diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 7d574e2..221999f 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+Version 3.18.1 released 2022-XX-XX
+
+* Remove unnecessary `i` variable from encoder module namespace
+  https://github.com/simplejson/simplejson/pull/303
+
 Version 3.18.0 released 2022-11-14
 
 * Allow serialization of classes that implement for_json or _asdict by
diff --git a/conf.py b/conf.py
index 694446c..e58b507 100644
--- a/conf.py
+++ b/conf.py
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
 
 # General substitutions.
 project = 'simplejson'
-copyright = '2021, Bob Ippolito'
+copyright = '2022, Bob Ippolito'
 
 # The default replacements for |version| and |release|, also used in various
 # other places throughout the built documents.
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@
 # The short X.Y version.
 version = '3.18'
 # The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tags.
-release = '3.18.0'
+release = '3.18.1'
 
 # There are two options for replacing |today|: either, you set today to some
 # non-false value, then it is used:
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 336f443..64c5c74 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
     DistutilsPlatformError
 
 IS_PYPY = hasattr(sys, 'pypy_translation_info')
-VERSION = '3.18.0'
+VERSION = '3.18.1'
 DESCRIPTION = "Simple, fast, extensible JSON encoder/decoder for Python"
 
 with open('README.rst', 'r') as f:
diff --git a/simplejson/__init__.py b/simplejson/__init__.py
index c79ad1b..b3e8a81 100644
--- a/simplejson/__init__.py
+++ b/simplejson/__init__.py
@@ -118,7 +118,7 @@
 
 """
 from __future__ import absolute_import
-__version__ = '3.18.0'
+__version__ = '3.18.1'
 __all__ = [
     'dump', 'dumps', 'load', 'loads',
     'JSONDecoder', 'JSONDecodeError', 'JSONEncoder',