Latest News:

Whistling Shade's 2022 issue is now available! Download a $1 PDF below, or buy a print issue from our Subscriptions page.

Whistling Shade Press is thrilled to publish Greg Watson's latest poetry collection, The Sound of Light! Buy the book from Whistling Shade using Paypal, from Amazon, or stop in to Subtext books for a copy.

Submissions are now open for the 2023 issue. The theme for this year is "Love". Make of that what you wish - romantic love, friendship, filial love or maybe even love gone wrong.

Whistling Shade is seeking a junior fiction editor. This volunteer position would begin in January and involves three or four meetings Jan - July to discuss stories and select them for publication. We cover about 30 stories in a year. Meetings are typically in person at a cafe. If you have some extra time, love fiction, and would like to take part in lively literary discussion, please email Joel Van Valin at admin@whistlingshade.com.

Purchase a PDF replica of the print issue for $1.
After paying at Paypal, select "Return to Merchant" to access the PDF download.

New books from Whistling Shade!

The Sound of Light - Greg Watson

From a record store to a marathon to a newborn intensive care unit, Greg Watson's poems catalogue the intimate moments that fall just below the surface of a busy, modern world. By turns tender and elegiac, his sparse lines are filled with a quiet reverie that attempts to describe "the sound of light itself / asking to be recorded, / and no one around to do so / but me, a novice playing / the only way I know" ("And Learn to Sing Along").

The Neighborhood Division - Jeff Vande Zande

Jeff Vande Zande's latest story collection travels down the shady lanes of the American neighborhood. From kids egging windows to lost joggers and insomniacs to basement prisoners and Orwellian gated communities, these stories grow ever more surreal, holding a darkened mirror up to that which we are - and may become.

Castle Bash - Julian Bernick

A narrative poem in the Romantic tradition, Castle Bash is Byronic in character, Gothic in atmosphere, Romantic in outlook and Lovecraftian in scope. When a bastard poet is given safe haven and patronage at the tenebrous Castle Bash, mystery, passion, and the forces of hell converge upon its benighted inhabitants. This is the second title in Whistling Shade's Geste Series.

Encounter in Prague - Jarda Cervenka

Jarda Cervenka's fifth collection of stories ranges from gold panning in the jungles of Colombia to fossil hunting on Corsica and sailing off the Florida Keys. But at the center of the collection is Prague, Cervenka's home town, which he fled in the wake of the Soviet invasion of 1968 - an event recounted in his story "Tanks and Quantum Mechanics in 1968".