The past three years have been a remarkable epoch in our lives. We are so grateful for your support of our magazine and our authors–it’s been an honor to showcase the first professional publications of so many of them. We’ll be watching their careers blossom, as we imagine you will, too.

We can’t go without making sure you know exactly who’s been working behind the scenes, making us look good. Every single one of them volunteered their time and expertise to this project.

Phoebe Barton and Mayookh Barua interviewed authors for the Author Spotlights. Phoebe joined us shortly after we launched; Mayookh took over when Veronica Henry moved on to focus on her novels. Mayookh has also handled a lot of our social media. In the time they’ve been with us, Phoebe has won an Aurora Award, and Mayookh earned his MFA and acceptance into a PhD program.

Madison Brake is our author wrangler, ensuring that we have updated bios where you can learn more about our authors and their accomplishments. She continues her work with the Lightspeed and Nightmare teams.

Chloe Smith is our tireless copyeditor; she has saved us from ourselves many times, as did Alex Puncekar before her.  Anthony Cardno has been proofreader for both Fantasy Magazine and Lightspeed for many years; Devin Marcus joined him in 2016 and has been proofreader for all three magazines in our publishing family since. Anyone who has worked in any kind of quality control role knows what all three of them have put up with: Everyone gets to be late but them, and they have tolerated our lapses with grace.

Wendy Wagner helped us get on our feet in the beginning, showing us the ropes of the Managing Editor role and generally being her amazing, supportive self.

The website itself was artfully designed and is expertly maintained by Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios.

Our submissions system is Moksha, created and maintained by Matt Kressel. Matt has simplified the lives of countless authors and editors.

And of course, the great John Joseph Adams is ultimately our publisher, the guy who handles all the fiddly details, makes sure that our authors get paid, our subscribers get their ebooks, and the web content isn’t eaten by packet mites.

Our content will remain online for you to read and hopefully for others to discover.

Christie has other editorial irons in the fire and will be giving them the attention they deserve, much to the relief of the authors patiently waiting for her to do so. She’s also looking forward to getting back to her own writing.

Arley has taken on a new role as Associate Agent with kt literary, which he describes as “in many ways, a continuation of things I did as co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy.” He recently taught week five of the six-week Clarion West Workshop. He is still a senior editor at Locus Magazine, still working with F&SF, Clarkesworld, and others, including reviewing books for Lightspeed. Look him up at arleysorg.com for calendar info and so on.

• • • •

Christie: What a ride this has been! We’ve had the good fortune to work with so many wonderful people, and I hope to do so again, one way or another. Everyone on this team has left their mark, and we wish every one of them the very best in all things. Thanks, too, to the many authors who submitted their work to us, whether or not we ultimately purchased it. It’s always an honor to be trusted with a person’s art.

To our readers, thank you so much for giving us a try and sticking with us. We hope that you’ve found stories here that moved and inspired you.

One of the things that I love about the SFF short fiction community is the “coopetition” between magazines. I’m grateful to all of the other editors and publishers out there who boosted FM and supported us from the start. Go subscribe and support your favorites!

Finally, I’m so glad to have done this with Arley. This has been a project of shared values and shared goals, and we’ve stayed true to them and to each other for the entirety of this three year run. It’s a thing we made together, and I love that Arley will forever be such a huge part of my personal and professional journey.

Arley: I’m immensely grateful to everyone who gave this magazine a read – I believe we did something special with this space, and I’m glad it touched so many people. I’m super grateful for the authors who worked with us, who trusted us, and whose work we had the privilege of publishing. It’s been wonderful to get to share these amazing works with the world! I’m even glad I got to read a lot of the work we didn’t have room to publish, and I sincerely hope more readers get to see those pieces. I feel immensely lucky to have been able to do this, and I’m really glad I got to do it with Christie Yant, who is a powerhouse and a creative force. I’m super super super grateful to both Christie and John – look, y’all: folks who don’t work in this industry have no idea how much trust and faith goes into the simple act of letting someone do something with your mag. Besides this, they put in tons of “behind the scenes” work, and gave me room to make creative decisions. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who had their hands in making Fantasy Magazine happen. THANK YOU to reviewers and other folks who shouted about how much they loved something they read. A huge THANK YOU to all of you, taking a moment to look at this editorial. Support your favorite mags, authors, and venues, and please be kind to each other.

This month, we’re proud to introduce you to the podcast team:

Stefan Rudnicki has been producing the podcasts for our family of magazines since Lightspeed launched in 2010. A Grammy and Audie award-winning producer and tremendous voice actor, he has narrated many of our stories himself–but he has also taken great care to be true to the author’s intent, seeking out and hiring actors to ensure a personal, authentic voice for each production. You can discover more of his work at Skyboat Media, where he and Gabrielle de Cuir record, produce, and direct audio books.

Speaking of Gabrielle–another incredible, award-winning talent–she also recorded many of our stories, and introduced each podcast episode with her signature verve. Alison Belle Bews rounds out the Skyboat team with her directorial expertise.

Acclaimed voice actor Janina Edwards took over for Gabrielle, and has brought a warm, professional polish to every podcast episode. Janina is an Audie award finalist and has been featured in the New York Times for her work voicing BIPOC stories and audio books. Her audio blog is full of depth and insight into the audio book field and her creative world. You can learn more at her website, https://www.janinaspeaksvolumes.com.

Jim Freund is our post-production editor. Jim is the host of the SFF radio show Hour of the Wolf out of New York City, which has been running since 1974. He’s also the Executive Curator for the New York Review of Science Fiction reading series, a vital part of the SFF literary community on the east coast of the U.S. Jim’s meticulous attention to detail ensures a final product that our authors and the entire podcast team can be proud of.

We can’t emphasize enough just how lucky we feel and how grateful we are for all of these incredible professionals who have devoted their time, talent, and skill to these productions over the years.

If you’ll miss their work and your fantasy audio fix, take heart–the team is adding fantasy stories back into the podcast over at Lightspeed, starting with the November issue.

Next month we’ll introduce you to our amazing editorial team.

In this issue we’re proud to bring you short stories by Lowry Poletti (“Dread of the White Dog”) and Sam Kyung Yoo (“Set Yourself on Fire”); flash fiction by Angela Liu (“The Cursed Universe Inside Your Eye”) and Alex V. Cruz (“Bacá”); poetry by Zynab Iliyasu Bobi (“Brief History of Monsterification”) and Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe (“A Mortal’s Guide to Attaining Godhood in the Era of Chaos”); and an interview with a few of the many anthologists doing interesting work in the field. Enjoy!

We relaunched Fantasy Magazine in November of 2020–what a weird thing to do at an exceptionally weird time!–and we did it with high hopes, but realistic expectations based on our many years of experience in this field.

It is with real sadness that we have to announce that October 2023 will be our last issue. People will want to know why, of course, and the answer is the expected one: Unfortunately Fantasy never reached a point of paying for itself, and with the Kindle Periodicals mess it’s just not sustainable. We’ve actually carried on a little longer than we originally anticipated, because ending on our third anniversary made sense.

We accomplished what we set out to do, which was to make something special, to offer something distinctive, and to contribute to the landscape of genre in meaningful ways. There were a number of fantastic accolades along the way, including being finalists for two Locus Awards and two World Fantasy Awards, not to mention the work of our contributors landing in Best Of anthologies and various awards lists. Fantasy was driven by our vision, but it wouldn’t exist without our contributors. And we can’t forget the amazing individuals helping behind the scenes, who you’ll learn more about next month. They were all instrumental in Fantasy’s success.

Finally, we couldn’t have done this without you, dear readers. Thank you for joining us in celebrating these wonderful works.

Christie Yant & Arley Sorg

Publisher’s Note: Information for Subscribers

If you are a subscriber to Fantasy and subscribed directly through the store on our website, you can either get a refund for the remaining issues on your subscription, or we can convert your Fantasy subscription to a Lightspeed or Nightmare subscription. Please email subscriptions@adamantpress.com to let us know how you’d like to proceed. If we don’t hear from you by the time the last issue is published, we’ll just convert your subscription to a Lightspeed subscription. We’ll also be reaching out to direct subscribers via email soon.

If you subscribed via Weightless Books, you can contact their customer service at weightlessbooks.com/contact.

If you subscribed via Amazon, as noted repeatedly in our editorials over the last couple of months, the Kindle Periodical program is closing in September (one of the primary reasons for Fantasy’s closure), so there shouldn’t be anything you need to do to cancel. All Kindle Periodicals magazines are being moved into Kindle Unlimited.

AS: I couldn’t make it this year but you’re right, they’re usually about 130 people or so. That’s one of the things I like about them! At smaller events, it’s easier to have quality hang outs with folks.  Everyone had a great time! A couple of minor hiccups, of course. I think 60 people attended in-person. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from the community. It was a tremendous amount of work – the two people who put the most into it (Liza Trombi and Francesca Myman) probably worked 80 or 90 hours that week.

CY: I think we were both pretty gobsmacked to be finalists again this year. One of the many things that I’ve really appreciated about you since we started this journey together is your vigilance in keeping up with the honors and nominations that our writers receive. There have been a LOT, across multiple categories, including non-fiction and poetry! It is always a joy to be a small part of a writer’s career, whether they’re a new author selling us their first story, or a seasoned, multiply-award-nominated pro.

AS: Absolutely. I was genuinely surprised that we were finalists again, because it’s by open vote, and there are so many folks doing awesome things. I’m grateful that readers have loved a lot of the work we’ve published. I’m so glad that many of our writers have been recognized, from various awards to awesome reviews to inclusion in best-of anthologies.

CY: You’ve worked at Locus for . . . how many years now? It seems like forever. For those who don’t know, Locus has effectively been the trade journal for the SFF field for decades. Long before I’d ever submitted a story–or even finished writing one, probably!–I would buy issues at Borders and get to feel like I had insider access to the world of SFF publishing. It’s been an invaluable resource for pros at every level and in every role in the field. Working there I imagine you get to learn about upcoming good news well before the rest of us. What’s it like having to keep those secrets, when you just want to squee to the world and congratulate people, knowing how much readers loved their story? 

AS: I started there in 2014, right after the Odyssey Workshop! It’s been valuable for learning about and understanding the field, including its history and communities. I do get to hold a lot of secrets! It’s pretty fun! I occasionally agonize at not being able to tell a friend something, but it’s so cool when our community recognizes the wonderful things that creative folks accomplish, and I don’t want to mess that up. Has working as an Adamant Press publisher and a Tordotcom acquisitions editor changed your perspectives on the industry, since back when you were first starting out?

CY: Seeing how the sausage gets made is bound to change a person’s perspective. There are real challenges involved in bringing stories into the world, and many of them are beyond our control. Fantasy Magazine and its sibling publications are so lucky to have so many amazing people volunteering their time to make these stories available to our readers–including our friends at Skyboat Media, who produce our monthly podcast for no reason other than that they love genre fiction just as much as we do. The most important thing I’ve learned, having worn multiple hats on both sides of the submission portal and the checkout line, is that this thing we’re creating would be diminished without the contribution of every person involved in the process. Between the ebook, website, and podcast, a dozen people have touched each story before it reaches its ultimate destination–the mind and imagination of the reader.

• • • •

In this month’s issue of Fantasy Magazine we bring you short fiction by Simo Srinivas (“Bozpo Witch-Bane”) and Margaret Jordan (“Blue”); flash fiction by Kimberly Terasaki (“The World is Ending Tomorrow”) and Catherine Yu (“The Dancer”); poetry by H.B. Asari (“After the Pyre”) and Julia August (“The End of Little Dreams”); and an interview with this year’s finalists for the Nebula Award for Short Fiction.

Publisher’s Note: Kindle Periodicals is Closing, and We Need Your Support More Than Ever.

Many of you have likely already heard about the new existential threat to Fantasy Magazine and all of the other digital magazines in the SF/F/H field: the impending closure, in September, of Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program. They will be transitioning some magazines into Kindle Unlimited, and so in some respects things may continue as normal if you subscribe via Kindle Periodicals—but this shift will cut severely into the finances of any magazine currently using the service; Fantasy, for instance, will see our largest source of funding cut it in half. (For additional information about this seismic shift, you can see Neil Clarke’s deep dive into the details at neil-clarke.com/amazon-kindle-subscriptions.)

What We Can Do About This

The best thing you can do if you are a Kindle Periodicals subscriber is to migrate your subscription over to one of our other subscription options. Currently, we have the following options available:

1. Subscribe direct via our website: We have options for 6 month, 12 month, 24 month, and Lifetime subscriptions. We’re in the process of also bringing back the pay-as-you-go monthly subscriptions (i.e., the way Kindle Periodicals currently works) as well. Your issues can be delivered to your Kindle or Kindle app of choice the same way they are via Kindle Periodicals, though they’d appear on your device as regular eBooks rather than the special “periodical” format Kindle Periodicals forced us to use.
2. Subscribe via Weightless Books: Weightless Books’s subscriptions work exactly like our Direct subscriptions, though they only have 6 and 12 month options.
3. Become a Patreon patron: If you just want to support Fantasy and the other Adamant Press magazines (without getting ebooks in return), you can become one of our Patrons at Patreon. You’d be able to choose any amount that you’d like to pledge to support us, either monthly or annually.

Visit Fantasymagazine.com/support for more info about all of the above.

Why We Need Your Support

There are no big companies supporting or funding Adamant Press’s magazines—and Adamant itself is kind of a two-person show—so the magazines really rely on reader support. Because of that, it’s vital for us to keep as many Kindle Periodicals subscribers—which is the vast majority of our subscribers are—as possible during this upheaval. So, please—if you care about the continuation of Fantasy and any other genre magazines you subscribe to, please take this to heart and help us make this transition.

Thank You for Being a Subscriber

Thanks so much for your generous support over the months or years you’ve been a subscriber or reader. Together, we can ensure that Fantasy will continue coming to you every month for many years to come.

CY: I hope to see you in Kansas City! That’s it for me this year, I’m afraid. Travel is pretty tough these days, and my one “big” trip will be to see family I haven’t seen since before the pandemic!

AS: My first time going to a convention, I was actually terrified. It’s hard to explain looking back on it. But I think I just had a lot of misconceptions about them. If a friend hadn’t gone with me, I would never have attended. Christie, for you, what do people get out of these events, and who should think about going? Especially considering that many folks see reading (or writing, for that matter) as a solitary activity.

CY: Anyone who wants to meet and geek out with other genre fans—and learn a little about how the sausage is made—should try to get to a convention! Several have kept an online component, which might make participation easier for those who can’t travel. 

World Fantasy 2009 was my first convention. I went alone—I’m still pretty proud of Past Me for that—and I was so intimidated by all of the pros around me! But everyone was so kind and seemed to take me seriously as a writer even though I hadn’t sold a thing yet. WFC is a “pro” convention, as opposed to a fan convention like WorldCon, but that just means it’s primarily focused on business and craft. I’m allergic to the word “networking”–it sounds so transactional and inauthentic—and I was relieved to discover that the people were really genuine, and we bonded over our shared passion for the genre. I met some of my dearest friends that weekend! That’s still why I go—I get to spend time with other genre nerds. So for the writers out there, World Fantasy is a great place to start.

AS: I feel like conventions are such multi-faceted events, and each has its own characteristics, each has its own personality. I usually recommend folks going for the first time do so with a friend, ideally someone they can split off from here and there to have their own, separate hang-outs, or to pursue their own interests. You also have to plan to spend more money than you think. If you go out for drinks, for example, that may be an expense you hadn’t anticipated; and meals and drinks can be great ways to socialize with folks. But it’s also okay to just go and attend panels and meet your literary heroes.

CY: You’re so right—a convention is what we make of it, and if that means hanging out in the bar with a few friends for three days, going to panels and not talking to anyone, wandering through the vendors’ room browsing cool fandom merch, or actively seeking out new people who share your interests, those are all valid options! Also, a whole lot of us are introverts, so if you need to spend half the convention in your hotel room recovering emotional hit points, we will understand—and often will be relieved that we can go do the same!

Publisher’s Note: Kindle Periodicals is Closing, and We Need Your Support More Than Ever.

Many of you have likely already heard about the new existential threat to Fantasy Magazine and all of the other digital magazines in the SF/F/H field: the impending closure, in September, of Amazon’s Kindle Periodicals program. They will be transitioning some magazines into Kindle Unlimited, and so in some respects things may continue as normal if you subscribe via Kindle Periodicals—but this shift will cut severely into the finances of any magazine currently using the service; Fantasy, for instance, will see our largest source of funding cut it in half. (For additional information about this seismic shift, you can see Neil Clarke’s deep dive into the details at neil-clarke.com/amazon-kindle-subscriptions.)

What We Can Do About This

The best thing you can do if you are a Kindle Periodicals subscriber is to migrate your subscription over to one of our other subscription options. Currently, we have the following options available:

1. Subscribe direct via our website: We have options for 6 month, 12 month, 24 month, and Lifetime subscriptions. We’re in the process of also bringing back the pay-as-you-go monthly subscriptions (i.e., the way Kindle Periodicals currently works) as well. Your issues can be delivered to your Kindle or Kindle app of choice the same way they are via Kindle Periodicals, though they’d appear on your device as regular eBooks rather than the special “periodical” format Kindle Periodicals forced us to use.
2. Subscribe via Weightless Books: Weightless Books’s subscriptions work exactly like our Direct subscriptions, though they only have 6 and 12 month options.
3. Become a Patreon patron: If you just want to support Fantasy and the other Adamant Press magazines (without getting ebooks in return), you can become one of our Patrons at Patreon. You’d be able to choose any amount that you’d like to pledge to support us, either monthly or annually.

Visit Fantasymagazine.com/support for more info about all of the above.

Why We Need Your Support

There are no big companies supporting or funding Adamant Press’s magazines—and Adamant itself is kind of a two-person show—so the magazines really rely on reader support. Because of that, it’s vital for us to keep as many Kindle Periodicals subscribers—which is the vast majority of our subscribers are—as possible during this upheaval. So, please—if you care about the continuation of Fantasy and any other genre magazines you subscribe to, please take this to heart and help us make this transition.

Thank You for Being a Subscriber

Thanks so much for your generous support over the months or years you’ve been a subscriber or reader. Together, we can ensure that Fantasy will continue coming to you every month for many years to come.

AS: Fiction – the art of telling inventive stories to each other—is a global phenomenon. We don’t own it in the global “West”, we don’t own it in the US, it isn’t governed exclusively by the English language. Fiction has existed for a long time. And, all over the world, people weave the fantastic into their narratives.

CY: Case in point: Worldcon is in China this year, which underscores your point that this genre belongs to everyone. It’s easy to forget that there’s a whole world out there when what’s comfortable is so accessible. It takes some effort to seek out the unfamiliar, and we don’t always remember to do so until someone reminds us.

AS: I’m really glad that we’ve been able to showcase a range of voices and perspectives from around the world. This issue is certainly no exception. Many of the amazing works submitted have struck a chord, even if we only have a budget for a few of them. Personally, I believe our lives are improved by this variety, by being able to engage with stories by and about people from beyond our own direct social circles.

CY: Absolutely. The magic of the medium is that it’s the closest we can get to finding out what it’s like to live a different life and to see the world–real or imagined–through someone else’s eyes. We’re so grateful to our writers for giving us these glimpses into their imaginations and the experiences that shape them.

AS: We at Fantasy Magazine are not the only ones consistently showcasing work from around the world. With the careful work of a number of venues, such as khōréō, Strange Horizons and their sibling publication Samovar, Anathema, Apparition Lit to name a few, plus newer publications like Tasavvur Nama, and wonderful anthologies like Meteotopia, Africa Risen, Unlimited Futures, Disruption, and others, Anglophone readers everywhere and readers in the global “West” have even more access to so many amazing stories. Friends, this truly is the platinum age of genre.

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction,  Anya Ow’s “God of the River” wades into family legends and survival, and “The Body Fate” by Avi Burton explores role, identity, and expectation; in flash fiction, Anne E.G. Nydam pieces together a new kind of narrative in “Some Assembly Required,” and “It’s What’s Inside That Counts” by Warren Benedetto delivers a slice of hard truth; for poetry, we have “1960s With a Glass Harp” by Gospel Chinedu and “Legacy” by Anjali Patel. Plus an interview with Mark H. Harris about nonfiction book The Black Guy Dies First, co-authored with Robin R. Means Coleman. Enjoy!

I was once told a story about a Maa community that lived in Laikipia in pre-colonial times. They were very fierce, feared by the other communities around them, and they were closely related to the Maasai. However, when the British arrived during the colonial conquest, they were massacred to extinction. This story affected me in many ways, especially given that I could only find little written information related to it. As a result, this made me ask questions about whether there were tribes which were entirely lost during this period, but more so, it made me ask what happens to the survivors of genocides, and how that affects their descendants down the line. I’m not sure I was quite successful in finding an answer to that question, but it did give rise to my story.

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

The most difficult part of writing this was trying to understand what tone to use. While I felt that the story always contained grief, it was hard to write about collective grief in a way that didn’t seem abstract or too expository.

The easiest part was the narrator and the writing of place, what she sees and how she interprets it.

What authors or stories have most influenced your work? Are there themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

The authors who have most influenced my work are Gabriel García Márquez, Ted Chiang, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and Ken Liu. Through them, I was able to fall in love with speculative fiction and magical realism and understand how to weave those aspects into fiction.

I always find myself returning to the theme of identity in my writing. However, this is not necessarily a conscious thing, and perhaps as I experience life more, different themes will emerge in my writing.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?

No. However, I am hoping that it will motivate readers to seek out histories which may have been erased by colonial domination. They may not be written anywhere, but hopefully they still survive through songs or stories that only a handful of people know.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

Right now, I’ve started work on a novel titled Other Time, Other Life. It is mostly about the experiences of exile and how exile makes one feel as if they occupy two planes of existence, a past we cannot reach and a present in a different country that doesn’t fully explain us. At least this is my hope for the novel; I’ll see how it develops.

In addition, I’m also working on more speculative fiction short stories still dealing in some way with lost histories and memories.

Thanks! So pleased to share this weird little tale with all of you!

“Children of Earth” came out of a workshop prompt, which is very rare for me.

The full backstory starts with Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s weekly blog and short stories at kriswrites.com, which were (and continue to be) a formative influence. She’s married to another fantastic author, Dean Wesley Smith, and they co-own WMG Publishing.

Back in 2021, I backed one of their (frequent and stunningly successful) Kickstarters. It was in support of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, and the backing reward I chose was a workshop called “How to Write a Pulphouse Story.” The short answer to the question posed by that workshop, for those who haven’t read the magazine, is to lean into the bizarre and don’t hit the brakes. It’s an (invitation only) place for stories that don’t colour between the lines.

Something I always love about doing workshops with Dean is the way he brings together eye-opening, challenging, and inspiring insights. You don’t often get told to do less editing and rewriting and more wildly chaotic and unplanned “writing into the dark.” Terrifying. Thrilling. Fun, as Dean likes to emphasize.

So, I was looking at the workshop as a chance to maybe get a few more short stories written, maybe learn a few things, maybe even have some fun (not something I’m good at, but I digress). I’m stubborn, so I kind-of ignored the initial prompts and just went ahead with drafting the openings to a couple of concepts I’d been kicking around for a while. Neither really panned out . . . and in addition to being stubborn, weird, and bad at fun, I’m terribly competitive, so for the last assignment, I buckled down and actually tried to write something that would get a reaction.

Something bizarre. Something that wouldn’t quite colour between the lines. Genre-blending. Uncomfortable. Hmmm . . .

The result was an odd blend of body-horror, humour, and eco-anxiety with a side of romance thrown in as a challenge to myself to raise the bar and make it even weirder and more uncomfortable. So, uh, enjoy?

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

I was really conscious of trying not to censor, self-edit, revise, plan ahead, or even slow down and think too much while I was drafting. This was almost a freewriting exercise. Dean really emphasized pushing boundaries, “writing into the dark,” and being true to the story in the workshop/not editing the life out of it, so I was trying to put those learnings into practice without letting myself filter or fear the outcome too much.

The most difficult part was not getting scared and not trying to plan ahead. I’d get these ideas about where the story could go next as I was typing, and I’d sort-of have to shove them aside so they wouldn’t take on gravity and pull the arc of the story away from the characters and the moment. I got to the end, saved the file, and emailed the attachment out to Dean. I type “clean” as a general rule, but it absolutely went out with some typos and one or two hilarious mistakes. With apologies to Arley, some of those mistakes stuck around even into subsequent submissions!

Oh, and the whole romance angle was hard for me, too. I remember putting that in deliberately, as practice. I have this intention to write more romance/get better at writing romance, but it always seems faintly absurd. I don’t know if that comes through in the stories or not, but since part of the challenge with this assignment was to write without self-censoring or giving into taboos, fears, etc., I leaned into it. Maybe it says something that, when I do write a rom-com, it’s about a basement-dwelling gremlin-girl, body-horror, and toenail cryptids.

All that makes it sound like drafting this story was like peeling my own skin, but it was actually pretty easy. I think it was done in a single sitting, maybe a couple of hours long, and other than having to make a conscious effort not to distract myself by trying too hard, it all just kind of flowed. As may be obvious, I had a lot of thoughts about eco-anxiety and aspirational Millennial lifestyle envy to spill (lol).

I feel like a lot of my evolution as a writer has been (/continues to be) about realizing/accepting creative work can be play and doesn’t have to be painful to have value and meaning. I absorbed waaaay too much Protestant work ethic at an impressionable age and am still deprogramming. I wish all my writer kin less sweating blood (unless they’re enjoying it) and more grace and joy in their creative process.

What authors or stories have most influenced your work? Are there themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

This is another question where I could just go on endlessly. I inhaled Lewis, Tolkien, L’Engle at a young age. Adored Redwall; spent an embarrassing amount of time rampaging across playgrounds roaring the battle cries of small, bloodthirsty woodland creatures. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising Sequence also made a strong impression.

I’ve always been a little too interested in the intersection of fantasy and horror, the places where the nightmares break through. But, like L’Engle and Diana Wynne Jones, I can’t help mixing genres, writing science fantasy that sometimes leans more sci-fi and sometimes more dark fantasy.

Holly Black’s The Modern Faerie Tales were a revelation. I adore everything Brenna Yovanoff touches. Laini Taylor and Christelle Dabos are both inspirations. Kelley Armstrong’s The Darkest Powers series helped form my sense of what was possible in YA (in terms of walking the edge of horror in fantasy) for my first series, and her Cainsville series was a major influence for what will be my next series. I was reading the brilliant The Market of Monster series by another Canadian author, Rebecca Schaeffer, just before I wrote “Children of Earth,” so my main character’s name is in homage (or just outright stolen from her book, depending on your perspective). Outside of speculative fiction, I love Louise Penny, Laurie R. King, Sandhya Menon.

I also see a lot of anime/manga influence in my work, probably due to mainlining an inadvisable amount at a formative age. And, weirdly, a splash of Disney. I wouldn’t be shocked to find musicals somewhere in the mix. Influences are fascinating (and terrifying). I can see traces of so many different stories, including some that I wouldn’t have thought made a strong impression. At the same time, I don’t think I actually write or tell stories like any of the authors I admire. If anything, there are books like Dhonielle Clayton’s genius The Belles that I wish had made more of an obvious influence.

In terms of themes, I keep circling back to eco-everything and (mostly) girls/women who don’t fit in or struggle with the expectations of their society—and aren’t terribly interested in correcting that. Also monsters. So many monsters, often with a liminal element.

My first series was set in an alternate future where the climate apocalypse comes with a side of monsters. It follows a haunted girl who has to figure out how to take back even the ability to want or choose or own her own desires from a world that’s taken the very ability to feel and question from her, before she can rise up and fight monsters, and so on. So, uh, not the most veiled commentary, lol. But most of what I’ve written since then has been more a shift in tone (lighter, funnier, grosser, less angsty), rather than in content (still trying to solve the dystopian capitalist hellscape . . .)

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?

There’s definitely some poking fun at eco-friendly lifestyles going on in this piece. But I’m all about holding corporations and governments accountable, not pointing the finger at Millennials doing their best to buy local. While elitism, overconsumption, and greenwashing are legitimate problems, let she who has never drooled over an eye-wateringly expensive Merino top cast the first stone.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m getting ready to launch a new series loosely inspired by Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and The Fiddlers of Tomnahurich for fans of Supernatural, Kelley Armstrong’s Cainsville, Seanan McGuire’s Toby Daye, Lilith Saintcrow’s Gallow & Ragged, and Holly Black’s The Modern Faerie Tales. An aspiring musician ends up babysitting a washed-up rockstar on a road trip from hell when she gets him blamed for a string of strange murders in the area. If that’s not bad enough, she’s in debt to the fae—and if she doesn’t perform, they’ll show up to collect. Twisty, unexpected, and dripping with angsty vibes. Fun fact: switching to the male POV really upped the romance quotient! Readers can actually find an early, gloriously voice-y (though mildly spoiler-y) version of this story from the female POV in “A Song of Dark Things” in Unknown Realms: A Fiction-Atlas Anthology.

I also have a ghost story for kids (upper middle grade/teen) waiting for some love, inspired by an actual place I visited as a teen with a basement that was just open to the side of the mountain. Like, it just didn’t end. I . . . was not brave enough to explore. Anyway, it’s about this boy who has to escape the haunted cave off of his basement by learning to really listen to the trapped souls in it, including, at the end, his own grandfather. He ends up confronting this intergenerational legacy of toxic masculinity, racism, etc. while also confronting some of the true history of the area . . . It’s pretty cool, probably the most action-packed thing I’ve ever written, but there’s this weird gap in publishing where no one is actually putting out books for younger teens, and I need to either age it down or up, or make up my mind to release it independently and try to get it into the hands of kids on my own. Maybe a Kickstarter or something when I have time (lol).

Finally, I always have more short fiction on the go. I’m really excited about my first audio production, an upcoming Twilight Zone-esque piece inspired by my (brief and unproductive) time in Hollywood North. It’s my most “straight horror” story so far. Usually, I go in for more gothic weirdness or humour. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to say which horror podcast has picked it up, but I’ll have a link to it at kawiggins.com as soon as the news goes public.

CY: When I have a chance to talk to people about this part of the field there is always someone who’s surprised that we’re dependent on subscriptions. This is why we frequently see subscription drives and annual Kickstarters–some of us may sell advertising, but it’s not nearly enough to cover the costs of publishing, even with an all-volunteer staff!

AS: I have a column over at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and my latest entry is about the lifespan of magazines. I used the idea of landing on a Hugo ballot going back to 2000—so, over two decades—as a metric, and did some research to see how many of those mags are still around. The number of notable, beloved magazines that have closed is higher than you think, and includes such as Daily Science Fiction, Future SF Digest, and Fireside.

CY: When you and I first talked about working together we were still lamenting the loss of Shimmer! We’ve both seen the sausage being made for a long time now—you at Locus, and me at Lightspeed—so we knew what we were up against. New markets open and close every year, and readers have to be selective in where they spend their money. No one can be expected to subscribe to everything. And like most in our field, we make our content free to read online–we just make people wait for it! Our subscribers get it all at once at the beginning of the month.

AS: This is a very volatile industry, and so much about it is harder than people think. But the joys include discovering authors; and seeing folks Tweet about their acceptances is both fulfilling and inspiring. It’s a strange, unique ecology, where authors and editors and publishers coexist to create something wonderful. And then the reader picks it up, and they add their own perspectives and context to the pieces they read, ultimately building worlds and narratives in their imagination that are as amazing as they are individual. This stuff is actually pretty magical.

CY: Very few of us go into this thinking we’re going to make money at it. We do it because we love genre literature, and the short form in particular, and want to see more of it in the world. For some it remains a very expensive hobby—Fred Coppersmith has published Kaleidotrope out of his own pocket for more than a decade, which is a testament to his love and dedication to the readers and writers in this field.

AS: Whether Fantasy or somewhere else, I encourage you to support the life of your favorite venues, which in turn helps authors by making sure they have places that will showcase their work. Vote in awards, such as the Locus Poll & Survey, signal boost or tell friends about pieces that really worked for you, and if you can, subscribe, or purchase issues.

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction, we have “Children of Earth” by K.A. Wiggins, and “Nairuko” by Dennis Mugaa; flash fiction “Trading With Monsters” by Miguel O. Mitchell, and Keech Ballard’s “The UFO’s New Clothes”; in poetry, “The Frumious Jubjub” by C.H. Lindsay and “Sleeping With the Fishes” by Shreejita Majumder. Plus essay “What Language Do You Think In: On Being Lost in Translation” by Linghun author Ai Jiang. Enjoy!

AS: There are a number of Recommended Reading Lists coming out. The Locus list just came out, and we have THREE stories on the list! Our sibling mags, Nightmare and Lightspeed, have three and four stories respectively. Over at Nerds of a Feather we have THREE stories on their list! And they see us as good candidates for a Hugo in the Best Editor category, which is . . . well. It’s awesome! These lists can be great ways to find new reads. Christie, how do you find reads?

CY: I pointed those lists out to my book club and got a lot of “That’s too much to sort through!” (Ha! And that’s already been curated for them . . . ) But I did get them to pick a book off of the Locus list anyway—I just had to do the sorting-through myself.

As far as short fiction goes, apart from reading lists like these, year’s best anthologies usually have a list of the stories the editor loved but didn’t quite make the cut. It’s always interesting to see how much the lists overlap, and how much they don’t!

AS: For short fic in magazines beyond our own submissions, I have a few reviewers whose taste often lines up with my own. I sometimes start with the Locus Rec List or another respected list, pick a story with an interesting title or author, then cross check to see if some of the reviewers I like have said anything about it. I read a lot of anthologies for reviews, and so much depends on just hearing about something in the first place. Occasionally I find out about a book that looks intriguing but it’s too late to review at that point. Locus magazine can be a great tool for finding books, and just browsing through Netgalley can sometimes turn up cool finds. Also, to a degree—and more randomly—Twitter.

AS: The great thing about finding a magazine you really like is that you know there will be some fantastic new reads for you on a fairly regular basis. I don’t think most readers will like every piece in every issue of any given magazine—there are bound to be occasional entries that don’t land for you – but I do think magazines can be where some of the most interesting and powerful writing happens. It’s really wonderful to see so many people love the work we’ve published, and I’m seriously glad for the authors. Keep reading! We’ve got more on the way!

• • • •

In this issue’s short fiction, P.H. Low takes craft to the extreme in “The Will of the God of Music,” and Effie Sieberg’s “There’s Magic in Bread” connects lessons of the past to the problems of the present; in flash fiction, Mari Ness takes a hard-hitting look at current magical trends in “Enchanted Mirrors Are Making a Comeback. That’s Not Necessarily a Good Thing,” and in Aimee Ogden’s “Moments of Doubt” an absence of evidence leaves us guessing about the fate of the evidently absent; in poetry, we have “The Distance Between Us” by Rati Mehrotra and “Possession” by Tonya Liburd. Plus an interview with the author of The Changeling, The Ballad of Black Tom, and Lone Women, Victor LaValle. Enjoy!

Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book left its mark! The original fairy tale is the perfect thing of its kind, a cascade of snowballing quests and nonsense assertions. I can’t imagine anything better to hear from a toothless grandmother in the middle of a sixteen-hour winter’s night. Even if I personally had it from a very Victorian Scotsman. The vaguely evil, nonspecifically trollish princess set to marry the thoroughly useless prince is a bit of a nonentity in the original, and only stuck in my eight-year-old head because of her single identified characteristic, a nose three ells long. I read it as eels when I was very little, which made for a great mental image I didn’t completely escape until the advent of search engines let me work out what an “ell” actually is. It wasn’t until I saw illustrations of Norse trolls later that I worked out what it was supposed to mean, and by then I’d developed a fondness for the long-nosed princess such that I had to work out what her experience of the story might be.

I recognized the title immediately; “East O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon” has been my favorite fairy tale since childhood, and I was delighted to discover the story of the troll princess. Do you often explore fairy tales in your work? Do they influence your writing in indirect ways?

I grew up on fractured fairy tales and dissected tropes, which was the style at the time. Being left to one’s own devices in a 1990s Midwestern library will do some funny things to a person. Dagrun’s tale is the most straightforward retelling I think I’ve written, which says a lot, but I play with folktales directly every so often, usually in inversions and mash-ups. I’m more likely to use those elements as a handy toolbox, though. I have a weakness for stories about stories. Concocting the folktales for secondary or far-future worlds is an exercise I employ when I want to understand a society or a character I’m creating, though they rarely make it into the text. The anti-logic of a good fairy tale in its original form and the clever, well-interrogated, what-ifs of my own postmodernist upbringing are two sides of the same coin. I can’t believe that some long-ago Nordic farmer wouldn’t have been as likely as any of us to ask what the troll princess was doing there.

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

Finding the ending took some time. I’m what is diplomatically called a discovery writer, but I did go into this one thinking I knew the ending, which involved the princess sabotaging her wedding so she could marry the sun instead. This motivation was rolled into a broader wanderlust and pining after freedom that suited the character better. Since Frida wound up being a more prominent character than I’d expected, I didn’t even steal Dagrun’s romantic resolution. It took some work to smooth out, though.

I had the most fun fitting stranger elements of Nordic folklore back into the sanded down story I’d already learned. Huldra and the fossegrim and subterranean, sneaky elves and properly trollish trolls are excellent toys. I drew on everything from academic folklore, to other fantasy writers playing in the space, to my college roommate from Norway, to my baby brother’s copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?

I don’t believe in walk-on roles. If a character’s in a story, they have their own reason for being there. Every story is richer for knowing what that is.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

My short fiction plays all across genre, and I’m as likely to pop up again in a spaceship or haunted house as a nebulously intelligent castle. My current biggest project is, as one might expect, playing with story elements. I love the tension and trickery of a court drama or an epic conflict, but I am sick to death of emperors (and have only a little leftover affection even for princesses). I’ve been working on ways to tell stories with those stakes about the file clerks and mechanics of the world.

Thanks! I’m thrilled to be a part of Fantasy Magazine!

I started writing “The Dead Return in Strange Shapes” during the summer, when I was in the middle of my Elden Ring playthrough. Elden Ring is a game steeped in obscure, surreal lore that must be pieced together from a combination of environmental storytelling and stylized dialogue.

I was particularly inspired by the gods’ complicated family dynamics and the recurring motif of dual identities (so many of the characters are two individuals who collectively form a single entity). I wanted to try to capture a snapshot of this in my own work, which led to my considering the following questions: How would conflicts between the gods affect the lives of others? How can I explore the duality between an identity created by mythology and an identity created by lived experiences?

Also, I decided to make the ghosts look like animals, because that’s cool.

What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?

Usually when I draft a short story, I start with the dialogue and gradually build up more of the narration and description. This story absolutely took that to the extreme. The plot is primarily driven by a single conversation, which is complemented by Liosse and Thais’ pilgrimage, as opposed to the action being complemented by the dialogue.

As a result, the dialogue flowed very naturally. But in the early stages of the draft, it felt like the characters were simply telling us the story rather than actually experiencing the story in front of the reader. I recognized that I was writing the story this way because so many character-defining moments occurred in the past, to be recalled later—in many ways, we find both Liosse and Thais at the end of their stories, and we’re only able to witness bits and pieces of the beginning and middle. Ultimately, this structure works to reinforce the overall atmosphere of grief and inevitability, but I ended up doing multiple rounds of edits to balance the expository dialogue with character action that’s engaging and narratively impactful.

What authors or stories have most influenced your work?

My writing is influenced by the works of Roger Zelazny, Junji Ito, and Mary Renault. In fact, Zelazny is the first author that inspired me to write short fiction. I still remember picking his anthologies out of my dad’s book collection. (I know I mentioned Elden Ring previously, but no, George R. R. Martin is not usually on my list of inspirations).

Are there themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

Many of my stories return to the theme of consumption as love. My characters form relationships that are unusual, dysfunctional, and removed from the human experience in ways that I find fascinating.

Liosse and Aima are a great example of this. Both are creatures that are uncomfortably close to humanity but still distinctly removed from it. When writing characters like this, I like to question every assumption I’ve made about them. Conformity to social mores, normal behavior, and even emotional responses are all assumptions made based on how people act in the real world. These assumptions that don’t necessarily make sense for characters in a fantasy setting. Liosse and Aima’s relationship more closely resembles that between predator and prey, but even this metaphor isn’t entirely grounded in reality: The antelope’s behavior is an intentional subversion of expectations, and one that I hope instills a sense of uneasiness in the reader.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m currently drafting a science fiction novelette about a species of bird that has evolved to live in space. The birds are used by humans for exploratory navigation, but our main character—a pilot trained to work with these birds—suspects that her bird is attempting to communicate with her. The story explores the ethicality behind the captivity of an animal that may have human-like intelligence, told through the lens of those entangled in this system of exploitation. I’m very excited about this project, and I’m even more excited to see where the story leads me.