The Lonely Crowd is a literary magazine devoted to publishing the best new short fiction, poetry, photography and criticism.

Editor / Design / John Lavin has a doctorate from the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, as well as an MA in Creative Writing from Cardiff University. The former Fiction Editor of Wales Arts Review, he edited their short story anthology, A Fiction Map of Wales, as well as their online series, Story: Retold. Lavin also co-founded The Lampeter Review and co-edited the magazine for several years. His criticism has appeared in The Irish Times, Wales Arts Review and The Welsh Agenda amongst other places.

 

 

 

                                                                             

 

The Lonely Crowd is an entirely self-funded endeavour  Please help us to continue our work by considering purchasing one of our issues, available in our online shop.

Please direct all other queries to johnlavin@thelonelycrowd.org

 

Latest articles

Books of the Year 2025 / Part Three

Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. John Lavin   Twenty years in the making, Sarah Hall’s seventh novel, Helm, is an imaginative tour de force. The Eden Valley, where the author grew up, is dominated by the shrieking Helm (the only named wind in Britain) and Hall…

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Books of the Year 2025 / Part Two

Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Three follows on Friday. Karys Frank Sarah Hall’s Helm, a gale of a novel in which the Helm wind is personified in a bold, non-linear narrative was going to be the focus of this piece. I also mulled over reviewing…

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Story of the Month, December: ‘The Broken Wand’ by Jane Fraser

The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish a new story by Jane Fraser. It wasn’t a white Christmas in Gower as they’d promised on Wales Today. Lynne and David looked out over the ocean – frothy-white and agitated…

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Books of the Year 2025 / Part One

Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Two follows next week. 

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Poet of the Month, December / Jack Houston

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish three new poems by Jack Houston. The first of these, ‘magic city’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.   magic city   it sure seems as if…

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How I Wrote ‘Joy’ / Karys Frank

For some time before I wrote ‘Joy’, I’d been having strange feelings. I didn’t know what to make of them, or how to explain them. They occurred in bouts a few times a year. They were blasts of intense, untethered happiness, often ambushing me in very mundane settings. Ironically, they made me feel a little lonely afterwards, as I couldn’t think of anyone I could talk to about them who wouldn’t find me loopy. So, I kept quiet. Eventually, I confided in my husband, who listened, and told me he didn’t experience such things. I expect he thought I was loopy.

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Story of the Month, November: ‘Joy’ by Karys Frank

Eric was late to the airport, but Laura was not there yet with her life. The pieces of it would not come together. She was studying, she was being evicted, she worried her boyfriend was cheating on her. Someone had stolen her identity and was buying blenders from abroad in her name and she had spent a lot of time sorting it out.

The police told her the blenders were likely bought for mixing drugs. How could people do that to their bodies? Laura was training to be a nutritionist.

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‘Snow’ by Brian Kirk

Winter played tricks on us. In the lean time after Christmas the days were short yet somehow passed very slowly. We prayed for snow or a fire at the school or the death of the President. Anything at all that would trip up the plodding routine of darkness slowly lifting becoming darkness slowly falling. In…

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‘Family Almanac: Memory and Change’ / Brian Kirk

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For November, we are delighted to publish three new works by Brian Kirk. Here, Brian discusses the creative process behind these new poems. In early 2023 I wrote a short poem about a family from a child’s point of view.…

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‘Carnival’ by Brian Kirk

  In July the carnival set up in a three-cornered field not far from the church. The town was alive. Visitors came by the busload every day. Mothers and children sat in the wind on the long beach while fathers stayed in the city at work. At weekends the men came to sit in the…

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Submissions Window

We are open for submissions until November 30th, 2025. Short stories can be anywhere between 500 and 5000 words in length. Please send no more than four poems. Please send in word docs rather than in PDF. These submissions will be considered for our online Story of the Month series, our online Poet of the…

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Poet of the Month, November: Brian Kirk

The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For November, we are delighted to publish three new works by Brian Kirk. The first of these, ‘Keepsakes‘, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month.    Keepsakes We kept our grandparents in a dusty box…

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