Don’t forget, The Aesthetica Creative Works Competition closes for entries next Tuesday!

We’ve decided to catch up with last year’s Artwork Winner, Shadric Toop. His artwork, Alan, is a mixed media work, combining photomontage, varnish, stains, acrylic and oil paint as well as electrical wires and is the front cover image for last year’s Creative Works Annual. The Artwork section is judged by Aesthetica editor, Cherie Federico, and last year’s other winners were Louise Beech (Fiction, Judge, Rachel Hazelwood) and Sally Spedding (Poetry, Judge, Kate North). Read our Q&A with Louise here.

I love coffee. Not instant though. That was one of things that took a while to get used to when I moved to the UK. You’d go over to someone’s house; they’d offer you a coffee and get the jar out of the cupboard and the teaspoon out of the drawer. Now, in New York, out comes the grinder and then into the coffee pot. There is a distinct difference between American coffee and British coffee, although Italian coffee tops the list for me.

August/September Issue- Extract from the Editor’s Note

When we look back in fifty years, what do you think we’ll remember about these times? Technology is moving quickly; it’s hard to keep up. My new phone isn’t even that new anymore. As a society, we’ve changed – we can access anything we want, create our own user-generated content, and expose ourselves to the world on blogs. There has been a shift in power and we are more in control of our experiences, but this begs the question, what legacy will this leave?