FANTASY MAGAZINE - Fantasy Story Podcast (Audiobook | Short Stories)
Web <link> from RSS feed:
http://www.fantasy-magazine.com
Database link:
http://www.fantasy-magazine.com
RSS Feed:
https://feeds.megaphone.fm/SBP5348175046
Creator: Adamant Press
Fantasy Single-voiced Anthology Audio Book
Synopsis:
Edited by Christie Yant and Arley Sorg, FANTASY is a digital magazine focusing exclusively on the fantasy genre. In its pages, you will find all types of fantasy—dark fantasy, contemporary urban tales, surrealism, magical realism, science fantasy, high fantasy, folktales…and anything and everything in between. Fantasy is entertainment for the intelligent genre reader—we publish stories of the fantastic that make us think, and tell us what it is to be human. Every month FANTASY will bring you a mix of original short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. When you read FANTASY, it is our hope that you'll see where fantasy comes from, where it is now, and where it's going. The FANTASY podcast, produced by Grammy Award-winning narrator and producer Stefan Rudnicki of Skyboat Media, is presented twice a month, featuring original audio fiction.
Format: Audio Book
Continuity: Anthology
Voices: Single
Genres: Fantasy
Framing device:
Maturity:
Creator demographics:
Character demographics:
Content warnings (creator selected):
Country of origin:
Transcript details:
Completion status: NA
Click here to update these tags.
Episodes:
P A Cornell | Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont
Tue, 24 Oct 2023 05:00:00 -0000
On the island of Manhattan, there’s a building out of time. I can’t tell you where it is, exactly. It has an address, of course, as all buildings do, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I can tell you is that the building is called The Oakmont. | © 2023 by P A Cornell. Narrated by Nan McNamara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ruoxi Chen | Fandom for Witches
Tue, 10 Oct 2023 05:00:00 -0000
Lara is a summer witch born with fruit rich on her tongue, a monkey god's chittering beneath her skin, and a full July sun's worth of love for love. Her ba claims to have read Pasternak, but she knows it was Julie Christie's face he traced when he named her, Julie's yellow-gold hair her ma made fun of him for admiring, bright as an August afternoon. © 2023 by Ruoxi Chen. | Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sam Kyung Yoo | Set Yourself on Fire
Tue, 26 Sep 2023 05:00:00 -0000
The chrysanthemums are dying. The yellow flowers face downward, stems wilting at the neck. Their petals curl and brown at the edges like burning paper. You lift one of the ragged blossoms up, as if to try and help it support its own weight. You keep the flowerpot on the kitchen countertop right by the apartment window where it can get the most sunlight, but it doesn’t seem to be enough. © 2023 by Sam Kyung Yoo. | Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lowry Poletti | Dread of the White Dog
Tue, 12 Sep 2023 11:30:55 -0000
In the fading shadows of dawn, a hunter meets a wolf with white eyes, a wolf whose mouth stretches open, and in its growl there are three faraway voices, distorted as if heard through water, so the hunter shoots. He does not wait to see what he has done. | © 2023 by Lowry Poletti. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hana Lee | Bari and the Resurrection Flower
Tue, 29 Aug 2023 13:35:00 -0000
The forest whispers of my sister’s arrival long before I sense her. Birds flutter between pink-girdled maehwa trees, mocking her voice in the tongue only shamans understand. Seonbyeon, Seonbyeon, they repeat mindlessly, and this is how I know my sister is looking for me. But I don’t know which sister, not until she finally appears from the forest gloom. | © 2023 by Hana Lee. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Davida Kilgore | My Dear, My Love
Tue, 15 Aug 2023 05:00:00 -0000
It takes a Black woman to tell the truth about another Black woman, whether she likes that woman or not. If the woman in question is loved, the story reaches mythological heights, she could do no wrong, she was brown skinned and beautiful, intelligent, had all her faculties and her teeth, all the men and women of the neighborhood called her by a term of endearment, which is how Medea morphed into Ma’Dear. | © 2023 by Davida Kilgore. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 25 Jul 2023 05:00:00 -0000
It's so dark. Black-orange-bloody-bruised. Flashlights throw long beams across the sand. Police lights flicker blue and red, blue and red, blue and red, and the Ferris wheel on the pier glows an obscene neon. No one thought to turn off the calliope. It echoes off the empty boardwalk, cheerfully macabre. | © 2023 by Margaret Jordan. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Simo Srinivas | Bozpo Witch-Bane
Tue, 11 Jul 2023 10:50:00 -0000
Outside is the palace of slaughter. Under its gambrels of boiling sky, there is the cold unforgiving sea; there are mountains ready to cradle your bones. Along its corridors of singing grass, there are horseback warriors who will cut you to pieces. | © 2023 by Simo Srinivas. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Daniel Ausema | What Passes for Eyes in Dreams and Death
Tue, 27 Jun 2023 05:00:00 -0000
I am haunted by a funeral, a pageantry of mourners and tears that I can only barely remember. I am not certain, but I suspect the funeral may be my own. The mourners are masked in elaborate disguises. Feathered and ribboned and silk. If I know any of them, I don’t know that I know them. The flowers arranged beside the casket seem to carry some meaning, a meaning that has nothing to do with me. And yet… I feel myself drawn to that casket, feel that it belongs to me in some way. My dream self lingers among the incense burners, awaiting enlightenment. ©2023 Daniel Ausema. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 13 Jun 2023 05:00:00 -0000
Don’t feed him, Greta. We can’t afford to feed him! There’s not enough to eat! We were lost when we found the tower made of sugar that stretched up into the sky in endless red and white spirals. A sea of ants milled at its base. Fat dollops of sugar dripped onto the surrounding trees, candied the leaves, and brought curious bees to hover. ©2023 by Melissa A Watkins. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 09 May 2023 08:01:19 -0000
The beheaded tilapia nudged teasingly against the riverbank in a bloody soup, staining the lush weeds beneath the little girl’s feet. Oblivious to the stench, she squatted beside the muddy water, her gaze tracking over the dead fish. There were a dozen of them, freshly killed. Flies had only just begun to settle over silver flanks, scuttling shyly over tooth marks. | ©2023 by Anya Ow. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 25 Apr 2023 08:01:20 -0000
I walk into Old Town. In a curio shop on the promenade, an old man sells paintings, deras, kikois, and ornaments. Tuk-tuks move swiftly along the cabro paving, passing the teapot sculpture at the round-about. Pushcarts lumber beside the street restaurants and past the old buildings covered by vines. A radio plays “Malaika,” the song rising like a wisp of steam. Shouts of children playing football near the sea reach me. I buy a ticket to Fort Jesus and the seller tells me I am lucky because it is the day of secession. | ©2023 by Dennis Mugaa. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
K.A. Wiggins | Children of Earth
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 08:01:42 -0000
The toe wiggled at Mirella from the compost heap. She let the lid drop with a thud and a cloud of flies. Enough. Time to order an electronic composter. | ©2023 by K.A. Wiggins. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Effie Seiberg | There’s Magic in Bread
Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:01:16 -0000
“Everyone’s making bread,” I say, trying to sound casual and not like I’m terrified, because talking about bread is easier than talking about what’s going on. My phone balances on my belly as I lie in bed. “It’s like the pandemic hit, and everyone’s collective delusion went ‘I’ll bake bread, that’ll solve it.’ I just don’t get it.” | ©2023 by Effie Seiberg. Narrated by Gigi Yelen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
P.H. Low | The Will of the God of Music
Tue, 14 Mar 2023 08:01:10 -0000
You hear the door open as if in dreaming. Back when you were a conservatory student, you chewed a third of a melatonin tablet every night—to keep yourself from snapping awake before sunup, chest tight, your head still achy with exhaustion. Now, mornings are difficult: your eyelids weighted, sliding; thick grey wool between your temples. Your body drifting in a warm, slow sea. | ©2023 by P.H. Low. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Malda Marlys | A Princess With a Nose Three Ells Long
Tue, 28 Feb 2023 09:01:26 -0000
In a castle flanked by fjords, so very far from everything that the winds rarely raised its banners, there lived a troll princess. Her mother was a troll queen, by virtue of a castle and a bad temper, but queen she was, and her ambitions did not end at the still shores. | ©2023 by Malda Marlys. Narrated by Ruth Wallman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lowry Poletti | The Dead Return in Strange Shapes
Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:01:25 -0000
The dead return in strange shapes, yoked to those who mastered them in life. Thais sees them: shadowy animals who slink between the townspeople in the market square. When he was born, so he is told, his mother held up his birth-wet body and pressed her nose to the middle of his brow. They lay together, crowned by oak branches dragged low to the ground by last night’s rain, on the stone table at the center of the woods. | ©2023 by Lowry Poletti. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Erin Brown | Skyscrapers That Twist to the Sun
Tue, 24 Jan 2023 09:01:54 -0000
Shaundra took the small, empty cardboard box and swiveled on her work stool to place it gently on top of her daughter Dineisha’s head. Her daughter went cross-eyed trying to look at it and started chewing on the corner of her thumb, smiling at the game. ©2023 by Erin Brown. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 10 Jan 2023 09:01:41 -0000
I’m happy on the road. The land stretches like a languid animal, and I find tranquility in its measured length. Outside the car the earth breathes, the ground rising and sinking. Even though I am the one driving, concentrating on the road and the trucks roaring past, it’s like a meditation for me—my mind empties into the open space. ©2023 by Flossie Arend. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jennifer R. Donohue | Into the Dark
Tue, 27 Dec 2022 09:01:05 -0000
Angie is three months dead before I get her letter. She sent it the week before she died, and I guess that figures; the postal service got fucked in the twenties and never recovered. Maybe she even relied on that delay. ©2022 by Jennifer R. Donohue. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Victor Forna | Parebul of the Mother, Asked in Moonlight
Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:01:03 -0000
Walking, crossing, moon-kissed streets, black top, blue jeans, unwashed. Her afro is home to a million brown-winged birds, everlastingly chirping. There’s a baby boy, eight months old, asleep in her arms, and maybe he dreams of beautiful spinning star-like things because he doesn’t know of the hurt in the heart that loves him. ©2022 by Victor Forna. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aimee Ogden | SOC 301: Apian Gender Studies (Cross-Listed with ZOL 301)
Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:01:43 -0000
The bee liberation group meets at seven o’clock every other Thursday in the group study rooms on the fourth floor of the Main Library. Hannah tears tabs from the flyers that they post all over campus—outside the big auditoriums in Wells Hall, on the doors of the dorm cafeterias, in the women’s bathrooms—and feeds them into her jacket pocket. When she forgets and puts the laden jacket through the laundry, they turn into so much confetti. | Copyright 2022 by Aimee Ogden. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 08 Nov 2022 09:01:15 -0000
The sun draped itself over the left armrest of the couch at dawn, while Zella sat waiting for the typewriter’s tapping to commence next door. Even though she’d tossed and turned all night in the summer heat, she still found herself rising early, expectant. | Copyright 2022 by Z.K. Abraham. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aigner Loren Wilson | The Black and White
Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:01:23 -0000
She wasn’t at his funeral, so I took the van around to where I knew she was staying while she was in town. He always taught us to stick close to our home. It was her ex’s place, a rundown one-story with dead grass and an old plastic playground for some forgotten children. | Copyright 2022 by Aigner Loren Wilson. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kelsey Hutton | Queen of the Wilis
Tue, 11 Oct 2022 08:01:22 -0000
Paris Opera Ballet, 1841 / You’re enjoying your reprieve here at the opéra, m’sieur, are you not? All the wealthiest gentlemen do. Here in the exclusive foyer de la danse, wives are forbidden and young girls lightly clad. Champagne obtained, you complain of your tiresome wife—how she will never replicate a young girl’s bloom, no matter how much rouge she rubs on her cheeks! | Copyright 2022 by Kelsey Hutton. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
K.S. Walker | How to Join a Colony of Sea-Folk; or, Other Ways of Knowing
Tue, 27 Sep 2022 08:01:22 -0000
Step One: You Wait - You are patient and your love, true. There is nothing you cannot withstand. | Copyright 2022 by K.S. Walker. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jennifer Hudak | The Weight of It All
Tue, 13 Sep 2022 08:01:59 -0000
Elizabeth is the first person to notice I’m inside her. “Tell me how to do it,” she whispers. It’s a shock. No one has spoken to me directly in ages. I’m nothing more than a whisper when I slip beneath her skin. I’m less than a breath. I should be undetectable, but somehow, I’m not. It might have been a relief—to be acknowledged, to be known—except that Elizabeth clings to me with her bony fingers and won’t let me go. I struggle to escape her, but no matter how hard I push, she’s got me trapped inside her body. | Copyright 2022 by Jennifer Hudak. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
P H Lee | A True and Certain Proof of the Messianic Age, With Two Lemmas
Tue, 23 Aug 2022 08:01:01 -0000
Once upon a time, in the dark ages before the singularity, there was a fox who, while walking its way along a riverbank, saw a great big bevy of catfish fleeing in a panic this way and that. Curious, the fox called out to the fishes, saying, “Good fishes of the stream, I see you fleeing in a panic this way and that. I do not wish to interrupt your suffering, but I am curious and as a fox I must follow my curiosity: Surely, there must be some great evil from which you are fleeing?” | Copyright 2022 by P H Lee. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Eliza Chan | The Tails That Make You
Tue, 09 Aug 2022 08:01:03 -0000
Ninth - It is a few days before your suspicions are confirmed. Perhaps it is the baggy trousers your daughter has started to wear, or that she picks at her food. She will lie if you ask her outright, this you know. You throw her bedroom door open without warning, the damp towel clutched around her chest after the shower the only barrier between you. Her mouth hangs open, shrieking like brakes in protest. | Copyright 2022 by Eliza Chan. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 26 Jul 2022 08:01:06 -0000
The year was 1999. Tupac’s Brenda’s Got a Baby was the anthem in Old Creek ghetto. Yes, I wasn’t born. But the first time, in a beat-up, metal-scrunched blue taxi, on her way back home, when the song came on, Mother felt my first kick coincide with the blistering bass beat. It’s a wonder how I knew that feet were made for dancing. | Copyright 2022 by B.S. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sabrina Vourvoulias | The Memory of Chemistry
Tue, 12 Jul 2022 08:01:07 -0000
We hunt for the structure of the universe in its ghosts. - Dr. Michelle Francl / In the beginning / In the beginning was the trigger warning: / Prepare for insects. Prepare for words in Latin and Spanish. Prepare for science and other species of the supernatural. Prepare for losses that rewire the chemistry of the brain. Prepare for aging and the way it flays you back to the first cell. Prepare for ghosts. | Copyright 2022 by Sabrina Vourvoulias. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sara S. Messenger | Potemora in the Triad
Tue, 28 Jun 2022 08:01:13 -0000
There are always three: the father, the unfather, and the child. That’s why Vriskiaab threw my unfather off his back after she bore my baby sister, or so Vriskiaab tells me when he stops in the shade of a dune, his massive scales warm under my calves and the tail of him stretching behind me for leagues. My baby sister is soft and crimson-tacky in the crook of my arm. | Copyright 2022 by Sara S. Messenger. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Fatima Taqvi | Baba Nowruz Gives His Wife a Flower Only Once a Year
Tue, 14 Jun 2022 08:01:47 -0000
My mother tells me all the wrong stories. In our hut beneath the cypress trees, my mother opens up at story time. She steps away from her apron and her broom, her heaps of marjoram and pennyroyal, her pestle and her mortar, and her ingredients for medicinal soups. She throws off her scarf, and oils our hair with fragrant sedr oil. We keep company with her stories as the wolves outside howl their song to the moon. Just as their ancestors have and as their descendants always will. | Copyright 2022 by Fatima Taqvi. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
K. J. Chien | One Day the Cave Will Be Empty
Tue, 24 May 2022 08:01:35 -0000
“Tell me again about the night I was born.” Li Shing drags the comb through her daughter’s oil black hair. Impermeable, like a starless sky reflected against a dense sea. Or a fish’s opaque cloudy eye as it gasps at the bottom of a boat. Li Shing’s fist accidentally brushes the creature’s clammy gray neck, and she tries not to shudder. | Copyright 2022 by K.J. Chien. Narrated by Judy Young, Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dominique Dickey | Drowned Best Friend
Tue, 10 May 2022 08:01:34 -0000
The clatter of rain against the window draws Lesley close. “Hey,” she hisses from across the kitchen. She calls me by my old name and I don’t even flinch. It’s morning, and I’m trying to get breakfast done before Mom comes down, because a perfectly fried egg makes her more likely to say yes to what I’m about to ask. The light was coming through the windows over the sink all yellow and golden, but the storm blew in fast, and now there’s electricity prickling in the air and everything smells damp. I left the window open, hoping she’d show, despite the water pushing through the screen into Mom’s flowerboxes above the sink. | Copyright 2022 by Dominique Dickey. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 26 Apr 2022 08:01:26 -0000
In the beginning, June and Nat are best friends. June is not yet a swarm of honeybees and Nat is not yet a cloud of horseflies, and the king hasn’t yet decided that separating them into parts like this—June’s left pinky finger one bee, her left ring finger another—is the only surefire way to strip them of what they really are. Which, at least in the beginning, is best friends, living together on the outskirts of town, sharing a dresser full of secondhand band tees, squeezing lemon juice onto one another’s hair in the summer, then sitting together on the blacktop to wait. | Copyright 2022 by Kristina Ten. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hannah Yang | How to Make a Man Love You
Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:01:33 -0000
Zayyan meets Cecilia on the first day of freshman year. He does not believe in love at first sight, but he does believe in the scientific method, and what is this moment if not empirical evidence of the former? She is like no one he has met before. Black hair pulled into a messy bun, bare arms laden with books, brown eyes ardent as a summer storm. | Copyright 2022 by Hannah Yang. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Gabrielle Harbowy | The Dybbuk Ward
Tue, 22 Mar 2022 08:01:06 -0000
I am not an illness. I’m a soul with a goal. Everyone on this floor is here for intrusive thoughts, ideations, risk of harm to themselves or others. What society used to call possession, they now call neurotransmitter imbalance or schizophrenia or obsessive compulsion. | Copyright 2022 by Gabrielle Harbowy. Narrated by Gigi Yellen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Isabel J. Kim | Christopher Mills, Return to Sender
Tue, 08 Mar 2022 09:01:34 -0000
This is the dead thing becoming the body. This is the dead thing opening the body’s eyes. This is the dead thing rising from the grave. This is the dead thing saying “What the hell—I didn’t ask to be summoned. I was having a great time being dead and dreaming about nothing.” | Copyright 2022 by Isabel J. Kim. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:01:46 -0000
Last week, in a tangerine raincoat that did not suit her pallid skin tone, Phylicia Wimby smiled through her lies. There is an 87% chance of rain for tomorrow. Due to the high probability of unpleasant weather for the entire week, we predict the Cousins won’t be arriving until next week at the earliest, once the rain dries up. Her and all the other meteorologists in shiny citrus-colored vulcanized rubber swore to us that Cousins Season wasn’t coming for a while, that in Virginia we had more than a week to prepare. | Copyright 2022 by S. Fambul. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dominique Dickey | Slow Communication
Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:01:01 -0000
Darla Revere was born to live her whole life as part of a conversation, the outcome of which she would never know. She was raised to be certain of three things: 1. The leviathan will come for you. She will come suddenly and without warning. 2. You will feel great joy and pain at the moment she contacts you. Be prepared. You may only ask her one question. 3. If you change yourself too much—if you do not bear resemblance to your mother, your grandmother, the long line of women the leviathan has touched—she may not be able to find you when it is your time. | Copyright 2022 by Dominique Dickey. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 25 Jan 2022 09:01:40 -0000
The coffin lies at the curb, tilted aslant on the strip of grass next to the sidewalk. Old Mr. Byerly spies it on an evening walk through his suburban neighborhood. It’s been put out alongside a pile of other discards—an old-fashioned lawn mower, a chrome-legged kitchen table, a bookcase with only one shelf. The stuff is from a house that’s under renovation after sitting vacant for many months. | Copyright 2022 by Corey Flintoff. Narrated by Joshua Kane. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shalini Srinivasan | Markets: A Beginner’s Guide
Tue, 11 Jan 2022 09:01:11 -0000
In the folds of banyan trees, between the treeish world and ours, are markets. Real markets, not the pale human sort that happen every week, as if things that are worth buying happen every week. A banyan market occurs one day a year, which is as often as trees are willing to entertain on such a lavish scale. And once a year is just barely enough time to make the stuff that trees dream of. - Revathi Kumar, ‘Markets: A Beginner’s Guide’ | Copyright 2022 by Shalini Srinivasan. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Megan M. Davies-Ostrom | The Rainmakers
Tue, 28 Dec 2021 09:01:13 -0000
“When in doubt—” I catch Thomas’s eyes and hold up a jar of sparkle lip gloss. “—add more glitter.” The mirror we face is cracked and wreathed in vanity lights that flicker in time with the strained chugging of the ancient generator outside. The smells of old perfume, road dust, and hush puppies fill the painted wooden wagon that serves triple duty as my transportation, home, and dressing room. I blame the generator for that last odour. We restocked on biodiesel at our last stop, and now everything smells like frying corn. | Copyright 2021 by Megan M. Davies-Ostrom. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga | Saviour of the Light Market
Tue, 14 Dec 2021 09:01:09 -0000
Rain soaks through my hair, stretching my coils to wavy locks streaming down my face. A cold gaze follows me through dark windows, reminding me of Lisa’s face. I complained about my parents, once. | Copyright 2021 by Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Genevieve Mills | Girls Have Sharp Teeth
Tue, 23 Nov 2021 09:01:36 -0000
When Madison S. didn’t show up to school, and word got around that it was because her boyfriend threw his phone at her mouth and knocked out four of her teeth, the junior girls of Clark High turned into monsters. Taloned, screaming things driven by rage and revenge. We swarmed her boyfriend, Josh C., by his car after school, and though he tried to beat us off with his lacrosse stick, our numbers were too great, our sisterhood too mighty. | Copyright 2021 by Genevieve Mills. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kehkashan Khalid | The Petticoat Government
Tue, 09 Nov 2021 09:01:59 -0000
I was twenty years old when Hamida Bano, the Padshah Begum, supreme wife of the Emperor, entrusted her infant prince to my arms before fleeing across the Thar desert. Her opium-addled husband, steeped in the luxury of his harem, had no defense against Sher Shah Suri’s advancing armies, which squeezed Agra like a coal between tongs. The Sur Empire then settled its traitorous haunches on North India, and Hamida Bano, trailing her husband’s camel, trekked across the blistering desert, while I, still a young concubine, nursed the boy who would inherit the throne. | Copyright 2021 by Kehkashan Khalid. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 26 Oct 2021 08:01:16 -0000
Nellie kept moving, expecting to blend into the ridgeline, but the hiking guide spotted her. He called out in Italian first, then English. “I don’t think you belong out there.” His group, tourists with brimmed hats and walking sticks, stopped and stared with dull curiosity. The steep slope under her feet was loose gray rock, treacherous for amateurs perhaps, but she’d been wandering terrain like this almost forever. | Copyright 2021 by Pamela Rentz. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 12 Oct 2021 08:01:07 -0000
I’m excited about this new apartment, its shining glass windows overlooking Harlem, until I see her peeing in the park one morning, shortly after we move in. Insulated glass dampens the screech of taxi honks and sirens below and gives us a great view of the nearby park: a huge swath of hilly green in the middle of the city, where evergreens reach up like pining lovers and silent figures walk along its paths. And yet one morning, while sipping my cinnamon coffee, I see her. | Copyright 2021 by Zebib K. A. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
K.P. Kulski | An Arrangement of Moss and Dirt
Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:01:53 -0000
I have spent a lifetime in front of this window, mortality seeping out in waves of nausea and lost weight. There she is, just beyond the grime-cornered glass, in the yard, playing like all children should. I almost tap to get her attention, to give a weak wave of longing and vanished time, but I only watch her move through the grass and tree trunks, hair blown by the breeze. | Copyright 2021 by K.P. Kulski. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 14 Sep 2021 08:01:53 -0000
Nanda hauls the bucket from the depths of the well, her palms aflame with red blisters from clutching the frayed rope too tight. The thick rope, screeching against the pulley, trembling under the weight of the water, becomes heavier by the minute. The minute she goes weak, the bucket will plunge, crashing into the sweet water below, and she’ll have to start the charade for the fourth time. | Copyright 2021 by Amal Singh. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Inez Schaechterle | Ghost Riders at Hutchinson’s Two-Pump
Tue, 24 Aug 2021 08:01:28 -0000
Clouds rolled across the evening sky, dark and low, dragging rain behind them. Desert washes ran dirt-red, and rocky mesas shone wet when lightning flashed. Rainwater frothed down the narrow slot of Sheep Drop Ravine, a chasm with overgrown edges that had claimed the lives of countless sheep and antelope, and of the entire “Handsome Jake” Jubles Gang as it had fled, on a similar night, from a posse of enraged Winslow, Arizona citizens. | Copyright 2021 by Inez Schaechterle. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Eugen Bacon | The Failing Name
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 08:01:49 -0000
The oval fruit, uneven on all sides even when it’s ripe, is not just for eating. Spaces in the dust roads filled with reddish-brown wind are what she sees in her lost childhood. Jolainne wants to tell you, to tell anyone who’ll listen, of hiding in the leaves of a mango tree, witnessing what could have been the onset of an assault. | Copyright 2021 by Eugen Bacon and Seb Doubinsky. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 27 Jul 2021 08:01:17 -0000
I had only one defense against a woman who knew me. “Fine.” I layered venom into my voice, to make her think it a hard-won concession yet again. “I’ll prophecy for you.” Queen Iroda stood alone by the parapet, a dark silhouette against the mountains. The scant light caught the gold embroidery on her robe and the perfect braids of red and silver that draped down her chest like chains. | Copyright 2021 by Benjamin C. Kinney. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lulu Kadhim | A Softness of the Heart
Tue, 13 Jul 2021 08:01:25 -0000
Aunt Violet had been sick for a long time before she died. The doctor said cancer, but Louise’s Aunt Sinna said it was a soft heart. Louise was inclined to agree, knowing little of this cancer business. Anyway, Aunt Sinna never, ever lied. | Copyright 2021 by Lulu Kadhim. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cara Masten DiGirolamo | A Gift from the Queen of Faerie to the King of Hell
Tue, 15 Jun 2021 08:01:44 -0000
The designs weren’t in the window or in any of the shop’s sample books, but I caught sight of the tattoo artist tracing stencils onto transfer paper. I’d been looking for a place to finish my sleeves, and though the tumbling spike-thorn roses weren’t what I’d pictured, I could see them winding between my birds and beasts, viny tendrils and jagged rocks, the buds tempting and lush, the thorns sharp and deadly. | Copyright 2021 by Cara Masten DiGirolamo. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rajan Khanna | Your Ticket to Hell
Tue, 01 Jun 2021 08:01:56 -0000
Your journey to Hell begins on a ferry. You clutch your ticket and line up in the stinging rain, waiting for your chance to board. You remember something about a river in Hell, and a ferryman, but in your memory, he rowed a boat more like a canoe in exchange for gold coins. You’re lined up to board a ship, a modern ship, the kind that might take you to an island. | Copyright 2021 by Rajan Khanna. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Anya Leigh Josephs | By Our Own Hands
Tue, 25 May 2021 08:01:26 -0000
On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, David Lev descends into the library, flouting both Jewish law and university regulations. The building is closed, and he is supposed to be praying, or at least meditating thoughtfully on the wrongs he has committed over the past year, not committing new ones. This is an unfamiliar scale of sin for David, a rabbinical student whose usual Yom Kippur regrets are things like only skimmed a reading and said he’d read it or should call his mother more often. Breaking and entering, not to mention violating the most sacred day of the year, are new ones for him. | Copyright 2021 by Anya Leigh Josephs. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
J. L. Jones | The Sweetest Source
Tue, 11 May 2021 08:01:36 -0000
The sound they’ve all been waiting for finally comes at night. It’s a melting pot of noise ingredients: howls and claps, cries and stomps. Laughter and shrieks are sprinkled in like cayenne powder. It isn’t long before the sound crescendos, the pot overboiling with a furor that calls hearts and stomachs. Deron scrambles to the window, momentarily forgetting his tablet and the buggy application he’s been working on. | Copyright 2021 by J. L. Jones. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Y.M. Pang | How I Became MegaPunch, Or, Why I Stayed with Dylan
Tue, 27 Apr 2021 08:01:16 -0000
I wake up at midnight for the third time this week. Some villain’s robbing a jewellery store. Can’t they get more creative? Maybe try . . . a high-end winter coat store? Or a candy store? Doesn’t make much sense economically, but that’s never stopped a supervillain before. Me? I’m MegaPunch. Just one of your many overworked, panda-eyed superheroes. | Copyright 2021 by Y.M. Pang. Narrated by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A.L. Goldfuss | The Woman With No Face
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 08:01:57 -0000
Ankuin knew she was in a sim by the mineral taste in her mouth. The other tells were more subtle: the fractal pattern of moss on the cave wall, the cyclical rhythm of the rain on wet fronds, and the lyrical birdsong piercing through the dense forest. Most people wouldn’t notice such details, because most people didn’t have a reason to doubt their senses. But Ankuin’s senses were never fully her own. | Copyright 2021 by Alice Goldfuss. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 07:01:44 -0000
It starts with the patch of skin behind her right ear, where her too-large turquoise glasses frame sits awkwardly, an unbalanced seesaw upon her nose. While finishing a requisition report, she scratches there unconsciously, and her nails catch on something hard and thin, coming back with a flimsy yellow patch the size of her nail, translucent and slightly elastic. | Copyright 2021 by Hal Y. Zhang Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 09 Mar 2021 07:01:05 -0000
Watch. The starter pistol sounds. The man takes off running. Five seconds later, the bomb takes off after him. The man is young and strong, for a human, but his legs are short. He’s naked and doesn’t have much hair, even on top of his head. His genitals swing frantically, like a smaller, more terrified version of himself, as he runs from the bomb. | Copyright 2021 by M. Shaw. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Innocent Chizaram Ilo | Flight
Tue, 23 Feb 2021 07:01:24 -0000
Tonight, Jekwu and Izu are perched on Chapel’s fence. They love this fence. It is the only fence in Selemku that is still coated with fresh algae-spirogyra lichen, warm under their feet, like a rug. Here, the glint of the full moon on Chapel’s stained-glass windows crisscrosses their grey feathers, the same way rainbow beams stretch out across the sky in the mornings. The air from this height is cold and dry. It wriggles its way under their skin, sending spasms down their spine. From time to time, the halogen-bulb atop the belfry comes on and then goes off and then on again. A never-ending cycle. | Copyright 2021 by Innocent Chizaram Ilo Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tue, 09 Feb 2021 07:01:05 -0000
Bragg sleeps alone. Thirty-four. This morning, he wakes up with one less tooth in his mouth, a central incisor. What his dentist, later and while looking at a dental chart, calls the patient’s Number Nine. Bragg’s Number Nine, root to crown, a crucial corn-on-the-cob tooth, is not in his mouth. It’s on the pillow beside him. Bragg rubs sleep from his eyes. That first glimpse of the tooth sends his tongue darting to the front of his mouth. An absence. A canyon. | Copyright 2021 by David James Brock. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tonya Liburd | 10 Steps to a Whole New You
Tue, 19 Jan 2021 07:01:51 -0000
(1) Be unaware that the wolf was presenting itself to you in sheep’s clothing. It began, as most things do, simply enough. In a simple neighbourhood, on the edge of a town. Too urban to be rural, too rural to be urban. Women grew old. Some women aged with their children, grandchildren, family around them. Some grew old alone, isolated, bitter. Others might grow old and die sick, in pain. Then there was you. | Copyright 2021 by Tonya Liburd. Narrated by Tonya Liburd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
C.E. McGill | Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind
Tue, 05 Jan 2021 07:01:11 -0000
Oz is holding a knife to his wrist when they knock on the door. For a moment he hesitates, weighing his options. His eyes dart between the door and the knife—eeny, meeny, meiny, mo—and land on the door. “Might as well,” he mutters, and gets to his feet. The dull sound of the knife as he sets it aside on the kitchen table seems to fill the room. It’s a terrible thing, he muses, how loud a house is when there’s no one else in it. | Copyright 2021 by C.E. McGill. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mon, 14 Dec 2020 07:01:04 -0000
“I have a favour to ask,” said the fushi to the chef, “and in exchange, I will grant you a wish.” “What sort of favour?” Yun San asked. She wiped sweating palms down her brown hanfu and tried to show a brave face. Thick mist had whisked her away from the back of her restaurant into the wilderness. Even were she thirty years younger and somehow able to outrun her captor, she had no idea where she was. | Copyright 2020 by Anya Ow. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kurt Hunt | An Indefinite Number of Birds
Tue, 01 Dec 2020 07:01:14 -0000
Stanley began watching birds on the day he panicked and asked JD how much he really loved him, and JD responded, “Oh for fuck’s sake, Stanley. How many birds are in the sky? I don’t know—a bunch!” Stanley couldn’t get the question out of his head. By week’s end, he’d bought a birdwatching guide and an embarrassingly expensive pair of Leica binoculars. He spent a tense Sunday morning ready for the birds to awaken and sing the day’s gossips and confessions, watching and ticking things off in his journal as dawn grew from a hint to a bloody smear to proper daylight. | Copyright 2020 by Kurt Hunt. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Osahon Ize-Iyamu | To Look Forward
Tue, 17 Nov 2020 07:01:27 -0000
We are the ones who dare, back and forth; our hair whipping over, our hearts full of joy. Our bodies burn bright and clean and crisp, glistening when we reach the sun. A healthy tan has coated our skin, our foreheads drip with sweat, our palms firm and slick. We are: over and over again, up in the air; not known to each other, but known to the sky. Mid-jump, mid-action, mid-reaction, mid-air; always there, on rusted swings, on creaking chains, on hot-sun days, back and forth and over, once again. | Copyright 2020 by Osahon Ize-Iyamu. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shingai Njeri Kagunda | And This is How to Stay Alive
Sun, 01 Nov 2020 07:05:48 -0000
Kabi finds my body swinging. I watch my sister press her back against the wall and slide to the ground. My mother shouts, “Kabi! Nyokabi!” No response. “Why are you not answering? Can you bring that brother of yours!” My sister is paralyzed, she cannot speak, she cannot move, except for the shivers that take hold of her spine and reverberate through the rest of her without permission. She is thinking No, no, no, no, no. But the word is not passing her lips which only open and close soundlessly. Mum is coming down the stairs. | Copyright 2020 by Shingai Njeri Kagunda. Narrated by Shingai Njeri Kagunda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Darcie Little Badger | Black, Their Regalia
Mon, 19 Dec 2016 07:01:15 -0000
Narrated by Roxanne Coyne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
P. Djéli Clark | The Things My Mother Left Me
Mon, 05 Dec 2016 07:01:16 -0000
Narrated by Jamye Grant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Shweta Narayan | The Padishah Begum’s Reflections
Thu, 24 Dec 2015 07:01:41 -0000
Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Catherynne M. Valente | The Lily and the Horn
Thu, 10 Dec 2015 07:01:42 -0000
Narrated by Justine Eyre (hosted by Ellen Kushner). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nalo Hopkinson | The Glass Bottle Trick
Thu, 23 Oct 2014 07:01:24 -0000
Narrated by Jayme Grant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Delia Sherman | Miss Carstairs and the Merman
Thu, 09 Oct 2014 07:01:19 -0000
Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:01:18 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nike Sulway | Her Lover’s Golden Hair
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:01:57 -0000
Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lavie Tidhar | Red Dawn: A Chow Mein Western
Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:01:55 -0000
Narrated by Lauri MacMillan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
K.M. Ferebee | Seven Spells to Sever the Heart
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 07:01:14 -0000
Narrated by MacLeod Andrews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Charles de Lint | The Invisibles
Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:01:45 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mon, 03 Oct 2011 07:01:14 -0000
Narrated by Christian Rummel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jonathan Lethem | Using It and Losing It
Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:01:26 -0000
Narrated by Harlan Ellison®. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Megan Arkenberg | Lessons from a Clockwork Queen
Mon, 05 Sep 2011 07:01:25 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Laura Anne Gilman | Crossroads
Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:01:20 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cory Skerry | The World Is Cruel, My Daughter
Mon, 01 Aug 2011 07:01:55 -0000
Narrated by Gabrielle De Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Catherynne M. Valente | The Wolves of Brooklyn
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:01:48 -0000
Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mon, 11 Jul 2011 07:01:57 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jeremiah Tolbert | You Have Been Turned into a Zombie by a Friend
Mon, 27 Jun 2011 07:01:04 -0000
Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cat Rambo | The Immortality Game
Mon, 13 Jun 2011 07:01:08 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sarah Monette | The Devil in Gaylord’s Creek
Mon, 16 May 2011 07:01:49 -0000
Narrated by Emily Janice Card. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mon, 09 May 2011 07:01:34 -0000
Narrated by Rajan Khanna (via StarShipSofa). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Genevieve Valentine | Study, for Solo Piano
Mon, 02 May 2011 07:01:48 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jonathan L. Howard | The House of Gears
Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:01:50 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kat Howard | Choose Your Own Adventure
Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:01:29 -0000
Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
George R. R. Martin | The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr
Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:01:30 -0000
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:01:23 -0000
Narrated by Erik Luke (via PodCastle). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Genevieve Valentine | The Sandal-Bride
Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:25:43 -0000
Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices