To mark the publication of Red Smoking Mirror, Nick Hunt explores how alternate histories can help imagine different futures

In this penetrating essay, artist and lecturer Mat Osmond, looks at how the disruption of activism challenges a fossil-fuelled ecocidal civilisaton and asks: what is the true role of education when generations are being betrayed by the sleepwalking culture that fosters them?

Today we bring you an excerpt from the new collection of essays, Mossback, by David Michael Pritchett, who looks for ways to resist empire and heal our cultural wounds by immersing himself in the murky waters of our living world. Introduced by Neale Inglenook.

The final post for Our Dark Materials, series editor Caroline Ross speaks with artist and calligrapher Joumana Medlej about transformation, natural pigment and craft ancestors.

An owl's silent wing swoops over writer Kim Schnuelle, reminding her to seek rest in order to restore her sense of the sacred.

For our final 'taster' from the new issue, no 23: Antonia Bertucci explores the sacrificial implications of Christianity and breastfeeding, and misogynistic taboos about the female body. With sporescape image by Nick Jordan.

In our fourth taster from our new issue, Dark Kitchen:, novelist Gregory Norminton serves up a deliciously dark short story about an exclusive dining club that is soon to have a taste of its own medicine. Menu illustrated by Graeme Walker.

In our third Dark Kitchen post, poets Nickole Brown and Emily Hasler serve up disconcerting dishes from the realms of fairy tales and rural Kentucky. With artwork by Peter Cameron and Superflux.