Week 4! I honestly wasn’t sure I’d get four weeks of roundups in a row without a stumble, that certainly hasn’t been the case the last couple years! My goal this year has simply been to take it one week at a time, no big hopes or plans. Just make time to read a bit each day and collect some favorites. It’s been working ok so far I’d say. 5 more stories this week including two from magazines that I haven’t featured in the roundup before. Apparition Literary Magazine (or Apparition Lit) is a quarterly magazine that published themed issues. This month’s issue’s theme was justice. Mermaids Monthly is a brand new magazine that funded through a kickstarter late last year (one I was happy to support) and it intends to bring, as the name implies, art, poetry, short stories and more all centered around mermaids (defined as any cool aquatic chimeras you can think of). I’d say with issue one it’s off to a great start!

As is usually the case we have a pretty wide selection of story settings, tone, and styles this week and hopefully you’ll find something (hopefully several somethings) to love.

“Commodities” by Zebib K.A. from Apparition Lit #13

This is an interesting story of a near and in many ways scarily too possible future. One that echoes obviously strongly with the terrors that have been amplified by the previous four years of American reactionary far-right politics. Here we have an America that has dissolved and has border walls to keep people out and in. What is really interesting is that the story takes place in California where many of the oppressed originally fled to. It’s supposed to be the “good” place. Indeed some patrolling officers even say so out loud. All while they look for people who had illegally crossed the border fleeing the bad of the other side of the wall. It’s a detail that resonated particularly with me as a Canadian, we who often paint ourselves as so much better than our southern neighbors, yet who refused to make practical moves to be a safe place for those persecuted by growing official American xenophobia. Our protagonist, Miriam only wants the private quiet life she has eked out for herself. Turning away from those in need is harder than she might like though and rugged individualism on its own is not much of a a solution to oppression.