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Every so often I review my subscriptions to refresh and spread the financial love as it were. I have my constants – Mslexia, Poetry Salzburg, Magma – but it pays to explore other publications, which is how I found SLICE.

Published twice a year out of New York, SLICE combines stunning visuals with themed fiction, non-fiction, poetry and interviews. This issue’s theme is ‘Borders’, be they personal, geographical or meta-physical.

I have a confession – rarely do I sit and read a magazine/journal from cover to cover in one sitting. This one I did. Bookended with engaging fiction – from ‘August’ by Aja Gabel, about a woman post-affair to whom a neighbour’s dog takes a shine through to Tara Isabel Zambrano’s ‘New Beginnings’, describing the delicate dance between a couple who first met at an Indian grocery store – there’s much to absorb to find or lose your own lines.

The poetry’s good too. In Josh Bettinger’s ‘Still Life with Bridge as Handshake of Lands’, inanimate objects are given life existing among us and in ‘Night Water’ by Josie Schoel, people are cyclical trying to connect from within their own orbits.

A gem is the ‘Exquisite Corpse’, a game where one writer drafts the first part of a story with their final line being passed to the next to continue it (I remember doing this at school!). Four writers were asked to play, with their words translated from Arabic, French, Swedish and Catalan to create a unique stitched story, which centres around an Institute given four facades.

So, if you’re looking to subscribe to something new, I’d recommend SLICE, because the images speak too, inspiration for that next writing project perhaps…