Not all endings are painful – some might lead to a wonderful new opportunity, or an unexpected adventure, or reveal a silver lining. This is the slant of our 20th issue’s theme, Sweet Hereafter. When it comes to death, perhaps there really is a glorious afterlife. If your marriage crumbles, a better love might be just around the corner. 

The Sweet Hereafter theme is partly a nod to the fact that this is the final print edition of the magazine, and partly to the death of my mother, Anita White, earlier this year. While there is not much that is sweet about that loss (apart from release from the ravages of cancer), it gives rise to certain, more uplifting reflections: appreciation of loved ones, gratitude for the good things we have, and – who knows – perhaps Mom really has attained her own personal version of heaven. If so, she’s got her feet up in a grand stately home reading good books by the fire, walking dogs amid a lush pastoral landscape, and hosting dinner parties full of scintillating debate and fine food that someone else, for once, has gone to the trouble of cooking.

In that vein, she would have been highly amused by Stephen Oliver’s take on a custom-made afterlife in “Müesli”. While what follows death is one of the obvious responses to the Sweet Hereafter theme, there are a range of other interpretations, too. Among the fiction writers, Mike Wheet imagines an unconventional route to late parenthood in “Sweetheart”. Michael Shelley depicts a young girl struggling with the new woman in her bereaved father’s life in “The Story of Emma the Human Toothpick”, and Julie Esther Fisher delves into a teenager’s post-traumatic escape to the Highlands in “Scottish Moon”.

The non-fiction writers also mine diverse terrain. In “An Apple for the Cool Kids”, Alexandra O’Sullivan rises to the challenges of her professional second act, embarking on a new career as an English teacher in Australia. Emily Larkin leaves the Mormon faith behind in “God’s Not Invited to My Wedding”, while Stephen Fabes laces up for a midlife marathon in “Late Blooming in the Pyrenees”.

The theme attracted a wonderfully rich and varied response from the poets as well. Amber Watson opens the issue with two compelling poems on foster parenting. In a bumper issue for poetry, eleven other poets explore adolescence and literary revisionism, birth and death in the natural world, life after relationships and life after life. A bonus feature is the winner of this year’s Shooter Poetry Competition, Bethan Murphy’s “Birth Plan”, in which stark, poignant contrasts challenge childbirth expectations. Sylvie Jane Lewis, whose beautiful pair of hare poems close out the issue, also won second place in this year’s contest.

Since devising Shooter more than ten years ago, I’ve gained enormous satisfaction from unearthing the literary gems for each issue, assembling each edition and sending the magazine out into the world. In 2015, when the first issue was published, I was sharing a small London flat with my beloved dog Robbie (of issue 12 fame) and, following a series of relationships that were not meant to be, yearning to have children. Shooter #7, the New Life issue, arrived in tandem with my daughter, and my husband followed five years later, somewhere between On the Body and The Unknown. Following our wedding in 2023, I would have felt squeamish about publishing a True Love issue, as far too on the nose.

So from the early days of all the time in the world to devote to Shooter, to the increasing squeeze of obligations (some welcome, some less so) of childcare, marriage, ageing parents and a day job, midlife has chipped away at my ability to produce the magazine on time and do it justice. I hope to keep the essence of Shooter alive online, perhaps with a new digital iteration at some point, and to maintain elements like the monthly Shooter Flash. In the wake of the print edition, I also hope that Shooter’s sweet hereafter might lead to the fulfilment of a few new dreams – and, perchance, some extra sleep.

To order a copy of the Sweet Hereafter issue, please visit https://shooterlitmag.com/subscriptions.