MIR Editor

  • I HAVE NOTHING NEW TO SAY, by Sinéad MacInnes

    SINÉAD MACINNES On your whistle-stop tour of the Highlandsand Islands our whispers are saidto be heard by native ears O Dhiadè rinn iad?               Oh God              what have              they done? Aon.One. The Barabhas moor on Lewis is empty. Leòdhas –…

  • X AND I, by Bediye Topal

    I belong to a race whose alphabet contains the letters Q, W and X. They are letters. Just letters like any others. But for the Turkish state, these aren’t just letters. They banned them.

  • MIR ONLINE – back at last

    The Mechanics’ Institute Review (MIR) is a forum for the most exciting new writing in short fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. We’re doing some work on the site

  • SIX OF THE BEST, by Tim Bradford

    Probably shouldn’t include something by a Birkbeck staffer but I’m not a student now so – fuck it.

  • A SINGLE NOTE, by Fabrice Poussin

    He reached into the darkness for the midnight drink to find the glass empty.

  • THE INTENTIONALITY BEHIND THE WORK: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI, by Akshay Gajria

    Eragon, the first book in the Inheritance Cycle, which established the World of Eragon as we know it now, holds a special place in my heart and my bookshelf. It is the second book I’d ever read in its entirety and where my love for books and stories started. I was around 7-years-old and it…

  • THE FALL OF TROY, by William Doreski

    A false dawn awakens us. The right time, when the cloud-facts explain us to each other and absorb the spilled light.

  • LITTLE THIEVES, by Susan Gordon Byron

    Dali’s clocks were sincere. They slipped over things, slid past and took nothing with them.  They changed. Or I changed them.

  • AN INTERVIEW WITH ANTHONY MCGOWAN, by JB Smith

    “Stag Hunt was published by Hodder and Stoughton. Beautiful edition. Nice reviews. Tesco bought tens of thousands of copies.” But here’s the kick. “The barcode had been misprinted and wouldn’t run through the tills.”

  • ENCOUNTERS WITH EVERYDAY MADNESS ( CHARLIE HILL), Reviewed by Summer Kendrick

    Hill plays with form throughout the book, to great effect. Some stories are epistolic, others are poems, reports or trailing snags of small talk on the School Run. The use of experimental form compliments the overall theme and objectives of the collection, reminding us that rules and reality are flexible conditions.