Frustrated by working under lockdown and worried that the 2020 festival might not happen, Arachne Press decided to continue as though everything would be alright, and asked writers to something that responded or reacted to or was inspired by a sixteenth century poem that editor Cherry Potts has always found comforting in a crisis: Robert Southwell's Tymes Goe by Turnes; or that responded or reacted to or was inspired by some concept in it. The poem observes the ebb and flow of fortune, nothing stays bad for ever, nor anything good - so get on with it while you can. And they have. Oh, they have. This isn't exactly a response to Covid-19, but there's an echo there - in Katie Margaret Hall's epic train journey, New Orleans To Vancouver, and Jackie Taylor's Rewilding; but there is also concern for the environment, and relationships and lives in need of nourishment they are finding hard to find. As with Southwell's poem there is a fine balance between dread and hope. stories and poems from:

Brooke Stanicki

C.L. Hearnden

Claire Booker

Elinor Brooks

Jackie Taylor

Jane Aldous

Jane McLaughlin

Julian Bishop

Karen Ankers

Katie Hall

Keely O'Shaughnessy

Kelly Davis

Laila Sumpton

Linda McMullen

Lynn White

Margaret Crompton

Neil Lawrence

Patience Mackarness

Pippa Gladhill

S. B. Merrow

Sean Carney

Cherry Potts is the Director of Arachne Press, for whom she is editor of almost all our anthologies and runs the Annual Solstice Shorts Festival. Cherry is the author of an epic fantasy novel, two collections of short stories, a photographic diary of a community opera, and has had many stories in anthologies, magazines and online. Her novel of sibling hatred in the 1920s, The Bog Mermaid, won the Quill LGBTQ+ Prose prize 2022.