I’m pleased to have a new story freshly published in the latest issue of chouette.
The third issue of chouette, Winter 2025, has just been released, and it has a theme: “bare.” Over 70 gorgeous pages of poetry, prose, and graphics that bare themselves in myriad vulnerable, emotional, gripping ways. I’ve had the chance to read the whole issue this week, and I’m so impressed, and so proud to be in its pages. Check it out — chouette is free to read online (though donations are appreciated!).
Chouette is a new Montreal-based online literary magazine run by four fab editors who say they’re “drawn to pieces that concern themselves with the little things—the day-to-day minutiae that make our nests.” Authors in this winter’s issue come from all over the globe. If you’d like to be in a future issue, check out their guidelines online and keep an eye on the website for new submission calls later this year.
Though this is my newest publication, I wrote “November” from a VERY old draft. (Like decades old. Who-wrote-this? old). I found the old manuscript in a file last year, while purging papers, and I saw a way to rewrite it, re-envisioning it from my older (more jaded?) point of view. I cut the word count by two-thirds, stripped the original story’s romantic worldview, and changed the narrator’s character by asking, What if she was really, realistically, selfish? What would her unexpected encounter with this achingly vulnerable young person feel like to her? The result is a sad story, and one that bares both of its protagonists. I’m so pleased that it’s included in chouette‘s “bare” issue.
I have two more stories forthcoming in 2025 — I’ll blog about those when the time comes.
Happy Spring! (Or as best as you can manage in the current political climate….)
I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Catherine Austen 
Congratulations!