weave together myth, magic, humanity, nature and intrigue.

Sam Campbell is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Arkansas. Her research focuses on eco-criticism, game studies, and media studies, with a particular interest in the intersections of game studies and environmental storytelling, visual storytelling, and interactive media. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas and an MA in English from East Tennessee State University. Sam is also the co-founder and fiction editor of Black Moon Magazine.

Dr. Chloe Germaine is a Reader in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and the co-director of the Manchester Game Centre. Chloe’s research falls within the umbrella of Environmental Humanities, with a focus at the intersection of gothic, ecocriticism and game studies. Her most recent books are The Dark Matter of Children’s ‘Fantastika’ Literature: Speculative Entanglements (2023) and Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play (2022).

Oliver Hollingdale is an award-winning filmmaker from West Sussex. With a passion for storytelling and a background in fantasy filmmaking, Oliver has been crafting imaginative narratives for years. His latest project, Gallowmere, showcases his dedication to bringing mythical realms to life. Follow the journey of Gallowmere look for updates on upcoming screenings.

Dr Kevan Manwaring (Host) is a writer and scholar of Fantasy. He is the Course Leader in the MA Creative writing and Senior Lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth. A BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers 2022 finalist, his research focuses on Fantasy, ecology and ecofiction. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is the author of The Long Woman, Writing Ecofiction, Desiring Dragons, and editor of Heavy Weather: tempestuous tales of stranger climes (The British Library) as well as collections of folk tales for The History Press. An academic consultant for BBC 4’s The Secret Life of Books and contributor to Free Thinking (BBC Radio 3), he blogs as the Bardic Academic.

Lauren McMenemy wears many hats: Editor-in-Chief at Trembling With Fear for Horror Tree; marketing for the British Fantasy Society; Writing the Occult curator. Her own fiction lives in the dark fantasy, gothic, and occult and folk horror worlds, where she explores her passions for mental health, folklore, and the paranormal. Using her 30 years as a professional writer across journalism, marketing, and communications, Lauren also works as a coach/mentor to SFFH writers. You’ll find her haunting south London, where she lives with her Doctor Who-obsessed husband, the ghost of their aged black house rabbit, and the entity that lives in the walls.

Dr Anna Milon is a role-player and researcher of fantastika, folklore and modern paganism. Involved in the UK LARP scene for over a decade, Anna wrote on spiritual experiences in LARP for her PhD. She cleaves to large-scale fantasy LARPs, the closest she can get to visiting Middle-earth. Among fellow role-players she’s known for either playing demure and mindful squires or demented heretics, with hardly anything in between. Anna conveniently lives in deepest darkest Buckinghamshire with her daughter, husband and two orange cats.

Dr. Will Nolen, Ph.D. teaches English and Philosophy at Houston Community College and researches the misanthropic assumptions and authoritarian methods inherent in literary, cinematic, philosophical, and historical depictions of western utopianism. He has published work on Star Wars as a criticism of American paternalism, on Borges’ ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ as ‘Metaphor for the Construction of the Narrative of Imperial America,’ Frank Miller’s Batman as ‘Critique of Reagan’s American Foreign and Domestic Policies’, and Wells’ and Asimov’s depictions of deep time in early science fiction reflecting a temporal rather than spatial call of the void.

Dr Eilís Philips holds a PhD in cultural history & monster theory. She specialises in the concept of "monstrous environments": how negative perceptions of spaces and phenomena affect those who interact with them, and vice versa. Eilís currently works at Queen’s University Belfast as a Research Fellow in Metaverse Technologies, exploring the development of interoperable virtual worlds. Alongside her academic work, she has been a Creative Industries practitioner for over 20 years, as a musician, writer and creative consultant. Eilís is a synaesthesia advocate, is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration, and is [not so] quietly pursuing her dream of becoming the female Dr Egon Spengler.

Anna Smith Spark is the author of the Empires of Dust grimdark epic fantasy series The Court of Broken Knives, The Tower of Living and Dying and The House of Sacrifice; the standalone A Woman of the Sword; and the folk horror high fantasy The Making of This World Ruined series which begins with A Sword of Bronze and Ashes; and is co-author of the grimdark fantasy horror In The Shadow Of Their Dying. Her work has been described as ‘a masterwork’ and ‘awe-inspiring’ and compared to Tolkien, Moorcock and Le Guin. She’s dyslexic, dyspraxic, ASD, PhD; previous jobs include English teacher, fetish model and petty bureaucrat. You may know her by the heels of her shoes.