Quick Sips - Fiyah Magazine #7: MUSIC

It’s an especially big issue of Fiyah Literary Magazine this go, with five stories and three poems, and focused on the theme of Music. Now Fiyah has featured a number of stories that have celebrated and complicated music during its run, but here the lights are on and focused on the stage, on performance. Each of the stories deal with people not only embracing music, but having to navigate the different stages they live with. From the literal stages of jazz clubs and private concerts to the much more metaphorical stages of magic prisons, family roles, and dark nights full of terrors—these character know that they have to wear different masks for different occasions, whether it’s to blend in among “polite” society or break free from the restraints of injustice. It’s a vivid and wonderful assortment of stories, leaning heavily toward fantasy this go around, at least where the fiction is concerned, but spanning many styles, genres, and time periods. So let’s get to the reviews!

Art by Mariama Alizor

Quick Sips - Fireside Magazine April 2018

Spring might finally be arriving, and at Fireside Magazine that means the stories are about rebirth and new beginnings, even as they’re about decay and endings. For me, at least, spring always brings to mind thaw. A thawing of the world after the long freeze of winter. Which means new growth, new green, but also means revealing all the death that the snow concealed. The roadkill, the rot, the dead leaves not yet turned to mulch. And these stories find characters at this point, seeing all around them the evidence of death and pain, and having to make the decision to also see the life. To see the good, and to try and foster that good, to help it grow. These are stories that show people pushing back against the pressure to die, to be silent, and embrace a future full of the possibility of failure, yes, but also full of the hope of success. To the reviews!

Art by Dawid Planeta