New Contexts: 5

Whenever I pull together an anthology such as this, I am inevitably struck by the quality and variety of both the fiction and poetry being written today. Curating an anthology such as this is therefore both a joy and a challenge; after all, it is not easy to distil a couple of hundred pieces down into a manageable number to form a collection (in the present case, seventy-four pieces).However, for this edition of New Contexts I was struck more than ever by the notion that the contributors had important things to say - and about significant topics too: war, disease, aging, love, refugees, our place in the world. These are all 'big' topics of course, and as such hardly novel; writers have been devoting their talents to addressing them for hundreds of years. Yet it struck me that many of the submissions for this book attempted to tackle their themes with a common sense of urgency.Perhaps this is a reflection of our times; or perhaps it was merely my interpretation of them. Whichever is true, I am confident that New Contexts: 5 represents another meritorious addition to our canon.