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Good afternoon and good evening, one and all! I hope March has been good to you. Want to know what it's been like for our contributors? Then read on ...

Just a couple of new books this month: the writer known to you as Rachael Acks has their debut novel Hunger Makes the Wolf out from Angry Robot. Karen Bovenmyer's debut is a queer pirate adventure, Swift for the Sun, from Dreamspinner Press. (In future-novel news: you can read an excerpt of Christopher Brown's Tropic of Kansas at Barnes & Noble, and pre-order it if you are so moved.

Looking for new poetry? Plenty of that: Peg Duthie's "Reading the Sky" (dedicated to another SH alum, Mary Alexandra Agner), can be found in Autumn Sky. Sara Polsky's "Small Certainties" appears in the current issue of Asimov's. David C. Kopaska-Merkel's "The Universe According to Arf" is at Polu Texni. Akua Lezli Hope has two poems out: "Dragon" in the Spring 2017 issue of Faerie, and "Cassandra" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #66. Ada Hoffmann's "A Lover, Asleep" was in Liminality #11, alongside Lynette Mejía's "Woodwork" and Alexandra Seidel's "Wild Cartography". Jenny Blackford's "With bright instruments and vast humming machines" was published in recompose #3, while Salik Shah's "Which species of bird is a drone?" is in New Myths. Jeannine Hall Gailey's "Introduction to Ecotoxicology, or a Short History of the Chemical Age" can be found in Gamut (behind a paywall, but the title is worth it, surely). Meanwhile, Deborah P. Kolodji was the featured haiku poet at the Mann Library at Cornell University in March 2017; her work is archived here. There are poems by Bogi Takács, Lisa M.. Bradley, Brandon O'Brien and Cassandra Khaw in the latest Uncanny. Virginia M. Mohlere's poem "Triptych for a Fairytale Heroine" can be found in the first issue of Wild Musette Journal. And Linda Addison's poem "Sycorax's Daughters Unveiled" forms the afterword to the new anthology, Sycorax's Daughters, which segues nicely to ...

... this month's new stories, since said anthology includes Sheree Renée Thomas's "Tree of the Seven Bells Turns the World Round Midnight." At Lightspeed you can read Indrapramit Das's latest, "The Worldless." Jonathan Edelstein's "The Shark God's Child" can be found in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, along with Kurt Hunt's "Ghosts of Amarana". Octavia Cade is in Clarkesworld with "Crown of Thorns." At Tor.com you can read new stories by Theodora Goss and A. C. Wise, as well as their "Nevertheless, She Persisted" flash fiction event which features work by Kameron Hurley, Alyssa Wong, Charlie Jane Anders, Nisi Shawl, and more. And more flash: Marissa Lingen's "The Hand of Loki" appeared at New Myths, while Andrew Kozma's "No More Doors, No More Windows" was in Antipodean SF. Elsewhere, Rich Larson's latest is "Cupido" in Asimov's (and his story last year, "All That Robot ..." has been shortlisted for the Asimov's Reader's Choice award!). J. Y. Yang's "Auspicium Melioris Aevi" is in Uncanny, along with work by S. Qiouyi Lu, Sarah Pinsker, Shveta Thakrar and others. Aliya Whiteley's latest is "The Chambermaid", and appears in Black Static. Stephen Case's "Color of the Flame" appears in the latest Mythic, while Jenny Blackford's "We are Looking for the Beautiful Horses" can be found in Helios Quarterly. Michelle Ann King's "For Your Safety and Comfort, Please Keep Arms, Legs and Tentacles Inside the Car At All Times" can be found in Strange Constellations. Daily SF featured Lynette Mejía's "Crow Girl", Jose Pablo Iriarte's latest, "Heart Stitch", and Ken Brady's "Fake Geek Girl" (and Ken also has a story in the third issue of Orthogonal: Criminal Variations). Alexandra Seidel's "A Soul to Keep" can be found at Mirror Dance.

A couple of pieces of audio fiction: Rachael K. Jones's "Home is a House That Loves You" appeared at Podcastle, and Karen Bovenmyer's "Eyes That See Everything" was at Pseudopod.

And some non-fiction for you to explore: Aidan Doyle has a writer's guide to Twine at the SFWA blog. Carmen Maria Machado interviewed Liesel Schillinger for Playboy. Abigail Nussbaum has Five Comments on Iron Fist. The Sharkes have been reviewing a storm at the Anglia Ruskin Centre for SFF; highlights include Nina Allan on Zero K, Maureen Kincaid Speller on The Trees, and David Hebblethwaite on The Gradual. Amal El-Mohtar's latest reviews at at Lightspeed are in praise of sequels by Mishell Baker and N. K. Jemisin. Sunny Moraine has an essay on Resistance Through Speculative Fiction at Tor.com. Stephen Case reviewed Peter Beagle's most recent novel, In Calabria, for Black Gate. John Rieder's imminent new book is Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System, which I mention to encourage you to go and read our reprint of his essay "On Defining SF, Or Not."

Last but not least, some other news ... Marie Brennan has a new Patreon project, "New Worlds", an ongoing essay series exploring aspects of worldbuilding. Jessy Randall has started an anti-Trump comics column in Maudlin House, and welcomes animal drawings from anyone who would like to participate; email Jessy if interested (300 dpi jpegs preferred). Bogi Takács has opened submissions for Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction 2016. And Bryan Thao Worra will be Visiting Artist at the University of California Merced from 3 to 28 April, where he will be conducting readings, workshops with the regional community addressing the themes and techniques of science fiction and fantasy poetry, horror, and examining historically under-represented perspectives.



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
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25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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