Tag: Editor’s Picks

Mothers, Daughters and the Multiverse: Self-sacrificing Motherhood in Fishya Setiana’s Poem Orange Chicken/Multiverse

Fishya Setiana’s Orange Chicken / Multiverse, published in the Summer 2026 Issue, explores and nurtures the complexity of mother-daughter relationships. Using a contrapuntal structure, Setiana reflects on the notion of the ‘multiverse’, a multiverse which holds different possibilities for the poem’s subject, the mother, or ‘Ma’, all recounted from the perspective of the daughter.  At… Continue reading Mothers, Daughters and the Multiverse: Self-sacrificing Motherhood in Fishya Setiana’s Poem Orange Chicken/Multiverse

What We’re Reading: A Creative Nonfiction Summer Reading List

As a reader who needs to be ‘in the mood’ for a book before I can read it, I struggle to assign myself a reading list which I will actually stick to. I tend to pick up whatever book matches the particular flavour of adventure, nostalgia, or heartache I’m craving, and spend days consuming it… Continue reading What We’re Reading: A Creative Nonfiction Summer Reading List

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Weaponised Domesticity in Bryanna Licciardi’s The Polisher

Popular murderess icons are a dime a dozen, and one such icon exemplified in Bryanna Licciardi’s The Polisher is ‘The Monstrous Homemaker,’ where weaponised domesticity transforms a comely figure of nurture into something lethal. Characters such as Pearl in Pearl are trademarked to rupture their simple, sweet shell of femininity and docility, like a boiling… Continue reading The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Weaponised Domesticity in Bryanna Licciardi’s The Polisher

What We’re Reading: A Witness to Violence in Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze

Amidst the humidity of a Cartagena night, I lay awake beneath the lethargic chug of an overworked air conditioner, excited to visit my family’s home city for the first time. I tried to imagine the families that had once lived in that colonial-style home in Centro Historico, now carefully preserved as an Airbnb; perhaps the… Continue reading What We’re Reading: A Witness to Violence in Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze

Our Enemy, Ourselves: Anxiety Personified in Elizabeth Ingamells’ My Friend, the Hag

I admire my friend’s consistency and unwavering attention to my every unwanted feeling, nervous twitch, or anxiety riddled thought. While I’m huddled against my pillow, petrified of an open curtain, she is just outside my door, whispering.  Featured in the Winter 2026 issue of Spellbinder Magazine, Elizabeth Ingamells’ My Friend, the Hag uses an evocative… Continue reading Our Enemy, Ourselves: Anxiety Personified in Elizabeth Ingamells’ My Friend, the Hag

Winter 2024 – Art

‘To The Island’ – Christopher Woods ‘To The Island’ reveals a melancholy, black and white snapshot of passengers traveling to an island by watercraft. The first word that appeared in my mind’s eye, when I saw this photograph, was loneliness. Also, when we think of island, many connect the word to isolation. In this interpretation,… Continue reading Winter 2024 – Art

Winter 2024 – Nonfiction

In Crash Test Dummy, Rose Mason delivers the universal anxiety of driving and thrusts with a tone so frank and forthright that the emotional dreamscape of subconsciousness and the clinical morbidity of facts merge together, inviting the reader along the inner-most routes of the narrators mind only to confront them with critical questions about male-oriented road safety that leaves the female driver and passenger inherently in danger.

Winter 2024 – Poetry

The Aldgate Horses – LJ Ireton Now cool in the fountain –  A memory of earth water; Squelching feet in fields With cleaner conscience, Louder heartbeats. The speaker conveys admiration for one of the bronze horse statues in London. A memory of earth water, under stone readings of oxygen. These are highlights of some of… Continue reading Winter 2024 – Poetry