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Arley Sorg

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.

Editorial, April 2021

In this issue . . .  Alice Goldfuss weaves a biting tale of resistance in “Woman with no Face” and Y.M. Pang offers a fresh twist on a superhero navigating relationships in “How I Became MegaPunch, or Why I Stayed with Dylan”; for flash fiction, A.Z. Louise brings coffee and witches together in “Single Origin” and Shane Halbach’s “So. Fucking.Metal.” puts the Death in Death Metal; for this month’s poetry we bring you Terese Mason Pierre’s “Appeal to the Dopplegänger” and Tristan Beiter’s “The Knitting Bowl”; plus, this issue features an essay by The Unbroken author C.L. Clark: “The Fiction of Peace, The Fantasy of War.”

Interview: Charles Yu

I’d written poems as a kid, and I took poetry workshops as an undergrad at Berkeley. But I didn’t make a sustained effort at writing until my mid-twenties, after graduating from law school. Instead of studying for the bar exam, I found myself at the bookstore every day, reading story collections. Going into a new career as a lawyer, I think I was searching for a creative release valve, some private headspace I could carve out. So I started writing little things in the margins of notepads, or sending emails to myself with scraps of language. My first pieces were very short, weird experiments. I don’t even know you could call them stories.

Editorial, March 2021

In the March issue of Fantasy Magazine . . . Original fiction by M. Shaw (“Man vs. Bomb”) and Hal Y. Zhang (“Arenous”); flash fiction by McKinley Valentine (“The Code for Everything”) and Donyae Coles (“Close Enough to Divine”); poetry by B. Sharise Moore (“Black Beak”) and Priya Chand (“Dragonslayer”); and an interview with Charles Yu.

Editorial, February 2021

In the February issue of Fantasy Magazine . . . Original fiction by Innocent Chizaram Ilo (“Flight”) and David James Brock (“Kisser”); flash fiction by Sharang Biswas (“Of Course You Screamed”) and Shingai Njeri Kagunda (“Blackman’s Flight in Four Parts”); poetry by Danielle Jean Atkinson (“Like a Box of Chocolates”) and Lynette Mejía (“What My Mother Taught Me”); and a new essay, “The Validity of Escapism,” by Andrea Stewart. Thanks for reading!

Interview: N.K. Jemisin

I don’t tell other artists how to do their art. For me, however, it’s important that art accurately reflect the world around me — how people really behave, how societies really work, how change really happens (or doesn’t). Even if I put it in another world, wrapped in trappings that have nothing to do with reality, certain things need to be true to life. That makes it political whether I intend for it to be or not. And right now I see (and feel) a lot of resistance, so naturally that appears in my work.

Author Spotlight: Anya Ow

I certainly can’t cook as well as Yun San, nor am I as fierce as Jin. The main thing I have in common with Yun San is her love of food – the favour she asks Jin, in the end, would be the same thing I would’ve asked for in her shoes. Chinese Imperial cuisine has resulted in a number of popular dishes today, some of which are my favourites, like Peking duck. As with Yun San, I also feel that it’s regrettable that some people treasure monuments and inanimate treasures more than our biodiversity.

Editorial, December 2020

So – 2020. What a year. And what an intense past few months. We’ve had so many challenges! Between elections and personal stuff–as we write this, on November 9th, we are both looking back at a lot of obstacles which are now behind us; and we are looking forward, embracing new opportunities, engaging in new discussions.

Author Spotlight: Kurt Hunt

My inability to focus and lack of free time make very short stories ideal because I can actually finish them. They also just come more naturally to me because my current strengths as a storyteller are turns of phrase, evocative descriptions—elements that can make a short-short sparkle but can’t prop up a longer piece. As for composing a successful story in such a short space, I’m no expert, but I try to listen to people who are.

Interview: SL Huang

One thing I do know, though, is that I don’t really believe in the idea of “breaking in.” Everything’s small steps, the way I see it—some, like a novel publication, larger than others, but everything sort of accumulates, and eventually there’s something other people look at and say, hey, that’s a career-shaped thing. But it’s never felt like that from the inside, for me. I did a bunch of small, individual things, separately, and they’ve sort of lumped together over time.