foxglove hymnal

A literary journal of fantasy and horror | Submissions are open

[foxglovehymnal]

Today is the last day to submit for August’s Monthly Short! Our theme this month is reflections and we’re looking for art, poetry, and/or flash fiction of the fantasy and horror variety. For more information on how to submit, check out our website. Or, you could read our first Monthly Short to get an idea of what we’re looking for: Girl, by Karen Draper.

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open!

Each month, we feature a piece of artwork, poetry, or flash fiction on our website. We strongly encourage work that breaks the boundaries of genre and style. The only requirements are that your piece be fantastical or horrific in some way, and that it be at least tangentially related to the monthly theme. This month’s theme is reflections. Check out our website for more info on how to submit. 

[foxglovehymnal]

Or, read this poem about the perfect man from our archives.

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open!

Each month, we feature a piece of artwork, poetry, or flash fiction on our website. We strongly encourage work that breaks the boundaries of genre and style. The only requirements are that your piece be fantastical or horrific in some way, and that it be at least tangentially related to the monthly theme. This month’s theme is reflections. Check out our website for more info on how to submit. 

[foxglovehymnal]

Or, read this story about women and witches and ugly children from our archives.

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open!

Each month, we feature a piece of artwork, poetry, or flash fiction on our website. We strongly encourage work that breaks the boundaries of genre and style. The only requirements are that your piece be fantastical or horrific in some way, and that it be at least tangentially related to the monthly theme. This month’s theme is reflections. Check out our website for more info on how to submit. 

[foxglovehymnal]

Or, read this story about a moon child seeking a mother from our archives.

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open!

Each month, we feature a piece of artwork, poetry, or flash fiction on our website. We strongly encourage work that breaks the boundaries of genre and style. The only requirements are that your piece be fantastical or horrific in some way, and that it be at least tangentially related to the monthly theme. This month’s theme is reflections. Check out our website for more info on how to submit. Or, read this story about a transgender shapeshifter from our archives.

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open!

Each month, we feature a piece of artwork, poetry, or flash fiction on our website. We strongly encourage work that breaks the boundaries of genre and style. The only requirements are that your piece be fantastical or horrific in some way, and that it be at least tangentially related to the monthly theme. This month’s theme is reflections. Check out our website for more info on how to submit. Or, read this story about a transgender shapeshifter from our archives.

[foxglovehymnal]

Foxglove Hymnal is currently open for submissions of artwork, poetry, and short fiction up to 1,000 words for our featured Monthly Short! Submissions should be fantasy or horror (or genre-smashing speculative fiction). Our theme this month is horizons. We’re looking for stories and authors with new, unique perspectives, and want to specifically encourage young people, women, people of color, people with disabilities and queer people to submit their work. Check out our website for more information on how to submit, or click here to read a poem from our archives. 

[foxglovehymnal]

Today is the last day to submit for this theme. Send in your art, poetry, and flash fiction!

[dbss0923]

My review of Catherynne M. Valente’s book Deathless is up if anyone’s interested!

[foxglovehymnal]

This month our Short is actually a review by one of our editors, of a book that is probably relevant to your interests if you’re following this tumblr. We also have a full transcript if video is not your favorite for whatever reason: 

“Death stands behind every bride, every groom.  Even as they say their vows, the flowers are rotting in her crown, his teeth are rotting in his head.  Cancers they will not notice for thirty years grow slowly, already in their stomachs.  Her beauty browns at the edges as the ring slides up her finger.  His strength saps infinitesimally as he kisses her.  If you listen in the church, you can hear my clock ticking softly, as they tock together toward the grave.  I hold their hands as they stride proudly down the very short road to dotage and death.  It’s all so sweet, it makes me cry.  Let me kiss your bride on both cheeks, Life.  Let me feel her hot blood slowly cool against my eyelids.”

Keep reading

[foxglovehymnal]

Foxglove Hymnal is currently open for submissions of artwork, poetry, and short fiction up to 1,000 words for our featured Monthly Short! Submissions should be fantasy or horror (or genre-smashing speculative fiction). Our theme this month is horizons. We’re looking for stories and authors with new, unique perspectives, and want to specifically encourage young people, women, people of color, people with disabilities and queer people to submit their work. Check out our website for more information on how to submit, or click here to read a poem from our archives. 

[dbss0923]

My review of Catherynne M. Valente’s book Deathless is up if anyone’s interested!

[foxglovehymnal]

This month our Short is actually a review by one of our editors, of a book that is probably relevant to your interests if you’re following this tumblr. We also have a full transcript if video is not your favorite for whatever reason: 

“Death stands behind every bride, every groom.  Even as they say their vows, the flowers are rotting in her crown, his teeth are rotting in his head.  Cancers they will not notice for thirty years grow slowly, already in their stomachs.  Her beauty browns at the edges as the ring slides up her finger.  His strength saps infinitesimally as he kisses her.  If you listen in the church, you can hear my clock ticking softly, as they tock together toward the grave.  I hold their hands as they stride proudly down the very short road to dotage and death.  It’s all so sweet, it makes me cry.  Let me kiss your bride on both cheeks, Life.  Let me feel her hot blood slowly cool against my eyelids.”

Keep reading

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open for next month’s Monthly Short; our theme is horizons. We’re looking for genre art, poetry, and flash fiction–fantasy or horror is great, weird and creepy genre mashups are even better. Check out our Submissions page for more information.

And check out this short story from our archives. 

[dbss0923]

My review of Catherynne M. Valente’s book Deathless is up if anyone’s interested!

[foxglovehymnal]

This month our Short is actually a review by one of our editors, of a book that is probably relevant to your interests if you’re following this tumblr. We also have a full transcript if video is not your favorite for whatever reason: 

“Death stands behind every bride, every groom.  Even as they say their vows, the flowers are rotting in her crown, his teeth are rotting in his head.  Cancers they will not notice for thirty years grow slowly, already in their stomachs.  Her beauty browns at the edges as the ring slides up her finger.  His strength saps infinitesimally as he kisses her.  If you listen in the church, you can hear my clock ticking softly, as they tock together toward the grave.  I hold their hands as they stride proudly down the very short road to dotage and death.  It’s all so sweet, it makes me cry.  Let me kiss your bride on both cheeks, Life.  Let me feel her hot blood slowly cool against my eyelids.”

Hi, guys!  Today I want to tell you about Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente.  She’s an author that I think I can now consider to be one of my favorites.  This is the second book of hers that I’ve read, and I just think that her writing is absolutely beautiful.

So, if you don’t know what this book is about, it follows a girl named Marya Morevna, who is born in pre-revolution Russia but grows up during the revolution.  And what this book does is that it combines Russian folklore with Russian history.  So in the story, Koschei the Deathless, who is a figure from Russian folklore, shows up at Marya’s house, in revolutionary Russia, and basically takes her away to be his bride.  And she goes with him to his country, the Country of Life, and she lives her life there, she lives out this fairy tale.

It’s a coming-of-age story in a way, paired with this fairy tale telling, and I just thought it was absolutely beautiful.  The prose is just so gorgeous.  On a sentence-structure level, I don’t know if anyone can beat Catherynne M. Valente.  She’s incredible.  Even her tweets are gorgeously composed.

The book of hers that I had read before was The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden.  Between that and this, I think it’s pretty obvious that this author really loves fairy tales, and loves the structure of fairy tales.  She uses that structure, like everything is in threes, and there’s a lot of repetition to move the story forward.  She uses that structure to keep the idea of fairy tales sort of alive and classic, but she molds it to the stories that she’s telling as well, which I just think is so clever.  And then down inside every sentence is so gorgeous.

It just flows, and the words are creative.  Words that are paired together that you wouldn’t normally think of being paired together.  Or images that you feel like you would never have come up with this image for something, there it is on the page, she did it.  It’s just so vibrant.

The word “ceramic” comes to mind -- something that is sort of sturdy and yet fragile, and functional and yet can be so beautiful.  That’s the way that Catherynne M. Valente’s prose is for me, and I would recommend reading any of her books just for that.

So that sort of begs the question, what didn’t I like about this book?  I’m a pretty critical reader; I don’t often read a book, no matter how good it is, that I don’t find something in it that could be better.

The one issue I would say I had with Deathless is that it isn’t a very long book, it’s only about 350 pages, there’s not a lot of text per page, but it covers a lot of time.  It covers several years’ worth of time.  And it goes in chunks, like it’ll cover a couple years, and then it’ll skip some years, and then it’ll cover another year or so, and that sort of thing.  So a lot a lot a lot happens in this not-super-long book, and I think for me that always makes a story feel kind of slow.

On top of that, it doesn’t have a story structure that we would typically expect, because in a lot of ways it’s more like fairy tales within a fairy tale within a fairy tale.  There are lots of storylines that do come together to make one story, but it doesn’t necessarily have a plotline that we would normally expect to see.  So, for me, reading through it, there were time when it felt kind of long, and I just thought that the pacing could have been a little smoother.

But really overall, I thought that the story was great.  Definitely different, because of that fairy tale structure, but interesting, and clever, and just exploratory, if that makes sense.  This book covers a lot of ideas and themes, especially in regards to relationships that people have with each other, romantic and platonic both.  I felt like I was discovering things when I read it.

Overall, the way that I feel about this book is that it’s definitely worth reading.  The only way I would not recommend it is if you are easily offended, or easily sort of bothered by exploring power dynamics in relationships, because that’s a big theme in this book and I can see how that might be difficult for some people.  But I would recommend it to anyone who really loves beautiful prose the way that I do,

This book moved me.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, it took me a long time to read it, but in the end I ended up giving this one a five out of five stars on Goodreads.  I only give five out of five stars for books that make me fall in love with something.  It can be anything.  It can be characters, it can be the writing style, it can be the story itself, it can be the world that the author creates.

In this case, I finished this book just sort of feeling in love with everything, just sort of in love with life and in love with writing and in love with storytelling.  And it reminded me of my love and my appreciation of the magic of a good story, and the magic of a well-written page.  That’s what this book is.  And if that sounds good to you like it sounds good to me, then I would definitely recommend picking up Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente.

Thanks so much for listening!  If you’ve read this book before, please let me know in the comments how you liked it.  If you haven’t read it before and you want to ask me any questions about it, I’d be happy to answer them.  If you just ask in the comments, I can get back to you pretty quickly.  If you are interested in seeing more from me, please like and subscribe.  I would love to hear from you about anything.  My writing blog will be linked below, as well as, I will link to Cat Valente’s twitter so you can check her out over there.

Thanks so much, have a great day, and I’ll see you later!

(click through to view the video on Youtube for the links referenced in the video)

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open for next month’s Monthly Short; our theme is horizons. We’re looking for genre art, poetry, and flash fiction--fantasy or horror is great, weird and creepy genre mashups are even better. Check out our Submissions page for more information.

And check out this short story from our archives. 

[foxglovehymnal]

The Eighth Plague

by Estefania Velez

I’ve been aiming to uncover the ephemeral mystery of flowers. Not to say meaning—not to point to a scar and say “this is for longing”, “this is for doubt.” No, I want to know the dark magic of nature. I want to know how a living thing can bleed itself over the secrets of becoming; I want to know how I, like the locusts, can crack forward from a dark place, can writhe in the mud and emerge forsaken, cleaner, purer, solid gold, hardened like bone and darkened like heart and ready, too, to plague the woesome people who bloody my way.

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For previous Monthly Shorts, check out our website. For a random cool thing to read, click on this.

[foxglovehymnal]

Submissions are open for our June Monthly Short. We’re looking for art, poetry, or flash fiction that fits in with the theme craft and is fantastical, horrific, or too strange to be either. The magic of making is in crafted objects all around us; to what work or witchcraft have you put your hand? In what craft have you sailed to distant shores? 

For more information, check out our submissions page. If you’re interested in reading some of our past pieces, start with this poem. 

[foxglovehymnal]

The Eighth Plague

by Estefania Velez

I’ve been aiming to uncover the ephemeral mystery of flowers. Not to say meaning—not to point to a scar and say “this is for longing”, “this is for doubt.” No, I want to know the dark magic of nature. I want to know how a living thing can bleed itself over the secrets of becoming; I want to know how I, like the locusts, can crack forward from a dark place, can writhe in the mud and emerge forsaken, cleaner, purer, solid gold, hardened like bone and darkened like heart and ready, too, to plague the woesome people who bloody my way.

• • • 

For previous Monthly Shorts, check out our website. For a random cool thing to read, click on this.

[foxglovehymnal]

The Eighth Plague

by Estefania Velez

I’ve been aiming to uncover the ephemeral mystery of flowers. Not to say meaning—not to point to a scar and say “this is for longing”, “this is for doubt.” No, I want to know the dark magic of nature. I want to know how a living thing can bleed itself over the secrets of becoming; I want to know how I, like the locusts, can crack forward from a dark place, can writhe in the mud and emerge forsaken, cleaner, purer, solid gold, hardened like bone and darkened like heart and ready, too, to plague the woesome people who bloody my way.

• • • 

For previous Monthly Shorts, check out our website. For a random cool thing to read, click on this.