Welcome to issue thirty-six of Lightspeed!

In case you missed the news last month, Lightspeed is again a Hugo Award finalist for best semiprozine, and your humble editor is again a nominee for best editor, short-form. We’re extremely honored to be nominated again, so please allow me to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for us. Additionally, our resident illustrator, Galen Dara, is up for the Hugo Award for best fan artist—largely, we assume, due to her work illustrating Lightspeed stories. If you’d like to check out all of Galen’s illustrations for Lightspeed, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/tag/illustrated-by-galen-dara.

Speaking of awards, this year’s Nebula Awards will be presented at the Nebula Awards Weekend event, May 16-19, in San Jose, CA. Lightspeed has two finalists in the short story category: “Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley and “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu; assistant editor Christie Yant and I will be on hand to cheer them on—so if you’re also going to be there, be sure to find us and say hi!

In other news, the list of artists to appear in Spectrum 20, the latest edition of the prestigious art anthology series have been selected, and Hugo Award nominee (sounds good, doesn’t it?) Galen Dara is among them. So is Marc Simonetti, who provided our cover for the June 2012 issue. As we were going to e-press with this issue, which specific pieces of art they’d be reprinting was not yet revealed; all we know for sure is both Galen and Marc will have their artwork featured in the anthology. Congrats to them both!

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With all that out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:

We have original science fiction by Maria Dahvana Headley (“The Traditional”) and M. Bennardo (“Water Finds Its Level”), along with SF reprints by Maureen F. McHugh (“Interview: On Any Given Day”) and Sean Williams (“The Missing Metatarsals”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Damien Walters Grintalis (“Always, They Whisper”) and Dennis Danvers (“Leaving the Dead”), and fantasy reprints by Holly Black (“The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue”) and Richard Parks (“The Man Who Carved Skulls”).

For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “The Garden” by Eleanor Arnason, and of course we have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with Gregory Maguire and Karen Russell.

Our issue this month is again sponsored by our friends at Orbit Books. This month, look for The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty. You can find more from Orbit—including digital short fiction and monthly ebook deals—at www.orbitbooks.net.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And remember, there are several ways you can sign up to be notified of new Lightspeed content:

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Before I go, just a reminder that our custom-built ebookstore I told you about last month is now up and running. So if you’d like to purchase an ebook issue, or if you’d like to subscribe directly from us, please visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in both epub and mobi format.

And don’t worry—all of our other purchasing options are still available, of course; this is just one more way you can buy the magazine or subscribe. You can, for instance, still subscribe via Amazon.com or from our friends at Weightless Books. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe to learn more about all of our subscription options.

Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!