Fantasy Magazine, May 2021 (Issue 67): Fantasy Magazine, #67

By Arley Sorg and Christie Yant

FANTASY MAGAZINE is a digital magazine focusing exclusively on the fantasy genre. In its pages, you will find all types of fantasy-dark fantasy, contemporary urban tales, surrealism, magical realism, science fantasy, high fantasy, folktales_and anything and everything in between. FANTASY is entertainment for the intelligent genre reader-we publish stories of the fantastic that make us think, and tell us what it is to be human.

 

Welcome to issue sixty-seven of FANTASY MAGAZINE! In this issue we have: Original fiction by J.L. Jones ("The Sweetest Source") and Anya Leigh Josephs ("By Our Own Hands"); flash fiction by Izzy Wasserstein ("Like Birdsong, the Memory of Your Touch") and P.H. Low ("Disenchantment"); poetry by Louisa Muniz ("Self-Portrait as Wolf") and Kim Whysall-Hammond ("Visitor"); and an interview with Tasha Suri.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: May 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201565299

Book preview

Fantasy MagazineFantasy Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 67, May 2021

FROM THE EDITORS

Editorial: May 2021

Arley Sorg and Christie Yant

FICTION

Like Birdsong, the Memory of Your Touch

Izzy Wasserstein

The Sweetest Source

J. L. Jones

Disenchantment

P.H. Low

By Our Own Hands

Anya Leigh Josephs

POETRY

Self-Portrait as Wolf

Louisa Muniz

Visitor

Kim Whysall-Hammond

BOOK EXCERPTS

The Apocalypse Seven

Gene Doucette

NONFICTION

Interview: Tasha Suri

Arley Sorg

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

J. L. Jones

Anya Leigh Josephs

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions, June 2021

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About the Fantasy Team

© 2021 Fantasy Magazine

Cover by Black Spring / Adobe Stock Image

https://www.fantasy-magazine.com

Published by Adamant Press.

From the Editors

Editorial: May 2021

Arley Sorg and Christie Yant | 594 words

CY: Convention season—and by extension, awards season—is in full swing! We had a great time participating in the Flights of Foundry convention online, and the Nebula Awards weekend is just around the corner.

AS: As we write this, the shortlist for FIYAHCON’s Ignyte Awards were just announced. One of the things I’m really enjoying about genre awards this year is the fact that the people getting recognized represent a broader range of perspectives and experiences than in years and decades past. There’s room in genre for all kinds of great stories, and we are seeing great stories told by a beautiful array of voices. Christie, you’ve been something of an activist for diversity/inclusion for a while. Your groundbreaking Women Destroy Science Fiction issue, back in 2014, and the issues that came after, created a wave of awareness and action.

CY: And you’ve been doing the same behind the scenes for years! You’ve been an integral part of the push for inclusion at every magazine you’ve contributed to, including our sister magazines, Lightspeed and Nightmare, making sure that we’re aware of the many new, up-and-coming BIPOC authors out there. 

AS: I feel like the steps many folks have been taking are beginning to pay off. Each editor, publisher, and market that creates positive change is helping to reshape our culture. Like Fireside and FIYAH running the #BlackSpecFic reports starting in 2015, Uncanny’s Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction , books like Glitter + Ashes and the Dominion anthology. And of course some people have been in this for a long time, like Nalo, Sheree, Nisi, Bill Campbell, and more.

CY: It’s been encouraging to see the many changes that professional organizations are making along those lines as well. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) began waiving membership dues for Black authors last year, and offered scholarships to the annual Nebula Awards weekend for Black writers and Asian diaspora writers through two different initiatives. There is real work that goes into bridging the gap between equality and equity, and I’m so glad that we’re part of this community at a time when that work is being done.

AS: I take my role as editor very seriously. I take it as a responsibility, as well as a wonderful opportunity. It blows my mind that we are a part of the cultural fabric of genre. I try to read submissions thoughtfully, keeping all these things in mind. And of course, I’m incredibly proud of the issues we’ve put out so far. Finding work in slush that speaks to you really is a wonderful experience. I can’t wait for readers to see what we have in store!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Arley Sorg is a senior editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy in the American mid-west. She worked as an assistant editor for Lightspeed Magazine from its launch in 2010 through 2015, and, in 2014 she edited the Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed, which won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. She is the co-editor of four anthologies, and a consulting editor for Tor.com’s line of novellas. Her own fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton),  Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, and Wired.com.

Fiction

Like Birdsong, the Memory of Your Touch

Izzy Wasserstein | 700 words

When I was a little girl, I’d experience premonitions, like the time I sensed that Mrs. Weatherby should stay home and not take her usual walk around the neighborhood, but of course she did anyway, because who listens to a six-year-old? and got caught in the grill of a self-driving car, which were everywhere in those days, like the kudzu climbing up every tree, swallowing abandoned houses like the old Ripken place, where I’d sit for hours, where there was no sound but birdsong (so much birdsong then, and I didn’t know to treasure it) and in that decaying house the vines were invading so fast I believed I could hear them grow, which was ridiculous, since back then nothing grew that fast. What I’d thought was sound was only a different kind of premonition, an even less useful kind than the one that failed to save Mrs. Weatherby, because this one is clear only now, sitting on my porch, listening to the susurrus of a million million pueraria apocalypsis vines growing, spilling over every surface, spreading so fast that one day I fell asleep on the porch and woke to them curling over my arms, their rough strands caressing my skin, and now I realize that all this has been about you, Clara, and how I knew before you told me that you were leaving, joining the other refugees pushing north, abandoning places where only heat and wild growth were left, and that was no premonition, just knowing someone well enough that you sense what’s coming, the way I sometimes did when you would come home with your eyes insatiable and I knew we’d spend the evening tracing patterns like new growth over each other’s bodies, and what did that empathy get me? It was of more use than premonitions, but could not stop