Articles about urban fantasy and romance novels are invited for a new, multi-contributor collection.

During the last few decades, urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels have come to the forefront of the publishing world. Normative heroes and heroines have been joined by werewolves, vampires, mermaids, shape-shifters, centaurs and dragons, to name but a few. These magical creatures fill the pages of books and the screens of movie theaters in ever-increasing numbers.

Such a vast industry—one that generated at least 75 million readers in 2008 alone (and has been growing since)—deserves more study. This collection will offer critical examinations of both urban fantasy and paranormal romance.

FORUM, the University of Edinburgh's Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts, is pleased to announce its third conference which will explore the theme of editing.

This conference invites participants to explore the variety of practices and concepts of editing across disciplines and as they appear in different historical and cultural contexts, as well as to reflect on the opportunities, goals and challenges of contemporary editing and publishing.

*A number of papers by postgraduate participants will be selected to be published in the December 2013 issue of FORUM.*

Call for proposals: March 15th deadline
A hundred years ago, Ireland was marked by a series of events that proved fundamental to the making of its modern memory. Those events – from the passing of the Home Rule Bill to the Lock-Out of 1913, from the slaughters on the battlefields of the Great War to the Easter Rising – occurred during a period of unparalleled modernist innovation, and in a mass media age. A subsequent history of national foundation and decolonization can be traced in part to this moment of Irish history, when Ireland's struggles proved paradigmatic of what was to come in other places.