The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2026. For March, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Mike Fox. Gwen awoke to the rustle of leaf mulch and feral scent of her unwashed body, her clothes damp with early autumn dew. Morning sun, sage,…
for M My heart was a dog curled around itself in the cold, far corner of a kennel & gnawing at the mange on its left back leg in the large & flood-lit rehoming centre full of other strays nobody’d ever wanted, or ones they’d tried to take care of but couldn’t find time,…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For October, we are delighted to publish three new works by Michelle Penn. The final installment of these, ‘Why acceptance is like sleep’, is published today. I launch my arrows — at the eye of sleep —…
Cath Barton on the creative process behind ‘A Suitable Feast’ from Issue 14. You can also listen to Barton read the story below. My story ‘A Suitable Feast’ was essentially a response to my anxiety during the COVID pandemic. When Italy was locked down in early March 2020 I had no idea that would happen…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For June, we are delighted to publish three new poems by John Freeman. The first of these, ‘Experience at Merthyr Mawr’, is published today with two more to follow over subsequent weekends. The accompanying photographs are by Peter Sedgwick, who…
Jackie Gorman reads ‘The Natural History Museum in my Mind’, from Issue 14. The Lonely Crowd · ‘The Museum of Natural History in my Mind’ Jackie Gorman’s debut collection The Wounded Stork, published by the Onslaught Press in 2019, was described by Dr Martin Dyar in Poetry Ireland Review as ‘an engrossing and ecologically…
Matt Rader is the author of six collections of poems, most recently, Fine (Nightwood Editions 2024), as well as a collection of stories and a book of experimental nonfiction. His work has appeared in publications across North America, Australia, and Europe. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
Gavin Goodwin reads his short story, ‘The Fox’, accompanied by Nerys Clark on cello. The Lonely Crowd · ‘The Fox’ by Gavin Goodwin Gavin Goodwin lectures in English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. His most recent publication is Creativity and Anxiety: Making, Meaning, Experience (Palgrave, 2023). ‘The Fox’ was written and performed by Gavin…
Karl Lorentz Ellerstraße 174 40227 Düsseldorf Annette Shröder Industriemuseum Cuxhavener Straße 9 40221 Düsseldorf Oberbilk, den 2. Oktober 1997 Dear Annette and the management team, I thought you would like to know that I have now come to terms with my unfair dismissal from the Industriemuseum. I’m no longer angry…
Laura Wainwright reads her two poems from the special five year anniversary issue of The Lonely Crowd. Laura Wainwright is from Newport, Wales. Her poems have been published in a range of magazines, journalsand anthologies. She has been shortlisted in the Bridport Prize poetry competition twice and awarded a Literature Wales Writer’s bursary in 2020…
Craig Austin discusses his story in Issue Twelve: Five Years. This is a tale about what it feels like to be an outsider, geographically, culturally, and ultimately emotionally. It’s a story that’s materially set in the Midwestern state of Ohio but one that’s psychologically rooted in the metropolitan city of Boston, Massachusetts; a place that,much like Liverpool, exists as a state of mind as much as it does a bricks and mortar conurbation. A city that righteously defines itself as much by what it’s against as what it’s for. The Beantown pubs and bars referenced within it, The Hub Pub, The Silvertone, are no works of fiction and I heartily…
I began this story last October, on the day and date the story takes place, in the town in which the story takes place, sat in the passenger seat while my brother drove us home from our grandfather’s funeral. My girlfriend sat in the back, five months pregnant with our first child, and we listened…
Photos © Michou Burckett St Laurent. Many thanks to Vinny Casey at The Workman’s Club for all his help setting up the event.
Fred Johnston discusses his three poems in Issue 7 of The Lonely Crowd. I was delighted to have three poems published in The Lonely Crowd, Issue 7. And especially to have some space in which to talk about them. I am aware, of course, that poems ought to ‘talk’ for themselves. So the best I…