Extra Teeth - Issue One

by Camilla Grudova, Leila Aboulela, Jess Brough

A Scottish magazine with an international outlook, Extra Teeth features bestsellers, award-winners and emerging writers alike. With fresh illustrations by Maria Stoian and thoughtful design throughout, this magazine is a celebration of the power of print.

Issue One includes:

FICTION
Leila Aboulela, Jess Brough, Nicole Flattery, Janice Galloway, Camilla Grudova, Sheena Kalayil, Kirsty Logan, Lisa McInerney, Martin MacInnes, Jay G. Ying

NONFICTION
Dave Coates, Carolina Orloff

Genres: Short Stories

79 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2019

About the author

Camilla Grudova lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She holds a degree in art history and German from McGill University, Montreal. Her fiction has appeared in the White Review and Granta.

Grudova originally posted stories on her Tumblr blog before being spotted by an editor from The White Review.

Her story, "Waxy" (Granta 136), was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for short fiction and won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novelette.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal.

But don't trust my opinion, I published it.

[Karen Rós · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had very few expectations going into this magazine because I straight up just didn't know what to expect - I have very little experience with literary magazines and all I knew about this one is that it's Scottish and, apparently, has extra bite.

I can honestly say I was blown away by this magazine. Not all of the stories appealed to me, but they were all brilliantly crafted and compelling in their own right, and I felt the curation for this issue was phenomenal. Not a single story felt out of place, despite how unique they were. This magazine was published in November 2019, yet some of the stories were so relatable to my covid-19 experience they seemed eerily prescient - in particular, Jess Brough's Thank God In The Acknowledgements because I swear, writing and finishing a dissertation during a pandemic felt EXACTLY like that.

My favourite pieces in this magazine were, surprisingly, the non-fiction pieces, and especially Dave Coates' essay The Lyric Is In Another Castle: Poetry and Video Games. I've never been a huge fan of poetry and while I like video games I've not always had access to them. This essay makes the argument that poetry and video games can be read with the same method, or that they teach you how to play/read itself with the same tools. Coates illustrates this brilliantly by analysing two video games and two poems, showing how the poem and the game are constructed, how they work, how they can be read, and how they are, despite all appearances to the contrary, are in conversation with one another. It's a brilliant essay and I loved this approach to reading poetry - I feel like I've actually been given a way to appreciate poetry in a different way from how it's always been taught in school, and - dare I say it - has actually sparked an interest in poetry for me. I also just really love this essay for breaking out of the box, combining two very different mediums in a way that enhances both of them, and for the way Coates' expects you to do the work to read the poems alongside the essay - he gives you homework, essentially, and I promise you that if you do your homework, you'll walk away from this essay with a richer understanding of critical reading than before you approached it.

The other nonfiction piece is Carolina Orloff's Translating to Resist. Orloff is the founder of Charco Press, who specialise in publishing Latin American literature in English translation. This essay reminded me of why I love translations and also highlighted how translations are an art form of their own, and a very political one at that. During my MLitt degree I wrote an essay about translations into English and made the point that in this current time of political upheaval and extreme right movements, translations are more important than ever. Orloff makes the same point, just much more eloquently than I did - and now I'm a teensy bit sorry I hadn't read this magazine before I submitted my essay, so that I may have quoted her in it. Oh well!

On a final note, I want to talk about the typesetting. At first I thought the typesetting was riddled with errors, but on closer review I realised that these little 'errors' were intentional - designed to be unsettling, to make the reader just a little bit uncomfortable. Much as I'd have liked to grab a ruler and straighten out every column until they aligned at the top and bottom, the somewhat jaunty offset contributes to the magazine's 'bite'.

I recommend this to anyone who wants something unconventional, experimental, and - well - 'edgy'.

[Ignacio Peña · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I know one of the publishers responsible for this mag.

Having said that, I thought this was pretty damn great. I was personally drawn to this first issue for the chance to read a new short piece of fiction by one of my favorite new writers (Martin MacInnes), and was delighted to read many more stories here which I found to be emotionally provocative and thoughtful. Like any collection or magazine, there was a piece or two which didn't quite land for me, but the magazine overall is very tight and impactful and a joy to read. There's even a critical essay in there exploring the connection between video-games and poetry - an endeavor which I initially found myself incredibly sceptical of, and one which won me over by the end.

[Rue Baldry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very strong first issue of a magazine, which looks like it has the legs to become a permanent part of the British literary landscape. (Let’s just hope it continues to have the funding, but I’ll save my rant about cultural underfunding in the UK for another time).

First off, it’s beautiful. It’s professional and artistic-looking, with a broad appeal. It’s just a nice object to hold on your hands. I love the style of the artwork (though the subject-matter is somewhat queasiness-inducing for a vegetarian) and a gorgeous little poster is included. The size, colour, layout and finish really make it stand out.

The quality of the writing is all high. Janice Galloway and Lisa McInerney are impressive authors to include in an inaugural issue, and the names I didn’t know were of roughly equal abilities. It was a pity that the Galloway piece appeared to be under proof-read. None of the other pieces had the typos it did. There’s a grounded surreality to a lot of the fiction (Gogol influences?). I preferred the earlier, more realistic parts of a lot of the stories before they went off fantastically, but that’s just personal taste.

There are two rather academic literary critical essays at the back of the mag. I tried to engage with them, but neither really held me. I’m mildly interested in video games, contemporary poetry and Latin American literature, but not enough to keep reading either of them. Without those I would have given five stars but, again, that’s just a matter of personal taste and does nothing to detract from a lovely, impressive literary mag overall.

[Euan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the bold and beautiful first issue of Extra Teeth. I’ve been introduced to authors I haven’t read before and whose contributions I thoroughly enjoyed (Camilla Grudova, Janice Galloway). Martin MacInnes and Jess Brough’s short stories, as well as Carolina Orloff’s powerful essay on translation as an act of resistance, were my highlights. I cannot wait to see what Extra Teeth do next!

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of short stories I can't recommend this new Scottish literary magazine enough. It's a real treat to have such a diverse range of brilliant authors collected together in such a beautifully designed and illustrated volume.

I particularly loved the stories by Kirsty Logan and Camilla Grudova (no surprises there), both of which produced actual out loud screams from me, but all the other stories are well worth reading too.