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Christie Yant

Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy in the American mid-west. She is a World Fantasy Award and Locus Award finalist as co-editor of Fantasy Magazine; a consulting editor for Tordotcom’s acclaimed line of novellas; co-editor of four anthologies; editor of Women Destroy Science Fiction!, winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology; and the author of just enough published short stories that if you counted them up on your digits you’d probably have a toe left over. She has a website here: inkhaven.net. She presently attempts to balance her dayjob, writing life, and editing life with varying degrees of success.

Author Spotlight: Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga

The idea of the Light Market developed from conversations I had with a friend from high school. We would speculate about whether black markets were physical places, and whether they were actually magical. How did they get their name? What if black markets were actually full of walking shadows? What if they were a time and dimension only open to a chosen few? When I revisited these musings, I’d been exposed to conversations about subverting the idea of blackness as evil, so I wondered what the Light Market would look like.

Editorial: December 2021

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!

Editorial: November 2021

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!

Editorial: October 2021

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.

Editorial: September 2021

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!

Editorial: August 2021

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!

Editorial: July 2021

CY: How is it July already? This month I’ll be teaching at the Cascade Writers Weekend, along with Wendy Wagner, who our readers know and love as the editor of our sister magazine, Nightmare. Wendy and I have been friends for more than a decade—we read at each other’s weddings! Years go by without us getting to see each other in person. While the Cascade workshop is online this year, I’m so excited that we get to teach together.

Author Spotlight: Cara Masten DiGirolamo

There’s a lot about identity in this story—when fairies steal your name, what does that mean?—and tattoos are a way to tie yourself to yourself, to mark your sense of yourself and your history on your skin. Flowers also felt right for these characters; flowers are the rock stars of nature—flamboyant, dramatic, and unexpected, which was the vibe I wanted for the world of faerie they inhabited—a punk rock version of the natural world. Flowers are also incredibly genderqueer.

Editorial: June 2021

In this issue’s short fiction, Rajan Khanna takes us on a literary trip that Dante and Milton would envy, in “Your Ticket to Hell”, and Cara DiGirolamo invites us to a perilous party in “A Gift from the Queen of Faerie to the King of Hell”; for flash fiction, Catherine J. Coles describes the dangers of a . . . transformative life—but with a lovely twist; in “Dos Coyotes”, and Christine Tyler’s “The Port of Le Havre” explores home and identity; for poetry, we have “Echidna” by Donyae Coles and “Magic Carpet” by Colleen Anderson. Plus essay “How to Steal a Million Dollars Dragons” by author/sculptor/fantastical cake maker Effie Seiberg. Enjoy!

Author Spotlight: Rajan Khanna

That’s always the trick of it all; as a writer, even if you feel like you captured the feeling you were hoping to capture, it’s not a guarantee that the story will evoke that same feeling in a reader. That said, I don’t need the reader to feel exactly what I felt writing it, but I do want them to feel something.

Editorial: May 2021

In the May issue of Fantasy Magazine . . .

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.

Thanks for reading!

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.”