It’s high summer in a season of oft-cataclysmic change. A myriad issues of culture, politics, economy and environment, are ripening right now, if not coming to fruition.
This August The Fabulist marks the season with a small farmer’s box of original fiction, fantasy, art and verse that reflect on these unsettled times — and also provide a few moments of comic and also imagistic relief.
Our full lineup for the month is below, along with an update on our forthcoming submissions window for short fiction.
The Fabulist — “Ripening”
Aug. 2020, Vol. 14, No. 5
A husband, a wife and a talking horse send “Mother’s Fine Crockery in Shards,” by Amsterdam-based writer Susan Carey, in the direction of preposterous imbroglio. (Aug. 1)
“Listen: A Fable,” a flash fiction by Curtis VanDonkelaar, mixes up allegory and archetype in its meditation on patriotism and a nation’s legacy of warmongering. (Aug. 8)
Heather Bourbeau return to our pages with another of her sparkling, implicitly fantastical 100-word stories, “Snake Shanties” (Aug. 14), as well as “The Siege” (Aug. 19), a disturbing allegory about the entitlement that comes with peacetime.
In “My Dear Deer,” Ukrainian painter Oksana Reznik depicts wild animals in formally surreal and modernist settings. They’re at once a critique of reductionist attitudes about ecology, and also reminder us of nature’s inevitable eruptions and incursions into our manufactured, mediated, deeply technological existence. (Aug. 21)
North Carolina poet Al Russell writes verse that evokes the suburban legends, bewildering distractions and private grammar of free-range teenage life. (Aug. 28)
SUBMISSIONS UPDATE
Just aheads-up that we’ll be opening a submissions window for short fiction in September. We will welcome works of up to 3,000 words, and value genre fiction with fantastical inclinations, clear plotlines, and compelling, oft-poetic depictions of character, place and situation.
We’ll be selecting for our 2021 lineup, and will be trying out Duosema, the new submissions system from Duotrope, instead of Submittable.
Full details will be announced with our September issue.
As always, you can get current updates on the latest fiction, poetry and art, and open calls for the foregoing, by subscribing to our email newsletter, or following us on Twitter.
