Issue Number
Release Date
ISSN
14
1 – 4 – 2024
2753-4103 (Print)
2753-4111 (Online)
Editors
Chief Editor
Poetry Co-Editor
Nonfiction Editor
Fiction Editors
Art Editor
Drama Editor
Associate Editors
Amber Kennedy
Doriana Dyakova
Linda Arrighi
Bruna Gomes
Ashlynn Zhang
Catherine Cooper
Lara Morgan
Keelan Blagg
Emmett Coleman
Hamsa
Cover Art
Warren Muzak
Button Factory
Featured
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Self-Portrait as Fairy Tale: The White Cat
Poetry Contributors
Garfield Chow
Jacob Schapiro
Michael Beard
Patrick Slevin
I Echo
Kenneth Pobo
On First Seeing the Snow
Requiem for a God
Red Sky Warning
The Convent Farm
A Tongue and an Arm
After Pie
Fiction Contributors
Soumi Roy
Every You
Visual Art Contributors
Giuseppina Brandi
Warren Muzak
Diane Kavaya
Nothing is Set in Stone
Button Factory
Steps in Time
Nonfiction Contributors
Ninna Hultgren
Cynthia Close
Jeremiah Swader
The Loneliness Questionnaire Nobody Knows I Have a Brother
The First Snow
Drama Contributors
Dorian Winter
Sylvan Psychosis
2024 has been a great year so far for the team here at Spellbinder. Firstly, we have launched our new monthly e-newsletters and given all of our former contributors and featured creators the opportunity to opt into this. These newsletters will be an important space for us to update you about our upcoming paperback and digital publications, new blog posts and podcast episodes, as well as general Spellbinder news. We will also use this platform to celebrate Spellbinder’s award winners and advertise events we are organising, such as spoken word showcases and our annual anniversary party. However, we don’t want our readers to miss out on the latest news beyond Spellbinder in the literary and art worlds, so we will also be sharing mini reviews of recent major award winners’ works and alerting you to major festivals and other events you might want to attend. If you haven’t opted in yet, but want to get these helpful updates straight into your email inbox, just scroll down to the bottom on our website’s homepage and you will be able to sign up.
Other developments this season include the long-awaited revival of our podcast, Spellchats. Find us on Spotify to listen to our podcast hosts, Doriana and Ashlynn, introducing the platform, and our collaborative founders talk with Parishka from Red Megaphone Press, a publication based in India. We hope these conversations are engaging to listen to and we would love to hear your feedback, via our contact form, if you have any suggestions for future themes you want us to discuss. Also, keep an eye out, because we are planning a further collaborative project with Red Megaphone Press which will be in the form of a Spoken Word Showcase in the spring. We will notify you about this as soon as we pin down the details.
In this issue, we are delighted to include a poem from a former Spellbinder Writer’s Workshop host, Jeannine Gailey, who delivered a fascinating session on speculative poetry in late 2021. This work is due to appear in her collection Fireproof, which will be published by BOA Editions. It’s great to read her fantastic work again and an honour being able to share it with you.
We are also very pleased to announce that we have made an exciting change to our website subscription plans, which allow our readers to access the digital versions of our issues. Previously, we only offered annual subscriptions, but upon reviewing this, we thought that our community would benefit from having the option to read Spellbinder without committing to a full year. For this reason, we now also offer the option to subscribe monthly. This gives subscribers access to all past issues for the duration of a month, thereby hopefully making Spellbinder more accessible to our readership and beyond.
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, spring is finally on the horizon and so we are, as ever, feeling optimistic for the rest of the year ahead. Whether you’re approaching autumn or spring, have a wonderful few months and take a copy of Spellbinder out with you into the world, for the more we share the work of great writers and artists, the brighter this world will be. Let’s spread our wings, like bees, and pollinate the flowers so the seeds of creativity can spread!
Amber Kennedy, Editor in Chief
We have created a playlist inspired by the Spring 2024 Issue. Feel free to play it while reading:
Poetry shortlist – Spring 2024
Beth | Sunrise Song |
Ryan M Mayer | The Singular Coquette |
Aimee Lowenstern | Borrowing |
Fiction shortlist – Spring 2024
Elina Kotsiliti | Say a Few Words for Maria Py |
Rachel Sloan | Marianne Berchtold, known as Nannerl, née Mozart |
Drama shortlist – Spring 2024
Alex Urwin | I Need to Speak to the President |