Erin k. Wagner

Doing that thing where I promote my 2019 work. Thanks for reading, all! The Green and Growing (novella), Aqueduct Press (Jan. 2019) “Best Not to Know the Names,” in Empyreome (Jan. 2019) “When Home, No Need to Cry” in Clarkesworld (Mar. 2019) “Fallow” in Syntax & Salt (Mar. 2019) “The Brief Day, the Long Evening,” in…

It has been a while since the day job has allowed me time to read and review a speculative short story. And just as I put away the school year for the summer, I read “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island” by Nibedita Sen in Nightmare Magazine, a…

I am teaching an introductory literature course on speculative fiction this semester, and I always feel a responsibility to teach my students a broad range of perspectives and approaches in the class. So, instead of primarily teaching the “classics,” I like to present a mix of new and old stories. A week or so ago,…

It’s come to the point where Castle Rock (available on Hulu and now on Blu-ray) has been on my mind so much that I just have to write a bit about it. Stephen King is far from an up-and-coming author (like most of those I feature on this blog) but we can all hope to…

Metaphorosis is a speculative fiction journal rising in recognition and it hosts an array of stories in keeping with its tagline: Beautifully Made Speculative Fiction. In honor of having a few days off from work, I read Ogle’s poignant story “Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, and I Love You.” Self-identifying as a mother and an emergency-room nurse,…

Hi all! Just a quick note to let any interested readers know that I have become a monthly columnist at Luna Station Quarterly. You can check out the introductory column here. The column examines the corpus of a different female spec-art creator each month.

  The great thing about Palumbo’s story (well, one of the many great things) is the complexity of the relationships in it. “The Pull of the Herd” appears in issue 5 of Anathema, the title of which should already give you a hint about their editorial focus: to provide a home for the “exceptional work…

Feldringer’s protagonist, Kala, is a photographer–and evocative images are strewn throughout this fascinating story. “The Singing Wind and the Golden Hour” is July’s story on GigaNotoSaurus, a webzine that caters to stories with high wordcounts. The story tracks the attempts of Kala, and her friend Abe, to expose the truth behind an illness that suddenly…

“Seven Turns Around the Sacred Fire,” by Meera Jhala, appears in the Summer 2018 issue of Kaleidotrope. It is a story about a married couple who endures many lifetimes together (seven in accordance with their marriage ritual to take seven turns around a sacred flame). And it is beautiful. It won me over. The contextualization…

Sometimes you read a story that just makes you revel in the words themselves–words like obsidian, amaranth, and tenebrous. The words are sensuous, jewel-like and complementary to the plot. In this case, the words primarily speak to sight, but sight and emotion are very closely linked in Lam’s “The Bridge.” This story appears in Issue…