Arley Sorg is an associate literary agent at kt literary. He is a two-time World Fantasy Award Finalist and a two-time Locus Award Finalist for his work as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine. Arley is also a SFWA Solstice Award Recipient, a Space Cowboy Award Recipient, and a finalist for two Ignyte Awards, for his work as a critic as well as his creative nonfiction. Arley is senior editor at Locus, associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare, a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and an interviewer for Clarkesworld. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, movie reviewer, and book reviewer, and ran a series of interviews on his site: arleysorg.com. He has been a guest instructor or speaker at a range of events—and for a variety of audiences—from Worldcons to WisCons, from elementary students to PhD candidates. He was a guest critiquer for the 2023 Odyssey Writing Workshop and the week five instructor for the 2023 Clarion West Workshop. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in the SF Bay Area and writes in local coffee shops when he can. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.
We still get dreams, and we still have our memories. We still have, somewhere nestled deep within us, the capacity to make a peace for ourselves or to try and climb the umbilical cord back to God or whatever Higher Power can grant us that peace we cannot make for ourselves. If we didn’t have that ability, we might not have gotten the Harlem Ballroom scene and vogueing.
In this issue’s short fiction, we discover the secret life of Banyan trees, in Shalini Srinivasan’s “Markets: A Beginner’s Guide”, and “Free Coffin” by Corey Flintoff reminds us that there’s no such thing as “free”; in flash fiction, Moses Ose Utomi explores the existential with “The Mirror Test”, and Saswati Chatterjee’s “Pest Control” takes a different look at one of the most popular tropes; for poetry, we have “Ōmagatoki” by Betsy Aoki and “Cherries, Sweet and Tart” by Maria Dong. Plus an interview with Beast Made of Night, Riot Baby, War Girls, (S)kinfolk, and Goliath author Tochi Onyebuchi. Enjoy!
In this issue’s short fiction, we get a different kind of hero’s journey in a really cool world with Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga’s “Saviour of the Light Market”, and “The Rainmakers” by Megan M. Davies-Ostrom glitters and glows in a climate-based post-apocalypse; in flash fiction, Dominica Phetteplace haunts us with “24 Reasons You’re Dreaming About Your Ex / 24 Razones Por Las Que Sueñas Con Tú Ex”, and C.L. Holland’s “What the River Remembers” takes a much closer look at change through a unique perspective; for poetry, we have “Forest Maths” by Nnadi Samuel and “The Other Day The Saucers Came” by Karen Brenchley. Plus a kind of “Part 2” essay, or companion piece to our December 2020 essay, this one called “All the King’s Women: the Fats” by the author of Big Girl, Find Layla, and series The Road to Nowhere, Meg Elison. Enjoy!
I feel like it’s more interesting to watch people change through their relationships to other people than to see them go through changes in a vacuum. I feel like one thing the stories in Even Greater Mistakes have in common is that you can usually identify one or two relationships that power them. Even in my novels, this is usually the case for me, and I feel like my novels are firing on all cylinders when you can track a particular relationship from beginning to end.
In this issue’s short fiction, Kehkashan Khalid offers a condensed epic, where a mother must contend with her fractious sons, in “The Petticoat Government,” and Genevieve Mills gives us a taste of revenge in “Girls Have Sharp Teeth”; in flash fiction, Billie Cohen’s “Lessons” features a different kind of imprisonment, and there are consequences for Charles EP Murphy’s “Shouty Lads”; for poetry, we have “Unfinished” by Eugen Bacon and “After The End” by Jessica Cho. Plus an interview with the author of Victories Greater Than Death, Never Say You Can’t Survive, and Even Greater Mistakes, Charlie Jane Anders. Enjoy!
In this issue’s short fiction, Pamela Rentz takes us on a journey of place and identity in “Obstruction,” and Zebib K. A. explores the complexity of being and feeling strange in “Heirlooms;” in flash fiction, Allison King asks what happens when a rabbit wants to be a dragon in “Breath of the Dragon King,” and Gwynne Garfinkle’s “Emily and the What-If Imp” gives voice to an undesired darkness; for poetry, we have “Halsing for the Anchylose” by Stewart C. Baker and “Twilight Mind” by Jennifer Crow. Plus essay “Worldbuilding With Legs” by Premee Mohamed, author of And What Can We Offer You Tonight, The Annual Migration of Clouds, and The Void Ascendant.
I began writing as a coping method, sneaking out of bed at night to work at my computer. I wasn’t sleeping much, anyway. This went on for a few years. I wasn’t doing it seriously, just writing what came to mind. There may have even been a novel attempt in there. I never showed anybody anything. It was just for me.
In this issue’s short fiction, Amal Singh gives us a difficult reality check in “What Is Mercy,” and K.P. Kulski’s “An Arrangement of Moss and Dirt” reminds us to be careful what we wish for; in flash fiction, Addison Smith introduces us to a couple coming out of—or into—their shell in “Sounds for Crustaceans,” and Mark S. Bailen has a fresh perspective on portal stories with “Lost Portals”; for poetry, we have “The Herbalist” by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe and “The Forbidden Path to Forgetting” by Daniel Ausema. Plus an interview with Elysium and Destroyer of Light author Jennifer Marie Brissett. Enjoy!
In this issue’s short fiction, Eugen Bacon & Seb Doubinsky take us through a frank and brutal emigration in “The Failing Name,” and Inez Schaechterle visits the Old West in the here and now in “Ghost Riders at Hutchinson’s Two Pump”; in flash fiction, Vanessa McKinney brings coming out to the celestial level in “Shapeshifter,” and in Sarina Dorie’s “My List of Bedtime Bogeymen” we may—or may not—want that bogeyman to stay away; for poetry, we have “The Reality of Ghosts” by Yilin Wang and “i find my body and my body” by Shaoni C. White. Plus an essay, “We Are The Mountain: A Look At The Inactive Protagonist” by author Vida Cruz. Enjoy!
My books are very different, and I think for someone who has only read one type of story from me it can be a bit shocking to see how much things can change from one book to the other. Velvet Was the Night is absolutely a noir set in a time and place most people don’t know about. This is the era when the Mexican government is torturing, killing, and beating activists. The CIA is assisting the government because they want to fight communists in Latin America. It’s a grim, dingy setting, full of conflict.
