Issue Number
Release Date
ISSN
13
1 – 1 – 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
Ned Vessey
Catherine Cooper
Lara Morgan
Tod Barnbrook
Keelan Blagg
Emmett Coleman
Hamsa
Ashlynn Zhang
Cover Art
J.S. Dorothy
Weighing Down
Featured
Velora Venn
Sylvan – Hearts of Stone
Poetry Contributors
LJ Ireton
The Aldgate Horses
Fiction Contributors
Alexandra Kumala
You’re 25 and the Sinking City Doesn’t Feel Too Hot
Visual Art Contributors
Melody Hesaraky
Saeed Rezvanian
Christopher Woods
Kristine Narvida
J.S. Dorothy
Sylvie Jane Lewis
The Most Gentle Touch
Freedom Tree
To The Island
Vigil 13
Weighing Down
Bogart and Bacall
Nonfiction Contributors
Rose Mason
Amanda-Marie Kale
Crash Test Dummy
Let’s Eat
Drama Contributors
Tatianna D. Kalb
Judy Klass
Bedroom: A Monologue
Wounded Vanity
Welcome, readers, to Issue 13. We hope that this publication will launch us into 2024 with magic, optimism, and craftsmanship. Our writers and artists are the beating heart of our magazine and we are humbled, as always, by their talent and dedication. In October, we had the pleasure of meeting some of our past contributors at our annual anniversary party, this time in celebration of three years of publishing. We were joined by the brilliantly entertaining epic poet, Kyle Derek McDonald, who shared a reading with us, and we thoroughly enjoyed playing creative games with all of our attendees. To conclude the online event, we announced our award winners for 2023. Five much-deserving contributors received stickers and certificates in celebration of their achievement and we have nominated three of them for this year’s Pushcart Prize. We are very much committed to supporting our contributors beyond their publication in our magazine by promoting their achievements in our Celebrate Success pages and by nominating them for awards.
Aside from the Pushcart nominations, the lead-up to the new year is always marked for us by the creation of our annual Spellbinder Advent Calendar. This year, we have shared recommendations for books to read based on your taste in festive songs. We hope you have found these inspiring and enjoyed the lead up to the holiday period as much as we have.
Over the last three years, it has been amazing for Linda and I to discover like-minded people who share our enthusiasm for the elevation of the arts within society, and we are delighted to have recently expanded our team so that we now have fifteen individuals volunteering their time to make this publication a success and promote its writers and artists. H.E. Luccock wrote, ‘No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it,’ and, if my experience at Spellbinder has taught me anything, it is that this is truer than ever. For this reason, it is really important for us, as co-founders, that everyone on the team shares a sense of responsibility for the direction of the publication and feels respected within their role. In order to develop this sense of internal community and enable all Spellbinder volunteers to utilise their talents, we have recently launched a new initiative in which each person has a specific project to take ownership of in the upcoming year. We hope that this will generate new content, events and opportunities, which will be of interest to our readers, contributors and followers. Stay tuned for more news on these projects in 2024.
Last but not least, we hope you all had a fun, safe, and joyous holiday period and we wish you all health, happiness, and creative productivity for 2024.
Amber Kennedy, Editor in Chief
We have created a playlist inspired by the Winter 2024 Issue. Feel free to play it while reading:
Poetry shortlist – Winter 2024
| Kris Kaila | Bearing Witness |
| Navila Nahid | Agape |
Fiction shortlist – Winter 2024
| Christy Hartman | Mother Shakes the Dreamland Tree |
| Ananda Kumar. S. | Sweet |
| Karthik Krishnan | An Outing |
| P.W. Lewis | Reconstruction Era |